B767
 

Keg,

I've had it working for the last two days. My iPad is in a leather case, and I've had it wedged in landscape orientation on my (F/Os) side of the compass. It takes a little while to lock on to the signal, but once it does works well.

Cheers

A great gadget...

and told the ramp cops today..."only using it to check that me late arriving Jepp amdts were correct"...impressed him no end..:ok:

Well played!

The Dual Xgps150 arrived from Crackberry in Florida Monday Avo. It was ordered Friday am Melbourne time so it shipped Friday US time. $150 including freight via UPS.

Hitches up in about Two minutes flat.

One thing though is it appears to be using a different datum from whatever Google earth is using because its consistently out by a hundred feet in both directions, not that it matters right now.

I was just informed that Mendelssohn now stocks the GNS 5870 in Australia:

GNS 5870 GPS Bluetooth receiver for iPad

We have not tested this one, but there is no reason to suspect it won't work...

If anyone already has one, we'd love to hear about your experiences.

I'll be in Oshkosh next month and I suspect I will investigate and buy samples of a fair few interesting ways to use the iPad in the cockpit. I am sure there will be plenty on offer this year.

EDIT: I have just ordered one. Will let people know how it goes.

There are heaps of cheap bluetooth gps receivers on Ebay. I know they can't be used on an Ipad unless Steve Jobs says so but if you jailbreak the Ipad any bluetooth gps will communicate with it.

I'm not sure which datum Apple uses for measuring GPS Altitude. Their documentation states only:
Positive values indicate altitudes above sea level.

Now I'm assuming if they have said "Sea Level" then they are using the WGS84 ellipsoid approximation of Earth, which most GPS units report altitude at. It probably doesn't apply the correction model to determine that actual height above sea level though, since the ellipsoid model can be out by 100ft at various parts of Earth.

I'd be interested to see if the GPS alt reported by Apple is different/similar to the GPS altitude on airliners especially. We may then be able to apply the corrected model to get a more accurate representation of AMSL.

EDIT: Found an answer on the Apple developer forums. An Apple representative says:
- iPhone 4 & iPad use the WGS84 ellipsoid Corrected for local variations in elevation. They don't say, but this most likely uses the WGS84 + EGM96 model (as used by Google Earth).
- iPhone 3GS and iPhone3G only reference compared to the WGS84 ellipsoid, much like your airline/handheld GPS does. This means your true altitude above the ocean may be out by about 100ft, but will probably be the same as your FMS GPS output.

Unfortunately you can't tell in code whether you're running iPhone4 or iPhone 3GS, so I can't apply a correction to the iPhone 3GS GPS altitude to make it true (local) AMSL.

Edit again - Yeah I'm working on Track-up now

Does it have a 'track up' option? I don't mind if the names are sideways, upside down, etc but having track up as an option saves me from having to move it around as much to get a 'map to ground' orientation.

Absolutely LOVE having the IFR waypoints on the WAC for transcontinental. Can't wait until I can load the plan and have 10nm markers on the track line.

Left it for quite sometime on the dash today. No joy with the GPS. I'll give it another go tomorrow altocu.

Keg, what are you using, an iPhone or an iPad? If iPad, is it the 3G model, as it doesn't have a GPS built in, hence the comments about sourcing a 3rd party one.

Track up? I thought it was only women that used track up, like when reading a road map.... apparently it's well known that women prefer track up and men prefer north up.

Shagpile, the XGPS150 is now "behaving" properly and giving me positions within 5 to ten metres according to Tom Tom, Google maps and my Navonics marine software (which i know to be correct wrt. position and datum) so I think it was just taking its time to autocorrelate.

Keg. Do you have the Airplane Mode Switch ON or OFF?

I couldn't get the gps to work, then tried with the Airplane Mode switch OFF. Locked on straight away. Maybe just a coincident. Haven't had a chance to try it again. Just remember to turn off the 3G and the Wifi, otherwise you'll have to reprimand yourself. :E

Perhaps I am being a bit dim (don't answer that!) but is there a way of entering a planned track?

I thought I read that you could enter the route in, but can't find where or how. I can't get the HSI up either.

Any clues most gratefully accepted!

Yes. Press on the destination and it will come up with the airport details, eg, VOR, NDB, AP, select airport, then "direct to" and you are good to go.

The HSI isn't displaying because you don't have a track selected.

To add to what XXX said, once you have a destination selected, press on the compass (second from the right, bottom row) and that will bring up the HSI, click on the hdg/crs bug and moving them will change the valve and pinching on the HSI will resize it just like you would anything else on the ipad

Unfortunately with the iPhone, the Aeroplane Mode switch, when ON, not only disables the Antenna but also disables the GPS antenna. The only way to work the GPS on it is with Aeroplane Mode OFF.:ugh:

Does the GPS work on the ipad 2 even in aeroplane mode?
As this would save battery life.
Gps doesnt work on my iphone 3gs in aeroplane mode. So I leave it off but it drains battery very quickly.

XXX, 3G IPAD with aeroplane mode on. When you open Ozrunways, GPS still comes up as 'active'. Left it on the dash today for 10+ minutes and couldn't get anything to 'lock on'. Did drain the battery like the GPS was on though. Having flown 'track up' on Boeings for the last 16 years, it's jus something i've become used to.

The external GPS is so that I can be more assured of getting an actual position and don't have to work out my position from lat/ long all the time. That said, having the IFR waypoints showing on the WAC certainly makes it easier to orientate yourself.

Capt Fathom, I thought I had tried with aeroplane mode off previously but can't remember for sure. It'll be about four weeks before I can try again (yay for holidays) so I'll have to leave it for a bit. Obviously most of the flying I do is outside of 3G coverage anyway.

Aeroplane mode disables "location services" - which is the memory stack that serves up GPS locations to applications that want it. The external Bluetooth GPS units can't be "seen" by the apps if this is turned off either.

Perhaps the words "aeroplane mode" are confusing - it should be off when in an aircraft to use the GPS and thus OZRunways, but it should be ON when we are travelling in an airliner. So in theory, it would not be legal (or at least company ops for pax) to have an iPad operating with aeroplane mode OFF.....

You can manually turn off transmitting services but not have it in Airplane mode (so the GPS still works)
- Turn WiFi off
- Turn Bluetooth off
- Cellular Data off