Half mil maps
 

Anyone reckon they've had their day? Personally I like maps of any sort anyway but apart from oddities like me do you think we'll still be buying them in say 5-10 years time if it's not mandatory?

its not a requirement you have them now onboard. So why would anything change?

I don't expect printed maps to be around in maybe 10 years. The more that pilots use GPS, the less printed maps will be sold, and the cost of producing them will increase. The increased costs will be passed onto customers, which means even less will be sold.

It's the same with newspapers and printed books. Newspaper sales are falling by 10%-30% annually. Which means the cover prices go up faster than inflation to cover costs, and results in the circulations dropping even quicker. Very few newspapers will be around in 10 years time (probably just the Sun and Daily Mail!) and many will have closed within 5 years. Printed book sales fell 9.8% last year as digital sales increased.

The less paper that is used, the more it will cost to manufacture. A wholly paperless society is only a matter of time.

Thought you had to carry a current chart or something. Maybe I'm wrong.

You're correct, but nowhere does it say it has to be a printed chart or a CAA produced chart.

Most charts are sold to students and that's not going to change.

And most folk even if they have a GPS will have a paper backup.

I can't see sales dropping off that much that they will stop producing them.

In a perfect world, yes. I don't know anyone who has a current chart (me included and an instructor I have flown with recently).

I prefer to use paper charts. After growing up with MS flight simulator I know one thing for sure: anything with a display on it can and will fail or tell me it has an error of some sort. I will always have paper charts on board... Although I very much appreciated the garmin 100 (hundred) while flying to IFR waypoints somewhere over the Ionian Sea (because there are places on earth where no official charts exist and not even an iPad helps much). :}

I'm astonished anyone even asks that question

Just because there is a technological option that depends on batteries or a power supply people think they can do without a tried and tested analogue alternative.
In many cases it is true, but I've seen systems fail too many times, and, let's face it, when they go down it isn't going to cost you £18 to replace

I do worry that some pilots are so in love with the technology, they are handing over too much control to the systems and fail to remember that it is only a tool.

Anyway - rant over......

If you took the trouble to read my OP properly you would in fact see that I approve of paper maps. However I have a feeling that not everyone else does.

I always do.

The reason I carry one is 1) it will never crash or run out of batteries 2) sometimes while it's nice to have a de-cluttered view excluding roads, rivers, airfields with a runway <500m etc, if you need a quick sanity check that isn't GPS based, at least you have something that shows it all without having to faff about changing config options. They are also useful as a sanity check while planning as it's easy to hide airspace >xxx on some electronic charts and think you are free to fly wherever you want. However, besides what I said once airborne my paper chart is put down the side of the seat and it generally stays there until I tidy the plane up after landing.

Piperarcher, I agree. I carry a printed chart too (for backup), but like every pilot I know, it's not the latest. Mine is 2 years old, and I likely won't be buying a new one this year - although I do have up-to-date electronic versions of the CAA charts on my iPad. The last time I needed a paper chart in flight was a few years ago, but I like to check it thoroughly when planning. As technology develops over the next few years (ie iPad crashes and overheating become less of an issue) the need for printed charts will diminish further. And the CAA will have to succombe to the inevitable at some stage and add GPS usage to the PPL syllabus.

I also use Memory Map for printing sections of up-to-date CAA charts. It's much better than trying to unravel a chart mid-flight.

Love maps.
Have three huge French IGN maps of the world framed on the wall at Tartare Towers - in view of the kitchen table.
Tartarettes invariably ask a question or two relating to geography or politics during their dinner.
Take your point Thing, but I'd personally feel very uncomfortable behind perspex at altitude without the carefully folded piece of paper on my lap.
Orientated in the direction of flight of course.
A map with a bullet in it is still a map...

Nooooo. How do people do that? I can't look at a map unless it's north up. My flying buddy goes all tilt if he's looking at a GPS that isn't track orientated; I tilt if it's not north up.

I doubt that paper charts will disappear in the forseeable future, but I can see a time when people navigate primarilly by electronic moving maps, and only carry a 1:1,000,000 scale chart in the aircraft as a backup in case all else fails.

This means that it will be even more important that people are taught basic DR nav during training, as they will get so little practice afterwards.

A growing problem I see now, is people mounting Ipads and such in places where, if their rubber sucker, or other temporary mountings came loose the screen would fall into the controls! :eek:


MJ:ok:

Of course I carry paper charts. I tried using an Ipad instead but my chinagraph pencil made one hell of a mess of the screen.

