I’ve managed to do this fairly simply using a Raspberry Pi and CUPS as an airprint print server which will scale down an A4 PDF to A5.
If you have it in pdf you can easily change the print size. Adobe PDF reader or acrobat support scaling of print or printing multiple pages per page.
Look at the print options that appear after pressing the print button.
What I do I take a screenshoot from my Ipad, email it to my laptop and then scale the size to A5 and print. Works well every time.
An extension of the above would be to take screenshots of all the plates you need; these end up in Camera Roll, then set up Dropbox to upload the Camera Roll to, ahem, Dropbox, and when they appear on your PC, either bulk-print them or drag/drop them into some program which can generate a PDF with them.
There is probably way to set up something which automatically prints a specific dropbox folder. It must surely be a common requirement. The slight complication is that you need to print two plates on one A4 sheet, so any such setup would need to pick the PNGs two at a time, and operate a timeout so it does eventually print the last one OK if the number of screenshots is an odd number
If you don’t mind printing the dropbox folder manually (i.e. when you know everything has been uploaded) then there are loads of programs. One which I used years ago was Fineprint. No idea if it does exactly what you need.
And then you take the paper print and let the approach chart be carved in marble :-)
That’s really what i use the iPad for – to look at the apprach charts!
A google on
automated printing from a dropbox folder
digs out various others.
I am surprised the windows DB app doesn’t already do this. It is such an obvious thing. Currently, on mobile phones, you have various weird and bizzare print solutions which are all printer manufacturer specific, and which talk to the printer over a wifi network. But just about everybody who has a networked printer is already printing on it from a proper computer, so why not use that computer to monitor the DB folder(s) and do the printing? Much more robust, and will work with any printer, not just some very recent inkjets.
I’m with @Flyer59 on this; I used to print out all the charts, then I started only printing the ones I was planning to use, now I run skydemon on the backup nexus 7, with the full set of AIP charts for europe loaded. That covers the primary failure case absolutely fine. If both tablets fail, then we can always ask ATC for help…
Agreed. I don’t use paper in the cockpit at all now. There are sufficient backups available.
I don’t use paper in the cockpit at all now
I don’t quite claim to be paper-free: I use paper for clearances and fuel tank timings – I know one can do this on the ipad, but I can scribble much faster with a real pen.
The OP might have all kinds of reasons to want a printout – paper or PDF…