For those who fly with just an Ipad :) (shutdowns at high or low temperatures, and GPS losses)

I just bought a new iPad Mini 6, since my 8-year old 4 would no longer reliably run Foreflight. I also bought an eye-wateringly expensive MyGoFlight cooled case for it ($300 + $100 shipping + $100 import duty). It seems to work from a thermal pov, although it helps that I can point the fresh air vent on the TB20 right at it also.

As for charging, I am a a bit paranoid since my old iPad4 died on me during an IFR flight. So I:

• print paper plates for all the stuff I’m pretty sure I’ll need (which is nice to have anyway, but then I don’t read books on Kindle either)
• charge my iPad before every flight
• have a USB socket in the panel, and the cable that goes with it
• carry a power brick, fully charged
• carry an old-fashioned cigarette lighter adapter

One thing (I’m sure everyone knows), nav apps like FF and SDVFR inhibit the automatic power-off feature of the iPad, for good reasons. So one important thing to do at the end of a flight is to select any other app, e.g. the web browser. (Even so I routinely find that my iPad has died when I try to use it at home).

Peter wrote:

didn’t lose GPS

Is the IPad also that bad? I use a cheap IPad mini sized Android tablet that loses GPS reception all the time (but never shutsddow) and was already thinking about downgrading to an Apple device because of that. I have an external bluetooth GPS which has quite good reception but is a pain to set up before the flight and of course one device more that needs care. Also, it shuts down when left on the glare shield for too long.

Peter wrote:

That implies carrying the tablet home with you. I don’t always want to do that because I don’t find tablets useful enough

Do you have wi-fi at the hangar to update e.g. Foreflight? I do not (wish I did) and the updates are too much data for cellular service so my devices come home and update FF automatically between flights on wi-fi.

My ‘flight planning process’ consists of entering the start and end point in the FF ‘FPL’ box on whatever unit comes to hand (as often as not my iPhone), rubber banding the rest, sometimes ‘packing’ and importing the route to two other spare devices

So far so good with thermal management per my post #17 above, but I still haven’t used it under the canopy in 40 C temps. I’m currently getting the engine oil cooler overhauled first, because engine oil is the other thing on my plane that can overheat in hot conditions.

I now have two cloned/identical iPad Minis, a fan-cooled mount and an iPhone on board when I fly I’ve tested the mount to sunny 94F / 34 C OAT conditions (so far) under a bubble canopy, fans plus windshield vent blowing and all was well. I don’t think occasional overheating in the desert will be a problem for me anymore and given that the iPhone is company provided my total cost for the worlds best VFR navigation setup was about $1300 including ADS-B weather and traffic via a ‘refurbished’ (actually NOS from Appareo) Stratus 2S… plus the Foreflight subscription that covers all three. The 256 GB iPads were also bought ‘refurbished’ for about $300 each. The Foreflight ProPlus subscription is $240/year, an upgrade from the base plan because I wanted synthetic vision.

For storage I slide both iPad Mini 5s into a single sleeve designed for a thicker earlier model and if necessary I can pull out number 2 for use in flight like pulling out a new card from a deck All three devices receive GPS and ADS-B from the Stratus wi-fi signal at all times in flight. I don’t do anything to make that happen, at the start of every flight the Stratus starts up and the three devices log on automatically when I turn on the plane’s master switch. If the Stratus were to die all three revert to internal GPS and I lose traffic. It hasn’t happened yet.

I fly long VFR legs in both a Warrior (In Europe) and a 172SP (in the US), up to 3 × 3-4 Hr occasionally. For this, two iPads are not enough. I run with a pair preloaded and up to date with notams etc. ready for hot swapping. This means taking them to the hotel every night for charging, which is a pain. I have a charger cigar lighter in the Warrior but this can only keep up at best and increases temperature. On the back seat I have a third iPad loaded with the route etc but not neccessarily up to date.

This brings up two iPad annoyances:

1) SD limit you to two devices. To get the 3rd iPad to work you have to swap the licence over, which I wouldn’t want to do in flight. SD say there is some way to do this but I would not want to find out while flying. So the third iPad is strictly in reserve in case one of the primary pair slides off the wing while refuelling (Yes, that’s happened!) or similar mishap.

2) One of the biggest annoyances in iPad flying is an inadvertant failure to charge overnight and with the best will in the world, it can happen! For this I carry a charging bank, always itself fully charged.

The overheat shutdown is a real phenomenon and for anyone who hasn’t experienced it yet, you will! Fortunately the Warrior has floor level vents and so the standby iPad can rest propped up against the passenger side vent and is pleasantly cool when needed. Not so easy in the SP.

All my iPads have GPS and PAYG sim cards which I update before a long trip. Some of them are quite old but all still run SD and FF. SD recently lambasted me for running their desktop version on an XP PC! All this is not quite so easy in the SP which doesn’t have a cigar lighter (24v) and I’ve had to shut down FF completely for extended periods during 10 Hr days, relying on KLN-94, but least FF allow you to have current data on 3 devices, much better than SD.

I also have hard copy terminal plates for each destination and a 430 or KLN94 in the panel. And a radio. And an xpndr. And a cellphone. Am I bulletproof? I doubt it, but better prepared than in the days of numerous paper charts stacked in a neat order of flight pile, only to find on crossing some boundary that the next one wasn’t there!

On the other thread I mention that if you do not use the internal GPs/location and pair the iPad to a SkyEcho or Bad Elf you shouldn’t experience either poor battery life or a shutdown due to overheating. Obviously don’t leave the device on the glare shied or face up to the sun. Not sure when my iPad mini 2 came out (ten years ago?) but it served as the glass cockpit in the Super Cub and is still going strong.