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Electronic flight bags / electronic in-flight data

The only significant difference that I can account for is the altitude being far higher than anything I’m used to flying at.

OK, we may be on to something here. What altitudes are we talking about? I think the highest mine’s been was probably around 11k. Incidentally, on their website Apple say ‘tested to 10.000 ft’….

Last Edited by 172driver at 09 Nov 15:31

I have had several thermal shutdowns but all at 9k plus cabin alt when charging and in sunshine. iPad Mini original.

I use no paper in my aircraft. As a device for aviation I think the iPad is the only way to go. And I am an android man through and through.

Last Edited by JasonC at 09 Nov 15:44
EGTK Oxford

OK, we may be on to something here. What altitudes are we talking about?

The recent ones that I refer to were FL140-FL190.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Do you think that the ambient air pressure has any effect over the operation of the ipad?

I am certain it does. FL180 is 50% of the sea level air density. Half the conduction loss and probably half the convection loss. That’s twice the internal temp rise.

does your ipad shut down also whilst in your living room?

Not IME.

What air temperature do you normally keep inside the aircraft cabin in flight?

I don’t know but probably +25C or so because on most “summer” trips I fly in shorts and a T-shirt.

FWIW, for the past 16 months I’ve had the Lenovo Tablet 2 (win8) and that will also shut down, at about the same rate. However it almost never shuts down if it is not being charged. The Ipad2 used to shut down anyway. Both devices have had the screen brightness on (or close to) max which is PROB100 another big factor; at home, one wouldn’t do that because it would be too bright. I use the T2 largely because (a) it runs various VFR charts for Europe under Oziexplorer and (b) it works with my cheap Hughes 7100 Thuraya satellite phone.

To answer the original Q I don’t think I would buy any of the old-style aviation GPSs, although much depends on what exactly you want one for.

For primary nav I always program the route in the panel mount GPS (KLN94 in my case; GNS430 in many others). So the handheld is just a backup. That is what the Garmin 496 in the LH yoke does

and it is good enough for that (emergency GPS – a “DCT box”). If I didn’t want to yoke mount the thing I would probably buy a Garmin 695… it will go on for ever and can be used to whack your mother in law about the head if she doesn’t stop talking.

However if you are going to use a handheld device as your primary nav and you have no other GPS then it obviously needs to be pretty reliable.

I don’t know about France or Germany but in the UK, if you call up ATC and tell them your GPS has shut down and could they help you navigate, yeah, they will help, of course, but all hell will break loose behind the scenes if you actually bust airspace, not least because London Info have the wrong pay grade controllers and they are not allowed to tell you what they see on their radar screens You will just end up looking like a complete twat and IMHO we pilots have a collective responsibility to not look like complete twats (I am stopping just short of saying there is a sufficient amount of “interesting pilot behaviour” in the air already and this is very obvious to anybody who pops up for a flight on a Sunday). Plus your pilot workload will go through the roof.

I don’t know of any handheld product which I would consider reliable enough and which depicts the “real printed” VFR charts. If you can find a tablet you consider reliable enough, you have the choice of of these mainstream products which do have good VFR chart representations (in alpha order):

JeppFD-VFR (IOS only; they did talk of an Android version)
PocketFMS (IOS, Android, Windows)
Skydemon (IOS, Android, Windows)

I hope I got that right.

I don’t know how accurate Jepps are for Europe nowadays. The product came out a year ago and while Jepp have owned the printed chart market for years (charts discontinued in 2013) they have historically had a very poor penetration of the VFR community. This will translate to a poor rate of bug and error reports coming back from customers. Also I know they (again, historically) rarely bothered to respond to error reports in their VFR products.

Also consider what happens if you stop paying for the database. I know at least some of the above stop working totally something like 60 days later. No panel mount I know of will do that, for enroute nav. I think that’s outrageous.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

JeppVFR works well, is well supported and developed. Very un-Jepp really.

EGTK Oxford

I am certain it does. FL180 is 50% of the sea level air density. Half the conduction loss and probably half the convection loss. That’s twice the internal temp rise.

I suspect we’ve found the issue. Not too many people enjoy flying with cannulae at FL 16+, therefore not that many reports of overheating.

However, this brings me to another idea – what about the new iPhone 6 Plus? At 5.5 inches across the screen isn’t that much smaller than the 7.9 inches of the iPad mini, which a lot of people use for aviation purposes. The iPhones definitely don’t have a thermal shut-off issue, although – again – probably not many people try to use it at Peter’s preferred cruising altitudes

Last Edited by 172driver at 09 Nov 17:10

LeSving, you are either ill informed or possibly malicious, and I actually wonder if making this kind of assertion on a public forum is actionable. Maybe Peter should consider that, as publisher?

No I’m not. I don’t have Skydemon anymore, and I don’t remember what it said to be honest, I never used it, I use EasyVFR. But anybody can can go to TMA of ENVA, sector A or B. EasyVFR shows class D. The correct is class C, as it always has been and as the AIP clearly shows.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

The iPhones definitely don’t have a thermal shut-off issue

Also I bet very few people use a phone (of any kind) for any kind of serious navigation in flight.

So again we are probably looking at a very small intersection of the population of users and the population of devices.

Speaking of overheating, it seems to me that all the tablet makers are playing the same game when it comes to heat management, and how close to the line they go. There is no free lunch in physics, they all use very similar technology (very similar ARM processors, batteries, etc) and they all face the same issues. So they work out how to get X amount of heat out in typical applications and the rest is what Steve Jobs used to call “edge cases”.

I find the T2 gets just as warm as the Ipad2 and both will shut down the same. The internals are probably near-identical and both are at the higher end of the consumer electronics quality spectrum. I’ve been doing electronics design since ~ 1975 and really there are very few options unless you want to throw a LOT of money at a particular challenge (e.g. a very high efficiency charger / power supply) and Marketing will never let you do that.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

However, this brings me to another idea – what about the new iPhone 6 Plus? At 5.5 inches across the screen isn’t that much smaller than the 7.9 inches of the iPad mini, which a lot of people use for aviation purposes.

I had the same thought when I got a new phone recently but ended up with a 5, because I carry it in my pocket. I’ll continue with my Mini for airborne use – as long as it has a little vent blowing on it, there are no problems at all. I worked that out quite a while ago, and keep the iPhone in my pocket as a backup – that I’ve never had to use to date.

Thank you. I’m reporting that for investigation and correction if necessary. If you find something that you think is wrong, then please report it.

EIWT Weston, Ireland
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