I'm with you ST. Without a map, what would we use to write stuff down on?


MJ:ok:

Half mil maps
 

'Current Chart'. With respect, none of the CAA charts published are current, not even the most recent, unless you update it regularly, which can be done by using the NATS subscription service.
I was quite surprised by the number of changes that get notified by e-mail. My chart would look a mess if I were to scribble them all on it.

Just hope I don't hit a mast that's been erected on a hill top after I bought the latest chart, I doubt it would appear on my ipad....!

I know you'll never see this in england.

in the australian summer heat the gps display vanishes and will not return until you cool the unit down. if you can't cool the unit down you are stuffed.

paper maps work at any temperature in a cockpit.

Things are certainly changing. Whether better or worse is hard to say, but certainly for the more complex.

Many people now favour GPS screens, of a dozen different varieties, over paper charts. We have always had ICAO paper charts at 1:500,000 scale, but then for a while we had Jeppesen who sadly have just withdrawn that product, but also we now have the Transair/Dobossy 1:1m chart, and options to print from various packages as well.

Personally I'm experimenting with the 1m chart for long trips, whether VFR or IFR, then a printout from either MediaMap or SkyDemon for the patch around departure and arrival aerodromes. I have a GPS with an on-screen map of course (who doesn't, although there are numerous variations as I said), but would never rely upon that as my sole source of information. For local flying, I just have an A4 printout of the local patch.


That said, I think that the ICAO 1:500,000 paper charts will be with us indefinitely. Why?

(1) It always works, regardless of conditions, locale, sunlight, power, etc.

(2) It's a universal standard, and we need one of those, so that everything is a variation FROM a known standard.

(3) You need a consistent system for flying instruction, as it's not reasonable to expect instructors and examiners to constantly switch mapping system between students and aeroplanes.


However, I think it's quite likely that as the internet gets more powerful and printing becomes cheaper and ever more available, we'll probably see a move away from buying a paper chart for the year, and towards printing from the net as and when required. Many SkyDemon users, for example, are already doing that as a matter of course. But, it will still basically be a 1:500,000 paper chart.

G

Listen to Farnborough LARs any weekend and hear the people without charts asking a busy LARs controller for the freq for Headcorn/Stapleford etc because they can't read a frequency off their yoke mounted GPS.


The bloke last year near East Mids whose GPS had packed up, and he was lost without a map, or the guy who bust Doncaster airspace because although the half mil showed their new airspace, his GPS didn't.


A current half mil is always folded to the correct place in my cockpit and has lines drawn on it.


SND

And up north in a couple of weeks we have exercise northern warrior or what ever its called with 2 weeks solid of GPS jamming.

ISTR, several years ago, Ordinance- Survey maps being printed individually, on demand, by an inkjet plotter.

Wide-format printers about 4 feet wide are fairly commonplace for printing posters, vinyl banners and the like.
I can see your local Aviation-shop, or even the larger airfields, installing one and printing , on demand, straight from the relevant Authorities' database. such a map can be date/time-stamped and updates readily identified and appended.

I always wondered, when buying an A-Z town map/street index, just how long ithad been sitting on the shelf....my current Manchester area one is hugely at varience with reality. In the case of Oldham roads and railways have completely vanished...thanks to the internet, an instant update can be had and printed.

How did we manage, before Computers and Cellphones?

I trust that Scottish FIs will be taking advantage of the opportunity to send as many students as possible for their QXCs ? :cool:

G

I am sure they will just like I always did.

Just as all the commercial flights to the highlands and islands will continue to operate as normal in a procedural environment without any radar cover below 7000ft.

"Multiple high energy contacts inside 50 miles flight information service boys good luck"

"bugga I knew we should have just gone for Scottish info those area radar boys are just depressing"

Mad Jock that's a breakfast I owe you!:cool:

At least Scottish Info give me some sympathy (not a lot though) for the thermal state of my nuts when stuck in a cub doing 30knts ground speed in the middle of January.

half mil maps
 

Our 1/2 m charts are very nice but also very expensive at about 18 quid a pop. To be strictly legal, I'm required to carry the most current chart but if, for example, I'm planning a trip to, say, the North of England next week, I will have to buy a chart for that area. No problem with that, but then the 'current' chart for that area may be going out of date in a couple of weeks, at which time the chart for which I've shelled out £18 will (legally at least) become useless and then I will have to buy another one!
UK charts are works of art but with high production costs. I have to ask, do we really need this sort of quality? I can't see why we can't just copy the US and issue non glossy paper sectional charts, costing the equivalent of about £5 a pop which we can just throw away when they become too tatty, or when a new one is issued. Being so much cheaper, it's more likely that pilots will have the latest version, and won't feel ripped off if they need to buy a chart for a short one-off trip.

