It seems to me we have SkyDemon best in Europe, OZRunways best in Australia and Foreflight best in the US….then we have GP and JeppFD trying to cover the world in uniform fashion… Garmin and Jepp no doubt have strong following in Europe from those who flit back and forth between various regions and/or who have Flightstream210…. But in Europe SD is king….mainly because the developer is an active participant in European forums (including here for example) and is very responsive in making the product do what people want..,
You have forgotten Pocket FMS which enjoys a very substantial following and whose developers are equaly active but largely ignored by the tribal Brits if they post on certain forums.
Peter Mundy above is right about PocketFMS; the GA scene differs between countries and PFMS has a big following outside the UK.
Also regarding…
“mainly because the developer is an active participant in European forums (including here for example) and is very responsive in making the product do what people want.”
the developer(s) of SD is not active here unless under a well hidden identity 
When SD started, they got a huge amount of free publicity on the (one) main UK chat site and IMHO were under pressure to incorporate almost every imaginable feature that was requested because they thought, probably correctly, that this is their only chance to grab a slice of the market before Jepp manage to knock their JeppFD-VFR into something that works and maybe before other contenders come out also (I am talking of some years ago).
After a while, a lot of people, myself included, thought the de facto free advertising of SD (a commercial product) was distasteful (especially with the way some of its supporters beat around the head anyone criticising the product) and expressed that view openly. Eventually the said forum pulled the plug on the advertising. The UK had another forum back then (since largely melted down) but they didn’t allow the free advertising at all. So predictably when EuroGA started in 2012 it was essentially boycotted by SD and its most vocal fans And when David was going to do this software review SD boycotted it. They asked me on two occassions why I don’t mention SD in my trip writeups and I replied I don’t use it but would give it a go if they lend me a free copy. They said they cannot afford to do that!
Yes; GA can be pretty tribal (or at least the most vocal forum posters / heads of volunteer GA organisations can be – I find most normal pilots to be really nice people) but there we are!
Pilot shops don’t make any money out of SD (or PFMS) because these sell direct, whereas Jepp (what about Garmin?) still sell some via the shops. These Ipad products have thus been a disaster for pilot shops who used to make a lot of money from sales of handheld GPSs. So don’t expect many fans among pilot shops
I have flown with a number of pilots who use SD and none of them really knew how it worked beyond the totally superficial, and with fairly regular “WTF is it doing” moments. This didn’t surprise me because – as often written here in the past – there is a lot of config, some of which is not exactly obvious. This is probably a wider issue in the business although for example JeppFD-VFR is much less likely to have that problem because the product is much simpler, with a much shallower user interface. But JeppFD-VFR is a lot more pricey than SD or PFMS. It has the German airport charts included but that is relevant to very few pilots in the UK.
Also different products are designed to be used in a different way; some more for adhoc use and others more for preplanned flights. The UK market is mostly adhoc, I think, because the Class G airspace allows you to fly freely all over the country (at low levels). Personally I don’t believe in a complex product which needs significant interaction during flight, so it will be very interesting to have a go with GP. Especially as it runs the raster maps which is exactly what I fly with (under Oziexplorer) on my tablet.
I still think the handhelds are the best for robustness of both the hardware and the software but can understand why few people buy them – at that price, most people want “convergence” and don’t want yet another gadget which has to be kept charged. I fly with a tablet but it lives in the plane and for best reliability isn’t used for anything else.
Navbox was probably the market leader c. 10 years ago but failed to capitalise on its huge lead in coverage and accuracy because for various reasons they were unable to develop it. I believe the database is still maintained however; I update mine from time to time. But they never did a workable moving map mode so IMHO it’s good only for preflight and printing off the maps and the plogs.
However I think any product in the range of €300 plus will never make it in European GA. VFR pilots are just not willing to spend that much.
Our Austrian forumites here know all the details about that area (some have once been posted in a previous thread).
@Boscomantico: The main problem with Austrian national parks AFAIK is that they are governed by provincial laws. The restrictions on aviation activities in/above them differ wildy – from “no restrictions at all” (eg. in the national park along the danube east of Vienna) to “no flying below 5.000 meters msl” (eg. national park “Nockberge” in Carinthia). The mentioned national park “Hohe Tauern” is the mother of all cans of worms with regulations differing between the 3 concerned provinces (Carinthia, Salzburg, Tyrol) as well as between “core areas” and other areas within the park.
For all practical purposes, one stays legal by flying above the national park only at 5.000 meters/16.500 feet MSL or higher. According to an online presentation of the Carinthian aeroclub, the fine for a one-time breaching of this regulation is up to 3.630 euros. That said, I do not know of pilots that have actually been fined.
on the forum of SD, in a posting about this last year, they stated “that legally, there is no requirement to avoid the national parks”? (I don’t know if I can place a link here?)
