May I suggest that you have a look at the US ipad application Foreflight as a sort of benchmark
Yes, I was planning to do that. One question I want to answer is if some of the often-quoted truisms on European in-flight apps are true, or rather, still true. As I said before, it’s a fast moving market and some products have evolved quite a lot.
I’ve never experienced in-flight shutdowns, resets or passwords with skydemon. Been using it since 2012 on a wifi-only iPad. It worked very well in South Africa where it was of great help in spotting bush strips (with the notable exception of Amphitheatre Lodge).
I agree that the weather animation on FF is quite cool, and synthetic vision as well. Georeferenced taxi charts I’ve never used but they are very neat apparently.
just a question – are you going to review on tablets or just Ipad ? ;-)
I’ve never experienced in-flight shutdowns
There’s a first time for everything! It did (and continues to) happen, once in the middle of the Tasman Strait, in limited vis, in a plane with no navaids and a Wellington ATC who must have emigrated from UK giving routings in class G that happened to always be just outside their airspace. On the other hand, in a plane with no navaids SD was a godsend in circumnavigating NZ without infringing anything (or ever being lost!) and despite the shutdowns, kept on plugging away. I was very glad to have SD in NZ, even though I might have been the first ever user there.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky with FF which has never (yet) missed a beat in hundreds of hours, but I don’t believe it’s down to luck. My point is to illustrate that FF’s design is more intuitive, and that IMHO translates through to a lower probability of funny behaviours. I got SD (latest version) locked out while cackhandedly trying to enter a waypoint lat/long just last week and had to re-start the iPad, fortunately not in flight although that’s happened as well. That would not happen with FF, IMHO.
I have had two sorts of issues with the Ipad2: its internal GPS does not work at all reliably in the TB20 (I bought an XGPS150 external one for it), and it shuts down easily due to overheating, in direct sunlight or even just on a hot day.
However, most tablets I have played with will shut down eventually, though some need to be connected to a charger to get warm enough. Well, the only one that did not was the Samsung Galaxy 8.4" (T700) which I cannot get to overheat, but that one doesn’t have such a bright display to start with.
I think it’s fair to say that in IT you can expect anything, eventually…
I am quite happy with my Nexus 7 running SD however garmin promised to make Garmin Pilot available for Android Europe IFR geo referenced…but it isn’t happening considering a switch to Ipad mini unless…The GDL39 3D and Garmin Pilot combo seems tempting …
Peter, I’m well aware of the overheating and other physical behaviours described in connection with the iPad. I’ve not experienced any of these but do leave the iPad in the passenger footwell if the sun is bright. I’ve found the internal GPS to be reliable on the 3 different iPads (iPad 1 & 2) that I’ve used with FF, SD and other products. It was more prone to momentarily losing lock in NZ which I took to being a southern Hemisphere thing. Even the 430 loses lock as well sometimes, notably in the Bay of Biscay. Maybe it’s possible that your plane has better Faraday cage characteristics than the collection of old jalopies that I fly!
It is my opinion that most of the episodes that I’ve described here are software issues and as I’ve said I feel that FF’s intuitive design is somehow more ‘clean’ than some other products. I felt that Jepps’ VFR product was similarily intuitive although I didn’t get to use it for long because it didn’t work in Sweden.
Peter,
what i used to do in my Piper was connect a plastic hose to one of the vents and let cool air blow on the iPad. Never shut down afte that ;-) I know, not very elegant, but works. Air cooled iPad.
In the SR22 it never happens. Air Condition!! :-)
I think the overheating issue is one which all the manufacturers struggle with. They all use similar hardware with similar battery and charging technology. And they have no forced air cooling, which makes the job really tough (I have been doing electronics design since ~1975).
On the old LS800 tablet (£1800, 2005) I solved it totally by mounting a little fan on the back. A totally clumsy and unacceptable solution but even at FL200 (air density ~40% of MSL) there was enough cooling. Nobody is going to do forced air cooling in the consumer marketplace today.
I wonder if perhaps the shutdowns (which are being widely reported in the GA community) correlate with operating altitude. The mfgs have no obligation to cater for more than ~8000ft which is the airliner cabin, and that is air conditioned to about +22C max and there is no sunlight.
Having just dismantled an iPad at the weekend to replace the glass (don’t try that at home!) I can say that the Lipo cells are in very close contact to the die cast and NC machined housing and that conductive cooling would likely be very effective. I’ve not needed to try it but a heat sink on the back?
On altitude, I’ve flown the iPad at levels above 8000’ continuously for hours on end in the US SW without noticing any heating issues. But even in Arizona, it does cool off at 12’500’!
