but during high altitude Eurocontrol IFR?
Play “Farm Heroes Saga”, watch videos, read books, write books, keep your electronic logbook up to date, develop apps, work on the equations of your latest cosmological theory and whatever other uses there are for a tablet without internet connection 
But kidding apart: We can’t charge our iPads in flight, so especially on days with four, five or six sectors it’s best to leave them off (standby) during cruise flight to conserve the battery power for the important parts of the flight. “High altitude Eurocontrol IFR” in practical terms means “fly direct waypoint XYZ” so the enroute chart becomes meaningless anyway.
We can’t charge our iPads in flight
One of the few items I DO TAKE is an in-flight charger working from the lighter-plug.
TA102 USB chargers are amazing!
I recently bought the non-certified version that goes into the cigarette lighter socket for about 1/100th of the price of these
One of the few items I DO TAKE is an in-flight charger working from the lighter-plug.
Unfortunately, there are no lighter plugs in all our aeroplanes.
These USB chargers are amazing!
Indeed! But the cost of the paperwork alone to retrofit one of these in a transport category aircraft (even small ones like out Citations) is prohibitive. Our maintenance guys briefly investgated this but it would be cheaper to carry two or four or ten spare iPads…
it would be cheaper to carry two or four or ten spare iPads…
That is sad AND funny at the same time…
CJ’s usually have 230V or 110V outlets, one in the back and one at the co-pilots side side wall.
CJ’s usually have 230V or 110V outlets, one in the back and one at the co-pilots side side wall.
It seems to be an option. Some aircraft on our fleet (CJs, Excels, Embraer) do have those plugs, others don’t, even among the same type. We have investigated all sorts of options like solar charges, “power banks” and retrofitted USB/lighter plugs but decided against it. Mostly for fear of damaging the tablets or even overheating the units in the worst case. And after more than a year of using EFBs it turns out that in-flight recharging is really not required. A typical sector consumes less than 10% of the battery of an iPad, so ten sectors a day without recharging are possible.
We carry 2 iPads, but only one is actually used between the crew for general use. The other sits in a stowage fully charged in case we break one, or we run out of battery. On AOC ops, if you only have one with you or working, 70% is the min charge level allowed for dispatch.
In the Learjet, in extremis we can use the Pax electrical outlets to charge them up.
“High altitude Eurocontrol IFR” in practical terms means “fly direct waypoint XYZ” so the enroute chart becomes meaningless anyway.
That’s exactly what I was getting at.
I can totally understand running a tablet nav app (PFMS, SD, Oziexplorer in my case) during high altitude IFR for
but what can one do on it for the flight itself? I guess one can run an airway map…
FWIW, and to answer Colm, I have my Lenovo tablet running for
What would be nice on a tablet would be a continuously updated glide range “circle” but it’s hard to do accurately because there is no wind data.