Vieke wrote:
on the forum of SD, in a posting about this last year, they stated “that legally, there is no requirement to avoid the national parks”? (I don’t know if I can place a link here?)
Without wanting to go to far off topic, that depends on the national park. Very obviously there is a requirement to stay clear eg. of the national park “Hohe Tauern” within Carinthia below 5.000 meters / 16.500 ft MSL.
And if you think all that is completely nuts, well, welcome to Austria …
Back on the topic of Garmin Pilot, can anyone post a screenshot of an actual IAP? I mean, do you only see the approach plate with your position georeferenced above it or is the screen divided in eg. the moving map on top and the approach plate below it?
The lack of IFR functionality beyond the airway and waypoint depiction is the one major grievance I have with SkyDemon. For somebody like me, who flies with steam gauges and a 430W/King avionics setup, this would be a nice contribution to situational awareness.
Peter wrote:
I have flown with a number of pilots who use SD and none of them really knew how it worked beyond the totally superficial, and with fairly regular “WTF is it doing” moments
Your post reveals why you maybe have a dislike of the people behind SD, but I hardly think that has any bearing on the utility of the app… I’m sure the WTFIDN moments happen with any of the similar apps… I never had this problem as I took the time to understand its functions… I remember some time back you thought you were pointing out a flaw in airspace depiction which in fact was due to lack of understanding of the software…not blaming you as you do not use the product…
And Blueline, yes I agree georeferenced IAPs would be great. SD already does this with the VFR approaches at a lot of airports….but bear in mind that SD markets itself as a VFR product first and foremost despite being extremely useful got IFR as well…. When I fly with the same setup as you on long IFR trips I find I keep SD on the VFR map mostly….I like to know what’s under me! Also I monitor the glide radius wrt airports should an emergency arise. The IFR map search feature is very handy when ATC give a waypoint I don’t recognize and not in my flight pan… For the IAPs I take photo snapshots in the sequence they will be required and use Photos to view them…(this trick taught to me by my 747-400 Capt brother-in-law)
I have better things to do than disliking some product because of some peoples’ forum behaviour, AnthonyQ, but obviously I do think it is daft to expect me or EuroGA to review a product while saying a trial copy costs too much Some peter2000.co.uk stats are here (102GB of traffic to mostly my trip writeups – the result of an informative site which has been running for 13 years) so maybe the loss is incurred elsewhere? And the EuroGA stats are vastly bigger numbers.
But you are right about taking the time to learn an app. The Q is whether this is reasonable given the user base, a substantial % of which has no IT skills. Like it or not, a large % of us here do have significant IT skills.
One could make the same “WTF is it doing now” comment about VFR people flying with a GNS430 but that device was not intended for a VFR-only market (a job which it does very badly).
Can someone comment on the GP config options?
you were pointing out a flaw in airspace depiction which in fact was due to lack of understanding of the software
It would be interesting if GP does the same “vertical airspace compression”. (Obviously not on the raster charts). That results in airspace depictions which are technically correct but which differ from the printed charts which most pilots are used to. I don’t think that is right because it creates pointless confusion (which I have seen myself with an SD user during flight, so that’s manifestly not a good thing) in the name of “technical slickness” but it is probably OK if you want to create a product whose substantial use is an “airspace bust warning” device. (We had a thread here with example images but the images were externally hosted on imageshack and have since vanished).
The other interesting thing, on IFR this time, would be whether GP georefences laterally as well as vertically, on the approach plate. JeppFD does only the former. The latter is tricky because the profile is not to scale to the lateral (the vertical scale is exxagerated so e.g. a 3 deg ILS GS looks about 30 deg).
My final Q is whether GP stops working when the database sub expires. Navbox doesn’t but JeppFD-VFR does (mine stopped running days after the sub expired, which is pretty crap if it happens at a bad time). Some products expire after say 2 months (JeppFD terminal charts e.g.). What you cannot do on tablets generally is to set the time back, as a temporary fix
I posted a screenshot of the EGHH IAP here:
http://www.euroga.org/forums/maintenance-avionics/5636-garmin-pilot-screenshots
You can either show the plate in split screen mode as shown here (map format of your choice in top view), or full screen. In either case the data fields (BRG, TRK, GS or whatever you choose) for the active waypoint are always shown.
Geo-referenced position not shown in those screenshots as taken on the ground.
You can continue to use Garmin Pilot with expired nav data provided your software subscription hasn’t expired. You just receive a warning when viewing plates and such like that they are expired. VFR raster charts are not available after their subscription expires – since the subscription is for a finite time period. The interface for viewing available subscriptions, downloads and expiry of data, and for selecting and queuing new updates is quite sophisticated.
Plates are only geo-referenced laterally, not in the profile view.
