The funny thing is that not pilots are interested in this kind of illegal “work around”
I know of an IR flight instructor who is actively encouraging this “work around” . In his opinion the Jepp IFR charts are way too expensive, so they have themselves to blame 
It’s true you don’t need to have a jailbroken ipad.
[ hack removed – sorry :) ]
I know of an IR flight instructor who is actively encouraging this “work around” . In his opinion the Jepp IFR charts are way too expensive, so they have themselves to blame
I have no sympathy for this view. It is a private company. They can charge what they like. There are free alternatives so you are not forced to pay for it. I think it is an expensive product as well but copying it is not the solution.
Yes I know there are hacks – there always have been – but I think Jepp are not stupid and they know that no private pilot will be paying the €15k/year or so for Worldwide IFR, so they are not actually losing any business at all.
Even the €2k/year for Europe VFR+IFR is far too much for most private pilots. With one or two exceptions that I know of, I think the only people who are paying that are those who are operating in some sort of club environment.
Jepp make their money from commercial ops where that sort of money is trivial compared to the cost of operating a jet and a crew.
However I also think that VFR is a very different game, where you are trying to make money from a pilot community which objects to a €15 chart or a €20 landing fee, and the potential revenue loss will be perceived as real. If I was a developer I would thus avoid Android or Windows – unless I was doing some sort of hidden online license check, which is an extremely dirty thing to be doing on a mobile product which might be used on roaming data.
That (roaming data) is incidentally why I don’t really buy into backup etc scenarios which rely on an internet connection. You are quite likely nowadays to be running some sort of an “EU discount data package” on your phone (I have 500MB/month for £3/day) but you aren’t likely to have a contract SIM in both of your devices. Yeah, you can do tethering… it’s just that these solutions get more and more tacky.
On non-IOS, you also need to do an equally “dirty” thing whereby the app stops running totally after say 2-3 months. Jeppview (on a PC) does that but you can set the date back. In a GPS device the developer can defeat the date-back hack however, and this happens in some panel mount products where parts of the Jepp package stop working and there is nothing you can do.
Last year I flew through Italy with then current Jeppesen VFR/GPS charts and the TMA boundary in the vicinity of Rome was indicated with a wrong altitude, SD was correct.
It is the ither way ’round. Believe me…;-)
In the end they both get there data from the same Eurocontrol source.
Yes, but that’s only part of the story.
[ hack removed – sorry :) ]
You don’t mean the AIRAC cycles you can grab from torrent and similar sites, don’t you?
The funny thing is that not pilots are interested in this kind of illegal “work around”, but flight sim enthousiast are. I
Maybe because if Jepp plug this hole, for us in flight in mid air it will be a bit of a surprise, and an issue. For a flight sim enthusiast, well they can just press the ‘P’ button, find the next way to hack it or MSN their mate and get copy sent through, and then press the ‘P’ button again
However I also think that VFR is a very different game, where you are trying to make money from a pilot community which objects to a €15 chart or a €20 landing fee, and the potential revenue loss will be perceived as real. If I was a developer I would thus avoid Android or Windows – unless I was doing some sort of hidden online license check, which is an extremely dirty thing to be doing on a mobile product which might be used on roaming data.
Alternatively, one can go the way of Skydemon and show enough good will. Skydemon is available for Windows or Android, and if you are poor and stingy, after the trial subscription expires, nothing is stopping you from getting another one for a different e-mail address, but everyone I know is paying for a subscription.
nothing is stopping you from getting another one for a different e-mail address
Surely they must be leaving “something” behind, in a hidden place on the PC – just like everybody doing trial versions has been doing for the past 30 years.
However I believe that mechanism (leaving hidden stuff behind) is not available on IOS. Is that right? OTOH the philosophy of IOS is that you have permanent online connectivity.
Peter, it’s easy to leave something behind in Windows, but it’s just as easy to undo these changes – either by sandboxing the program and then emptying the sandbox, or by restoring an old backup. On the other hand, on Windows CE, which is also supported by Skydemon, the OS may reside on read-only media, so leaving stuff behind may be totally impossible. So, I believe it’s the matter of the service being worth the price, plus good customer relations.
The Jeppesen Mobile Flitedeck VFR is already looking to become a failed product.
It does about 75% of what Skydemon for iPad already does and is looking to cost well over double the price.
