First question to Peter: where are we supposed to post questions about tablets? Some are in IT, others in avionics or non certified
I have purchased a Microsoft Surface Tablet. As my iPad is getting old and slow, I thought I might as well use my new tablet to read my Jeppesen IFR charts.
What is the name of the additional piece of software I need to read my IFR charts?
Will I have to purchase an additional subscription or will the one I have for my iPad suffice?
Where can I purchase a leg strap to use my tablet as a kneeboard?
Any other piece of advice for a new Microsoft Surface user?
Hmmm. tricky 
I think stuff about IT, or portable items like a tablet, should go in this section (IT). I have just moved the thread here.
The avionics section is more for panel mounted equipment.
Non-certified is for homebuilt (loosely speaking) aircraft and avionics for that category. At a stretch one could fix a tablet onto the instrument panel. But there is normally no connection between that and the aircraft (except power).
The only downside is that relatively few people read the IT/website section… but interesting threads get promoted to the big blocks on the home page and then loads of people read those threads.
For Windows, Jeppesen’s product is called Jeppview and that comes with Flitedeck which gives you a GPS moving map over anything that’s georeferenced. They also used to do a flight planning product called Flitestar (maybe it is still sold; I use it for IFR routepack generation) and there was a version of it (which differed only in the serial number ) called Flitemap which gave you a GPS moving map. Flitemap was withdrawn from sale about 10 years ago, possibly because of subtle bugs which placed the aircraft in a slightly different place (I found it on one Greek trip).
Jepp are trying to move everything to the Ipad (probably partly to keep a lid on piracy which is easy with the PDFs which can be printed from the Windows software) on which they have not provided any usable printing options. But obviously the Ipad is also very popular for carrying around. However corporate users are still using desktop PCs for serious planning (Jepp do corporate versions of Flitestar – Jetplanner?) and Jepp don’t have an Ipad product for significant IFR flight planning. Also anything intricate is painful to do on a touch screen.
Peter Mundy should know more since he sells this stuff.
I recently looked at the Surface tablets; nice fast and well made, but a bit too large for what I wanted. So I still fly with a Lenovo T2 tablet (windows 8).
Flitestar/Flitemap is very much alive, and it’s an excellent product for flight planning. However, it is poorly suited to touchscreen devices – the buttons are too small. There may be a way to make them bigger, but it’s not exposed in the user interface.
Piotr_Szut wrote:
I have purchased a Microsoft Surface Tablet
My wife just got one of those. It runs Windows 10 and behaves just like a PC (laptop), only it is smaller and with a removable keyboard, making it a touch screen tablet also. I would think you can run both SD and EasyVFR on it, and therefore also get all the charts you want, VFR or IFR.
I called Jeppesen as their website is just a mess.
Rather strange a way to manage their business, to pay people to answer basic questions instead of providing the info on their website.
They told that to view the IFR charts for Europe on my widows tablet it would cost me 1600 euros!!! That’s about 4 times the price I pay for the iPad.
So I’ll purchase a new iPad instead.
Rather strange a way to manage their business, to pay people to refuse money.
You spoke to one of these which at Jepp is the usual thing.
For years they used to sell a product which allowed four installations. Apparently it was intended for a corporate jet, which needs three pilots and one ground planner, or four pilots… This product was about €2000 for what we call “Europe” i.e. political Europe, for IFR + “VFR Europe”.
For years it was PC-only, called Jeppview (terminal charts, with crude route planning), and a complicated route planner called Flitestar (enroute charts). The two could be installed in the same path on a PC and then you could access terminal charts from within Flitestar also (and include them in routepack printouts, etc). They also did a primitive and buggy GPS moving map product called Flitedeck. Later they did the Ipad products: JeppTC (terminal charts only; still exists but they don’t like to sell it) and JeppFD (a reincarnation of Flitedeck, enroute + terminal charts, and this is their current Ipad offering).
Then, after years of pressure from all over the place, they introduced a single-device subscription. This was about €900 for IFR + “VFR Europe”.
It is the same product; the licensing is handled by the use of hidden files on the device, etc. The scheme has been widely cracked, which is the main reason Jepp are moving towards the Ipad, which is messy to jailbreak and most people don’t bother, and you can’t print PDFs from it usefully.
EuroGA is full of debates on Jepp products and they usually boil down to working out what exactly you are getting. What Jepp call “Europe” is just the bit west of the Iron Curtain, plus the former DDR. You don’t get Czech Rep, for example.
BTW “VFR Europe” is the old Bottlang Guides i.e. VFR airport info, VFR approach charts, etc.
The pricing of the four-device product doesn’t vary much according to whether you get some subs for panel mount avionics and some for Ipads etc. But it is damn hard to not get confused.
As always it is better to contact your local Jeppesen dealer than to try and do business with Jeppesen directly.
Piotr_Szut wrote:
I called Jeppesen as their website is just a mess.
Jeppesen’s printed catalogue is quite decent. You can also get it from their website in pdf format.
