Currently, if you click on an airport in FF, you get a page offering the AIP charts.
Often these are of extremely poor quality, due to the national publication policy – example.
Accordingly, I continue to fly with printed Jepp plates.
Buying the Jepp package (via FF, or any other way) is in the region of 1k a year (for Europe).
Now let’s assume that one can get Jepps as PDFs, say one PDF per airport, is there any way to get these to come up in FF?
Obviously one could display PDFs on an Ipad, in various ways, with various PDF readers. One could sync them against a dropbox folder, etc, etc. But none of this will integrate with FF.
A quick read here shows one can airspace charts (although I struggle to see how they could be easily kept up to date, say annually, because how would one automate some sort of batch process?) but not terminal charts.
One could obviously add terminal charts in the same way as adding basemaps, but there would be no user interface for selecting the one you want.
I know terminal VFR maps can be added but I’ve never tried IFR plates.
Peter wrote:
Buying the Jepp package (via FF, or any other way) is in the region of 1k a year (for Europe).
Europe IFR + VFR costs 522 EUR via ForeFlight and now seems to cover also Mediterranean countries in Africa and Asia (the coverage maps seems to be going as far East as Jordan and Syria). It seems to be missing, from geographical Europe, only Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and maybe Moldova (and Georgia/Caucasus if you nitpick).
While still significantly more expensive than the USA or even North America (which goes as far South as La Paz and Georgetown, just missing Bogota and Cayenne, and as far West as well beyond Hawaii), that starts to be very attractive, especially now that flying into Ukraine is rather out of the question.
The interactive map in the buying process shows an area including Moldova, the “finger” of Ukraine between Moldova and the Black Sea, most of Crimea, the Canary Islands, Madeira, Yerevan (but not all off Armenia), a large piece of Iraq (including Baghdad), Northwestern Saudi Arabia but not Tbilissi (but small pieces of Georgia, such as Batumi). Also only the northern 2/3 of Algeria, Egype and Lybia or so, and not the southern half of Western Sahara.
Peter wrote:
Now let’s assume that one can get Jepps as PDFs, say one PDF per airport, is there any way to get these to come up in FF?
Yes, see https://foreflight.com/products/foreflight-mobile/user-content/content-packs/ and https://foreflight.com/support/content-packs/
Plates & Airport Diagrams (BYOP): The “Bring Your Own Plates” feature allows you to import PDF files that you can access in the Plates view or in the Airports view under the Procedures tab. Files imported this way behave the same as procedure plates and airport diagrams downloaded through ForeFlight, including support for georeferencing if geospatial PDFs are used.
That looks very interesting; it appears to be a method for incorporating georeferenced PDFs in the basemap.
One Q would be: what is the user interface for loading these?
Then you need to georef the PDF but that is obviously unavoidable if you want a moving map. One can’t do this automatically because the PDF doesn’t contain the chart extents. I have been involved in projects many years ago where auto (batch) georef was done, but on chart data which contained (in a file header) the extents. I can see ways to do it but rather complicated.
For €522 you get just one Ipad license for all of “relevant” Europe, for both “VFR Europe” and the IFR charts? How much would it be for 2 Ipads? It’s an improvement from the historical €900, and the €2000 figure for the standard four devices.
If you purchase a single-pilot ForeFlight Pro Plus or Performance Plus subscription, you can use it on up to 3 iOS devices: 2 iPad + 1 iPhone or 2 iPhone + 1 iPad. If you have an existing Jeppesen account that you link to your ForeFlight account, you can activate available Jeppesen seats (licenses) in ForeFlight on your devices (each device requires its own seat (license)). If you purchase Jeppesen Charts through ForeFlight it is automatically available on all signed-in devices. Jeppesen Charts will work with all subscription levels, but you will need at least the Pro subscription to get Geo referencing. I recommend the Performance subscription
A Business Pro or Business Performance plan needs to have at least 2 pilots, and Jeppesen coverage can be purchased for one, several, or all pilots on the account. Each pilot can use ForeFlight and the Jeppesen coverage purchased through ForeFlight on 2 iOS devices.
Pricing for single-pilot or multi-pilot plans can be found at https://www.foreflight.com/pricing , and details about Jeppesen coverage through ForeFlight at https://www.foreflight.com/products/jeppesen
Peter wrote:
One Q would be: what is the user interface for loading these?
My understanding is: exactly the same as for AIP or Jeppesen plates, assuming you did the work and tagged them with the right airport and the right SID/STAR/APP. They’ll be available in the same menu.
Peter wrote:
Then you need to georef the PDF but that is obviously unavoidable if you want a moving map. One can’t do this automatically because the PDF doesn’t contain the chart extents.
A PDF can contain georeferencing. Whether the ones you are thinking about do, is another question.
Peter wrote:
For €522 you get just one Ipad license for all of “relevant” Europe, for both “VFR Europe” and the IFR charts? How much would it be for 2 Ipads?
To make NCYankee’s answer shorter: if the 2 iPads are for the same pilot, then the price is also 522,- EUR.
In FF, if I click on an airport, it pops up a page showing some IAP chart options.
If I buy Jepp terminal charts for say France, what happens then? In the UK, will I still get AIP charts and upon flying to France will I get the Jepp charts automatically, or AIP/Jepp with some sort of selection?
Do the Jepp charts work the same way as AIP ones e.g. the variable opacity control?
If person X has a FF trial sub, and person Y has a real FF sub, can these be merged under one account comprising two Ipads? And presumably retaining the PC application for each of the two users?
If I buy Jepp terminal charts for say France, what happens then? In the UK, will I still get AIP charts and upon flying to France will I get the Jepp charts automatically, or AIP/Jepp with some sort of selection?
Both sets are available with Jepp as a preferred one.
I think you can set which one of AIP or Jeppesen are the preferred even.
Peter wrote:
And presumably retaining the PC application for each of the two users?
What PC application do you mean?
