I fly with iPads since i first had one in 2010, but on a longer cross country flight to unknown territories I will have the programmed into the onboard GPS and most times i have a paper chart too …
If the iPad is on a mount, is beeing charged in flight and if you have some experience using it, it will not quit. If it’s in direct sunlight it might happen that it overheats, but if it is cooled by air from a vent it will never shutdown. Also the iPads OS is much more stable than any other OS i have seen. It crashes about once a month if you constatly use it with many apps running at the same time … but I use it all the time.
Peter wrote:
Going around isn’t going to magically restore the Ipad to working condition.
So what? I would have a backup device and even if that were to fail as well, I still have radio and can talk to ATC. I am not the least concerned about this scenario, this is nothing compared to the risk of your sole engine failing.
When planning contingencies, one should look at both the likelihood of the problem and its impact. In the tablet/phone situation I neither see a likelihood nor impact that would worry me.
This reminds me of a funny situation a few years back. I overheard a crew telling ATC they had forgotten their bag with the approach plates at home and were heading to France. This was just the time when I started carrying all European plates on the (then freshly appeared) iPad. I asked them to switch to 123.45 MHz and described the desired approach plate while they were busy drawing and writing. It took about 15 minutes and then they had all they needed and could safely perform the instrument approach.
I have another story ….
In 1996 I flew from Split to Munich in a DC-9 Airliner …. . At boarding i presented my press card (i was working for an aviation magazine) – and it worked again, they let me fly the jump seat in the cockpit.
On descent over the Alps the Copilot (who was smoking ….) started to look for the EDDM approach plates but couldn’t find them. He was glad when i told him the Munich ATIS frequency was 123.12 ….
Very different today, I know …
Peter wrote:
The bottom line is that you can find yourself on a flight at the end of which the battery is flat because it has not been charging.
not with today’s available gadgets.
many GA aircraft power outlets lack sufficient output for charging a tablet, true. the solution is simple: a powerbank. i use a powerbank that contains sufficient charge for 8 complete iPhone loading cycles and maybe 5 iPad cycles, at the same charging rate as the big power adapters.
i so far never used it in the cockpit (as the devices never discharged to a point where i needed it), but it is a simple and quick solution to charge your device in the cockpit if needed. it also comes in handy in non-flying scenarios.
The powerbank is a good solution. I bought this one and it works great, but it still outputs “only” 5.00V. And, I am not happy unless it is accessible in the cockpit (i.e. not in the luggage) in case the battery caught fire.
Regarding the earlier debate, yes, you won’t die just because you have lost your approach plates etc, but you are going to make a right dick of yourself and this sort of thing doesn’t help GA’s image as a bunch of fumbling amateurs, which is the image maintained in some quarters of the regulatory establishment and, believe it or not, in some (not many) areas of ATC. I have been to UK NATS presentations which were utterly depressing, in the attitudes of the presenters to both light GA and the “not real professionals” like bizjets which were portrayed as sometimes cowboys, doing lots of level busts, etc. We will never be as good and current as the 737 pilots flying the same sector 2x or 3x a day but making sure we don’t completely cock up is not exactly rocket science. OTOH the people who do these presentations are probably “self selected by character profile” because I have always found London Control ATCOs infailingly professional and helpful. Fortunately when the LGKR stuff happened to me, not much was going on and I was able to ask for a visual approach.
The “phone backup” for approach plates (an often mentioned last-resort backup) is really pretty poor, and I have arguably today’s best phone (the Samsung S6). If you are old enough to need reading glasses (most IR holders are 
) and you have the right ones for the kneeboard distance, a full size approach plate on a phone will be hard to read, so you have to zoom in and pan it around.
I would be interested in finding an android or windows tablet which is ruggedised and actually works properly in the relevant ambient temps. There are the SUMO ones but they are pricey.
Typo! Not S6, its 6S ! :-)
My experience is that the quickest way to overheat any GPS unit, not just an iPad, is to charge it whilst running the GPS in flight.
Most portable units have sufficient battery reserve for most flights. If possible delay recharging until on the ground.
I carry a 12v 7ah sealed lead acid battery for the purpose, if away from a charging power supply.
Peter wrote:
Going around isn’t going to magically restore the Ipad to working condition.
No, but it is going to magically increase the distance to the ground…
Peter wrote:
The “phone backup” for approach plates is really pretty poor
I regularly fly approaches with the plates on a 5 inch relatively low end phone (no HiDPI display) and with the touch screen enabled, even, and I don’t see the problem.
Heck, I even have it lying on the dashboard in bright sunlight and charging plugged in, and it a) charges and b) doesn’t switch off due to overheating
Solaris wrote:
many GA aircraft power outlets lack sufficient output for charging a tablet, true.
Huh? What kind of outlets do you have?
The only outlets I’ve seen so far are cigarette lighter plugs, mostly 12V, and fused with a 5A CB. Thats 60 Watts! Not enough to charge a gaming laptop playing GTA 5 hydra jet, but enough to charge a standard laptop plus a portable GPS…
Just for the record as someone who uses both systems extensively, Foreflight has far less potential for ‘accidental touch’ catastrophes than SD, which is littered with them. Despite that I’ve never needed or desired to disable the touch screen as described here.
But if you really want to observe the consequences of accidental touch (actually knob twists), just observe some (possibly older!) VFR pilots with the 430! I know of one who could not get back to moving map mode, period! I’ve not seen anything on iPad as arcane as the 430!
Peter wrote:
The “phone backup” for approach plates is really pretty poor, and I have arguably today’s best phone (the S6).
okay, i admit it, in spite of being a tablet/phone advocate, i always print the jeppesen plates for departure/arrival/alternate on jeppesen paper stapled together. i carry the rest of europe on JeppFD in the iPad.
not because i think for an instant the tablet may fail or present any problem, more for reasons of haptics, which is better than JeppFD’s, so in a way it is a matter of more screen real-estate, allowing also to display terrain from SD or Galileo Pro (one of the manageable iOS equivalents for peter’s infamous ozi-explorer). for me that advantage only works for the small jeppesen paper, any larger map is unwieldy.
