Jeppesen VFR / GPS charts

[QDMQDMQDM]

What are these like? They get slagged off a lot, but they're cheap and for the N-S transit of Germany I need to do in June I would only have to buy four of the Jepps to eight of the German ICAO charts.

Are the Jeppesen charts OK? I guess they must be. Opinions?

QDM

[Send Clowns]

They are OK, but not as good as the UK CAA charts for example. They are used for the JAA ATPL Flight Planning course I teach (southern Germany in fact, ED6). They are less easy to read and pick out detail, being too cluttered with coloured background. However if your route study before the flight is good they should be perfectly adequate. Try to have a look at each choice before you decide (any ATPL student should have an ED6 for an example, if you know someone who has sat JAA ATPLs).

[QDMQDMQDM]

Thanks a lot, very useful. I'm going to end up doing a combination:

Two of the French ICAO
Netherlands ICAO
Danish ICAO (£21!)
Four German Jeppesens
Swiss ICAO

Expensive stuff this Euro travel! Anyone got any advice about the cheapest way to get the airfield info? By the time I add a Bottlang set into this it's going to be several hundred pounds before I even start. Shame we can't pool resources on this board, innit?

QDM

[Keef]

The advantage is that you have the same "format" and style for all your charts, and they should "fit together" without vast (or no) overlap.

The disadvantage is that they aren't as easy to read as some of the others on the market. They're OK-ish once you get used to them.

They have (in my experience) had at least one worrying error: a VOR in France that wasn't there: they carried on showing the temporary one at LGL long after the permanent one was back in service. Fortunately, I also had the French ICAO chart in my bag (with the right information). Some friends on the same trip had a few interesting moments.

I have this niggling worry about Jepp VFR charts, by inference, because of the "missing" controlled airspace in my Garmin GPS. It has a Jepp database: Garmin and Jepp blame each other for the omissions - I'd rather they stopped passing the buck and fixed it.

[bluskis]

It may not be applicable to your routing, but its worthwhile checking the French, Dutch and Swiss maps to see if they cover the route you want to take through Germany. This would avoid the need to use the German maps.

[28thJuly2001]

Why dont you just use a road map of Europe. :D
Sorry couldn't resist it. (I shall go back in my box now)
28th,,

[Flyin'Dutch']

Hi QDM

The Jeps are OK'sh but that is really it.

If you want more info about the Bottlang drop me an email or private message and I will see what I can do as I have the complete version D in my bookcase.

Ciao

FD

[Rattus]

The UK ones lack detail and contain numerous small but significant errors, which give the impression that they have been drawn by someone who is not really familiar with the place. This tends to undermine confidence in the whole series.

Never buy a map (other than a target map of course :D ) which originated outside the country it seeks to portray.

Rattus

[Gerry Actrick]

At the risk of upsetting 28th, I got a UK one free with flyer and the roads are not well defined, big thick ones on the ground are little and thin on the map.
Gerry

[alphaalpha]

Whilst I generally agree with the earlier posts, the big advantage of using Jepp is that the format is constant across national boundaries. Particularly, the demarcation and identification of the various pieces and levels of controlled airspace. If you are unfamiliar with a chart, its easy to make a misread the airspace details. I use CAA charts for UK and Jepp for the rest of Europe.

They are also fairly cheap, which is an advantage for countries you visit only once or twice a year.

The danger in swapping between UK CAA and UK Jepp, is that the lat/long squares on the Jepps show minimum safety altitude, the CAA squares show maxium terrain/obstacle elevation. Very dangerous to mix up.

AA.