I don’t worry about my panel mount overheating
No? Maybe you should, because if that noisy fan that’s louder than all gyro instruments in my panel combined ever packs up in flight… and fans aren’t the most reliable electronic component
Straw man argument.
Care to elaborate? Tabletapps seem to work for the vast majority of private pilots (as MFD replacement, to aid situational awareness), because otherwise they wouldn’t use them. So why is this a straw man argument?
It’s not that certified software is bug free – certification just makes sure that no manufacturer other than Garmin can ever afford to fix them…
There is no conceivable liability
So what’s the difference to the KMD550? A certain peterh337 wrote that that device had terrain depiction errors for years. So if you crashed into some cumulus granitus, do you think Bendix would gladly pay? I don’t…
Because it does the job and does it very well.
Which job? It might work for commercial aviation whose pilots fly daily the same aircraft and there are two of them. The private job is different, it wouldn’t work there. And I doubt that unintuitive user interfaces work for professional crews in an emergency, when they need to do unfamiliar stuff at reduced capacity…
Human interface requirements – the iPad beats the GNS430 by light years :-)
I meant to add: I totally agree…
…widely accepted that nobody with a brain will use an Ipad app for non-VFR stuff…
Extremely broad anti apple/ ipad statement….Most airlines use iPads as EFBs these days….exclusively IFR…including briefing and flying the approach
As well as for performance calcs
Slight thread drift but the syn viz functionality on foreflight looks awesome.
Most airlines use iPads as EFBs these days….exclusively IFR…including briefing and flying the approach
Agreed, but the context of my statement was the lack of liability on the app vendor if somebody flies into a hill while using it.
The airline scenario is completely different. I have written this many times but from memory
)So, no comparison, in the context being discussed here.
Tom – yes, the KMD550 has some wrong colour rendition of terrain but again, speaking of liability on Honeywell/BK, only a Grade A idiot is going to fly below the MEA and use the MFD colours to avoid death Admittedly, there are plenty of idiots in every area of human endeavour (GA included) but this one would really collect the Darwin award, as would this Anyway, one could never prove that as the cause.
That is completely different to the liability for a mistake on a terminal (no pun intended) chart which kills somebody by compromising obstacle clearance.
Most airlines use iPads as EFBs these days
That may be as it may be, but it mostly illustrates the abilities of the big A’s marketing department. Such is today’s world.
It says little about the intrinsic value for money of any device, except for allowing the thing isn’t utter thrash.
And, as others have pointed out, even if it were technically today’s better option for airliner cockpit use, that says little about its suitability in GA – which is our prime subject, here.
I think most of the iPad overheating issues are due to 95% users leaving various apps running in the background. Skydemon only – never an issue.
I should add that what I wrote is not anti Apple. I have often reported that my Lenovo Tablet 2 (windoze 8) will shut down when too warm just as happily. I use it because win8 offers certain features which I currently need. The technology used in all these tablets is very similar and they dissipate a similar amount of heat. They use similar CPU, battery, battery charging and display technology which generates similar amounts of heat and they are all thermal dissipation (thermal resistance to ambient, in degC/watt) limited – just like our engines which cannot deliver max rated power at peak-EGT 
The shutdown policy will be determined by what Marketing decides is OK in the main user segment (“edge cases” like private pilots need not be considered).
Is there any info on the list of parameters which Flightstream gives access to, over bluetooth?
That is completely different to the liability for a mistake on a terminal (no pun intended) chart which kills somebody by compromising obstacle clearance.
I personally know no one which uses terminal charts on panel mount electronics. Also, nobody I know still uses paper subscriptions.
Everyone now uses terminal charts supplied by Jeppesen using one of their reader apps (for the PC or for ipads), or uses PDF charts supplied by the ANSP (for example, from NATS via EAD). In all of these cases, you rely on the noncertified reader app (JeppView, or a PDF reader) correctly interpreting the data, and on the noncertified operating system/graphics driver of the platform and the graphics hardware from painting everything correctly on the screen.
You can mitigate against the tablet batteries running flat or the tablet overheating by printing out the required chart. But there are other failure modes, like accidentally throwing a chart overboard (which is harder with the heavier electronics), and that stupid dingbats font used by Jepp doesn’t print out correctly on quite a few printers.
Good luck making any liability claim against Jepp, the ANSP, Adobe, Microsoft or Apple…
