It’s been a while now since I’m using an electronic PDF version of my checklist (from POH), enhanced by my experience and mainly the precious advises of my instructors (whether VFR or IFR), with the excellent aeropad app for ipad.
Based on a excel file, I found much more easier to modify the checklist, add personal notes or (my aircraft) avionics related actions to perform, and then have it on my iPads (always 2 100% charged), with the exception of the inflight and emergency checklists I always have in both format (as a backup in case of…)
Now, do you guys use an electronic checklist, whether PDF or an iOS / Android app, or you just stick to the ‘old but efficient and never failed’ paper checklist ?
Paper for the checklists. While I carry 2 ipads, one of them (mounted on the yoke) is continously running Skydemon for improved situational awareness and the other one (in my lap) is used for the airfield plates. I wouldn’t want to switch between the plates and another app during rather critical phases of the flight like departure and approach.
Still paper for the checklist, but ready to change. Did not find the right one.
Have an iPad on my yoke and a second one not running but as backup. Would be nice to consolidate checklist and nav app and weather app (Golze) on the same ipad.
I have the checklist as an Excel file, which I print on paper for use in the cockpit.
That is very easy to do. Just open the two or three apps you want to use in flight and close all the others.
At the moment you want to see an other app just two quick pushes on the home knob and you can choose the wanted app ( standing open) with one finger tip. While you are doing i.e the checklist you Skydemon app will just continue the navigation in the background. Same routine if you want to switch back.
Hope this makes sense. Doining it is easier than describing it.
What I also did is placing the main inflight apps in the bottom row of the first icon page. Always directly at hand!
Another smart trick I found out is this. In Jeppview I make screenshots of the possible charts to be expected. I keep my photo app opened and then it is very easy to swipe to the desired approach, departure or whatever. It saves you from having to reopen Jeppview every time.
You can switch apps on iOS by swiping the screen left and right with four fingers – easier than using the home button.
While you are doing i.e the checklist you Skydemon app will just continue the navigation in the background.
Don’t be too sure of this. Once an application has moved to the “background” (in laymans terms), the operating system can do a number of things to it, depending on how heavily the system is loaded. In any case, the app will keep on running for a few seconds so that it can save important (state) data. It may then be pushed off the CPU, out of memory and a few other things, depending on the load on the system. There’s also a precise sequence of steps that the OS performs to load the app when it is pulled back to the foreground. Details are in the Apple documentation.
The problem I found with SD (actually yesterday) is that it doesn’t preserve its state properly. I was on the couch figuring something out for todays flight. I was swiping between SkyDemon, GoodReader, mail, a weather app and one or two other things. Everytime I pulled SD to the front, it started with the “VFR only” warning, I had to press Agree, and the the location reset itself to the place where I happened to have a route loaded. Not the location I was actually interested in. Yesterday, on the couch, this was annoying, but in the air this can be quite dangerous.
To reduce the risk of this happening, it is indeed best to close any other applications. By far the best (but not necessarily the quickest) method would be to completely shutdown the system and restart it.
But in any case, if you created your own PDF checklists, it’s a much better idea to load them into SkyDemon itself. That way you don’t need to close the SD application at all, and all the above simply won’t happen. Just open the PDF in any arbitrary application on your device. Then select “Open IN” and select SkyDemon. You’ll find the Document Browser in the “Plates” slider.
I have built-in check lists in G1000 but I rarely use them – it simply requires more time than using paper check list.
