Jeppesen presentation at Shoreham EGKA 23/11/2013

What prices are you comparing?

I would certainly agree that JeppFD-VFR is currently bad value for money – if you do significant European VFR touring. But how many do?

That was incidentally why I used Navbox Pro for my VFR touring – it really had the whole of Europe.

Last time I looked, SD had some bits missing. Have they done the whole lot now? They did contact me a couple of times asking if I would review their product in my trip writeups, but said they could not afford to give me a free copy to try The chap said they do all of Europe, so I pointed him to their website, and he agreed it was not all there yet.

I think that to stand a chance, Jepp need to at least replicate their existing VFR/GPS chart coverage (shown here as the darker shaded areas)

in JeppFD-VFR. That is especially as they are dropping their printed charts, which removes the extensive and hugely valuable free advertising exposure of their name from pilot shop shelves. Now, they will be invisible in the shops and will have to compete according to how slick their product looks in the Apple app store, which contains about 200000 items of which 99% is absolute drivel…

But even if they will replicate the VFR/GPS charts they won’t be supporting Greece and the rest of the SE, and the NE countries. Whereas even good old Navbox does the whole lot – despite being functionally much simpler than say SD and has no useful GPS moving map functionality.

Unfortunately there are no VFR charts for some of these places, like Greece. You have to get enterprising

However, in the end, I don’t suppose many people will care about having 100% coverage, or anywhere near it. I think 99% will judge it on their own country, plus the usual foreign burger runs (like Le Touquet for Brit pilots). SD is way ahead in the UK where almost no VFR pilot ever used Jepp-anything. It may be different in Germany, where Jepp has a much bigger profile, but then Germany has very good national VFR charts and moving map products that use them. Plus SD of course…

Time will tell… I would not underestimate Jepp’s marketing power. Also I suspect their IOS team is not the same slow moving bunch as their IFR team which doesn’t need to change anything from one decade to the next.

A quick report on JeppFD-VFR:

A nice app, especially in the way zooming in from enroute eventually displays the airport chart, seamlessly. So no more getting lost at airports. Has all the usual flight planning functions which you would expect.

The VFR charts are nice and clear and look quite similar to the printed “VFR/GPS” charts.

The IOS implementation looks very nice. The JeppFD screen can be locked against accidental touching (JeppTC cannot).

However I have to say it does need a lot of finishing, if they want to bring it up to date with some “obvious” functions, let alone compete with the feature-packed Skydemon:

• no airspace warnings, both during planning and during flight
• the currently very limited geographical coverage is not going to expand as quickly as has been previously suggested – current coverage and Benelux only are likely during 2014.

My own additional dislikes are:

• no track tail shown on map
• no track log
• no Reverse Route function (during planning)
• track-ahead line limited to 5 minutes (really crap for tactical CAS avoidance by subtle heading changes)
• the app stops working completely 30 days after your sub lapses (what does Skydemon do? – I know Navbox remains fully usable)
• there is printing in JeppFD (as there is in JeppTC, contrary to previous reports here) but when displaying terminal charts you get just the one chart on an A4 sheet; no way to print off a whole airport. I forgot to ask what the print function in JeppFD-VFR does for enroute maps.
• can’t generate a PDF of anything
• the airport data contains phone and other contact numbers which cannot be copied/pasted into another app; also no country codes shown (Navbox wins big-time)

Some of the above is on a list of things to fix. They will also soon have winds aloft which will automatically populate the plog.

It seems clear that this product is a completely newly written app, not incorporating some nice features which have been in say Flitestar or its moving map GPS version Flitemap for something like a decade.

It also seems a bad business decision to scrap the VFR/GPS paper charts, and their electronic equivalents the Raster Charts, and try to replace it with an Ipad-only app which has a far poorer coverage and no useful hard copy option so even the pilots who are happy to fly VFR with just basically electronic strip charts (of which say Memory Map, with its raster data, is equivalent) cannot replace the lost geographical coverage.

Why not? Probably depends on the provider/contract, but I have three devices (laptop, iphone, ipad) on my existing contract without paying an additional fee. Admittedly, it’s a company account, though – I think for consumer contracts, you’d have to pay a small one-time fee for any additional SIM card added to the contract.

Which cellular provider does that, or anything approaching that?

I concur.

The only Q remains how long it is before the 2013 VFR/GPS charts become practically obsolete.

Jepp have often skipped a year in updating the paper ones, IIRC, and most pilot shops used to skip, ahem, at least a year with their stock

I reckon the 2013 charts will be good for 2 years at least, and anyway I doubt many people use them in the more rapidly changing bits of N Europe (UK and Germany).

Vodafone – is that really so extraordinary? I just added the iPad this year and ordered the third SIM card and got it without issues. I’ve never really questioned it and just took it for granted – but I see it might be an arrangement based on our company master contract with the provider.

I’ve just called their business line.

Voda charge £5/month per SIM on a contract. This is for data SIMs only (no SMS or voice). The staff I spoke to (2) know of no way to get multiple SIMs otherwise.

There are no data bundles, so you have steep pricing:

In the UK the data costs £5/25MB.

Outside the UK (European roaming) it costs £3/MB for 1st 5MB and £15/5MB thereafter.

There is a number of people who will do a SIM for £5/month. We make a product at work which uses SIM cards so this comes up here and there. But the data costs, especially roaming, get “interesting”. The cheapest reasonable SIM I have seen is from the “3” network, on a special corporate deal via Andrews & Arnold and we pay £3/month for that, plus a very low data charge, but that comes as a 3G backup product with a £40/month ADSL service so not usable in say an Ipad.

It looks like you are just ordering them and somebody else picks up the bill

Or you have some special corporate deal; for example I know Orange used to deals if a customer had 50+ phones and I am sure Voda do the same.