The many iPad GPS apps
 

I tried runway hd for a bit, sky demon is expensive, the demo of uk runways crashes even before getting airborne with it (see ya!).

There are loads now it seems.

I want stable, simple and not too expensive.

Any suggestions?

If you just want to know where you are, then UK AirspaceAVOID by PocketFMS will do the job for free. It doesn't allow flight planning. It just shows where you are relative to airspace and warns if you are about to enter.

Couldn't be simpler, nor cheaper! And it's NATS approved.

If you want something more advanced, then try EasyVFR by PocketFMS.

€69.99 for an annual subscription on one operating system including advanced weather, NOTAM, and aerodata updates or €150 for all operating systems.

PocketFMS are the original developers of mobile aviation moving map software for consumer devices. It's being going for over 11 years now.

I've got Runway HD on this mini iPad & can't see a problem with it. Latest incarnation gives optional Google maps with airspace (auto updated) overlaid. Along with airfield diagrams. Rain radar as long as a mobile signal is available, notams as required. Flight planning, Tafs/metars & flight plog sums. What else is required? It hasn't crashed out, yet!

I must admit to loving Air Navigation Pro. Doesn't seem to be too popular these days but it is cheap and in my experience pretty stable. It does everything I want, which admittedly is just to show my position on a chart with reference to a magenta line.

Does Air Nav Pro automatically give you a plog?

Not sure it does Ian. I usually use the free skydemon light on the internet to get a plog. I will have a check tomorrow.

Here in the Far East it is Air Navigation Pro that is quite handy. We also had it as backup on board when we ferried a PA-39 from Belgium to Thailand last November - we checked sporadically it's use if we had a spare time (no auto-pilot) and yes, it worked fine for most of the route. I like this app a lot.

Most important is - apply the ordinary redundancy and take at least two independent ones. All applications are based on databases and they have a tendency to crash in Murphys Law timeframe.

Currently, I have SkyDemon (actual primary auxiliary tool), AirnavPro (was my prime, but got worse and worse with version, is due to get thrown out of the cockpit) and Jeppesens Mobile VFR (trial version to see whether is is ready to replace SD and/or ANP) plus JeppFD (which is the most reliable of them all). ANP was quite nice, but maintenance and the hazzles of update tangos revealed that these swiss guys are simply not able to handle long term reliability - some versions crashed frequently, the current one often stops working or the VAC dont pop up - so, for me, dead. SkyDemon is quite nice, but also is not very reliable - if you look at the GPS traces you see drops of the app and also, the VAC database frequently corrupts. Jeppesens newest baby is quite ambitious, but not quite yet there. On my flight yesterday I had two crashes of SD and was unable to relaunch the app. Because I did not load all data for the flight into Jeppesen, I continued with ANP.

So, take at least two to not get into trouble.

That's a great idea Beethoven.