I have paid for a subscription to Navigraph Jepp plates – worldwide for about €90 per annum – and find them complete and up to date.
Of course, they cannot possibly be used in an aircraft – that is printed clearly on every sheet – but if you want a copy on your iPad or Android device (or, indeed, PC or Mac) and want them for a non-aviation use, they are there and not hugely expensive compared to other ways of getting the same information.
On the iPad, I have not been able to find a way to do a bulk download (eg the whole of France). The only way I can find of downloading the charts is to search for the airfield when on the internet, then to tick every plate in that airfield.
I think that if you leave the cache to be of unlimited size, it will then store them indefinitely, but I strongly suspect that it won’t update on the AIRAC cycle, so you would have to download everything you wanted pretty much as required.
The charts are clear and legible. You can blow them up and they remain crisp and sharp.
While there is georeferencing, it works only on flight sim input, not GPS.
It does occur to me that the one time it would have been really useful, when I diverted into RAF Benson at minima and had no plates at all (it’s not in the AIP either) it would not have been there, because I wouldn’t have downloaded it.
So this is what I think I’ll do. On a monthly basis, I’ll download all the UK, French, Benelux and German military airfields and keep them in cache. If I am going outside my Jepp FD coverage (eg my recent trip to Poland and Hungary) I’ll download the whole countries.
But for day to day use it would be frustrating and not a sensible replacement for Jepp FD, except strictly from hunger.
This will change when we get airborne 5G, which may not be a million miles away.
I’ll have it with me at the PPL/IR PBN conference if anyone wants a play.
Of course, if you just want to print the plates for occasional use, that would work too.
I had a look at that as well and it seems to contain current data…unfortunatelly “seems” is not what we want in aviation but as back up and the last resort…why not
I vaguely remember reading somewhere on the Navigraph site a while ago that they undertake to provide data that are current but not necessarily complete – that is, some plates may not be included.
Timothy wrote:
Of course, they cannot possibly be used in an aircraft – that is printed clearly on every sheet – but if you want a copy on your iPad or Android device (or, indeed, PC or Mac) and want them for a non-aviation use, they are there and not hugely expensive compared to other ways of getting the same information.
Other than flight simulation, what other non aviation use for them is there?
In my case, planning.
For example, I am planning a round the world next year. It is really useful having worldwide Jepp data.
I tried using them in flight today, on a second iPad, and can confirm that they do not work in flight at all, so you would have to print them out for inflight use.
Timothy wrote:
I tried using them in flight today, on a second iPad, and can confirm that they do not work in flight at all, so you would have to print them out for inflight use.
What exactly do you mean by “do not work in flight”?
You get a message saying “Connecting to Validation Server”, or something, and you can’t even access what you have cached.
You would have to save (print actually) the plates as PDF and then use them in GoodReader.
Your best bet is to make friends with somebody who has Jeppview and can just right-click on an airport and print it to one PDF.
Obviously Jepp want to prevent this which is why their Ipad products don’t have a useful print feature.
I did wonder what business model there is for Jepp in this product for flight sim enthusiasts, unless they prevent it being used in a real aircraft. You could probably use a satphone to access the validation server, but it might work out very expensive, as well as sufficiently unreliable to make it useless.
Your best bet is to make friends with somebody who has Jeppview and can just right-click on an airport and print it to one PDF.
It depends what you want it for. If you want to dip in and out of worldwide airports, seeing whether is is better to route via Japan or Russia, and where to go in Thailand, it is not convenient to ask your friend every time. Friendship might soon be stretched.
I’d like to ask another question, though. Navigraph seems to include more reference pages than JeppFD. I don’t have any specific examples as I am away from my iPad with it installed, but does JeppFD include all reference pages or are some omitted (I am talking about what would be the text pages in the AIP, with opening hours, LVP procedures, telephone numbers etc.)