UK charts are originally supplied unlaminated - it's further down the supply chain that someone adds lamination - and cost. When I worked for Loganair the charts weren't laminated.

I don't like laminated charts: They're bulkier, more difficult to fold whatever way you want, the gloss is an annoyance at night, and need a special marker & method to erase the marker. Plain paper is much easier to deal with. That being said, and more on topic, a week or two ago I ferried a 2001 Baron 58 from Central Florida to Michigan (870nm). It had a Garmin G500/600 glass display and a GNS540 - both with up-to-date databases. I also had an Android pad with (free) downloaded charts. I didn't need to touch a paper chart or document the whole way.

no you don't DUO you only have to have updated the chart with the new data.

If you want a paper one you just get the Jepp paper VFR ones which are poo but do the job.

Yes the school shop will say that you need to most current ones because they want you to buy them otherwise they are down out of date charts which you can't send back. There are even folk out there that will tell you that its illegal to hack off the bits you don't use and have a cut down local area chart. Some rubbish about the legend needs to be in tacked.

All a complete and utter load of poo.

half mil maps
 

I agree with you, Mad Jock. I didn't actually say that I necessarily carry the latest chart, (or a manually updated one), just that I would need to to be strictly legal. It's a pain in the a**e having to sit down and manually update an older one and I'm simply suggesting that it would be a helluva lot cheaper and easier to have cheap, throwaway paper charts like in the US and elsewhere. If I'm making a trip to another area which requires another chart, I probably don't have an older one that I can amend, and I grudge paying £18 or so for a glossy chart that's simply going to be stuffed down the side of the seat, all for the sake of what might be a one-off trip. Anyway, with electronic charts being more prevalent these days, a paper chart is nothing more than a back up if the electrics go tits up, and so will hardly ever get looked at.

I could be wrong but I thought that Jepp had stopped doing UK 1/2 mill VFR charts.

Also, I very often fly with a 'cut-out' chart, particularly in a glider where space is tight.

Well get that 1: 1 000 000 chart of the whole of the uk then thats paper and double sided from transair.

Thank goodness they have stopped making them they were pants.

Paper is not infallible either.....I once had my map fly out of the open door, briefly wrapping itself round the tailplane before departing english channel wards. Fortunately Shoreham was easy to find by mark one eyeball.....

They make good sick bags too, can't see an iPad holding much!

The great thing about the Jepps charts was that you could go VFR anywhere you liked in europe and use charts with the same presentation.

I did a SEP ferry to Portugal a while ago and it was great to be able to use the same charts in UK, France, Spain, and Portugal. :)

Now we're back to the old days of different chart formats for every country,:* .... unless you pay Jepps a whacking fee for an Ipad subscription!


MJ:ok:

DFS still offer paper charts for several European countries, 1:500000, all in the same style ; I will be using these more and more. Most cost some 10-12 euro's, which I think bearable.

Good point Bigendbob.

They don't teach you that on your instructors course. Chart origami on 2 mile finals while steering with your knees while you trial flight barfs in the chart.

And if you do it right you only have to wipe it down afterwards and swap it with another one in the lost property box.

Anyone got their hands on one of those 1 : 1 000 000 charts?

What they like?

Wouldn't give them to a student mind but handy for the rest of us. Especially for the IR boys/girls that still want the option of VFR winging it.

I think 'legally' you would be allowed to use an AA map, as long as you have marked in all the relevant airspace you are likely to encounter and the Notams.


But it's a bit of a fiddle, unless you only fly gliders locally, in clear class G airspace.

I like paper charts but I am stuck in the middle of the country so I have to buy two. Not that I every fly abroad but I really think all maps within EASA countries should be the same format.

This year I am going to buy the Cartobossy 1:million chart which covers all the UK. I can then get the same format chart to cover some of the european countries.

In reality of course I will use skydemon but use these as a back up.

I suspect that I will still recommend my students to use the CAA 1:500K chart however.