denopa wrote:
Foreflight is a great app. After reading US pilots rave about it, it’s a bit of a let down to compare it with SkyDemon or Garmin Pilot.
I felt exactly the same (I only tried in the US, as FF is pretty much unusable for VFR in europe, and I use GP for IFR), and actually found the interface not that easy to use and reverted to SD / GP.
Anyone using Jeppesens charts?
In FF you can buy the Jeppesen charts and have them on two ipads and one iPhone.
In GP you can buy the Jeppesen as well but IT will only work on one iPad. If you want a backup you have to buy another subsciption from Jeppesen and soon you will be out of money….
I’m running SD today but I’m searching for an app for IFR. I thought GP was nice but now I’m more into buying a subscription on FF to be able to use a backup.
And buying JeppFD is the same thing. Can only be usel on one iPad.
So the best solution would be FF…???
Otherwise GP+JeppFD, SD+JeppFD och GP+SD…
I just use FF in Europe (although only fly IFR). It is excellent.
Noe wrote:
denopa wrote: Foreflight is a great app. After reading US pilots rave about it, it’s a bit of a let down to compare it with SkyDemon or Garmin Pilot.I felt exactly the same (I only tried in the US, as FF is pretty much unusable for VFR in europe, and I use GP for IFR), and actually found the interface not that easy to use and reverted to SD / GP.
I guess it’s just a question of preference. I tried GP and didn’t like it. Found it very non-intuitive. I use EasyVFR for VFR. I use FF for IFR and Jepp VFR VAC/airfield info and am very happy with it, much better than GP. I entirely disagree that FF is unusable for VFR in Europe, although I do prefer EVFR in some areas. I cancelled my Jepp FD subscription because the FF Europe sub is much cheaper and one gets USA or Canada to boot…. and it runs on 2x ipad (one primary, one backup) as well as iphone.
I think what people (me included) find is missing for FF to be useable for VFR in Europe is graphical NOTAMs, airspace heights and ATSOCAS frequencies. GP has airspace heights but it is still missing the rest.
I agree entirely that this is largely a question of personal preference. And we have a massive amount of choice that we didn’t have a few years ago, which is fantastic.
For many years I used to plan VFR using Navbox, which had a – compared to today’s products – poor map depiction, so I used the printed VFR charts for CAS and terrain elevation (MSA) reference. It was time-consuming but very good and quick for printing off a plog and a rough map. Navbox packed up in March 2016.
In terms of VFR mapdata, Foreflight seems to be around where Navbox was 15 years ago. To be competitive for VFR, they will need to show fully usable VFR charts. IMHO this needs to include spot elevations but I have no idea where you get that kind of data from. Of the modern products only Jepp MFDVFR has that and that is about 2x the price of EVFR and SD. OTOH, EVFR and SD find plenty of customers who presumably don’t need this, but it could simply be that their market is in areas of Europe where terrain is not a huge issue (perhaps Swiss etc pilots use other software?). One simply doesn’t know the customer distribution.
The basic point is that, for VFR, most of the users of these programs do absolutely all their planning with it and they do all their navigation with it. A big part of the justification for the price is that you don’t buy the paper charts anymore.
The posts about flight planning and spot elevations etc have been moved to a new thread
So I took a few hours to play around with Foreflight’s User Chart feature. I was hoping to make it more useful for flying VFR in Switzerland. I got the ICAO chart working and as a test, one of the VAC charts. Watch the video to see how it looks.
This is how I did it, in case someone wants to replicate the steps.
Disclaimer: do not use the user charts that you’ve created with this for real navigation! I have no idea if the projections line up 100% – I’m basically clueless about maps. This was done for my personal enjoyment only. Feedback is welcome.
That’s brilliant Nick – thanks for posting it. It sounds like Foreflight accepts user-loaded GEOTIFF maps. That’s an excellent capability.
You should be able to check the map calibration by turning off auto map centering and panning the thing to some point and watching the coordinate display which I presume must be there somewhere.
Other programs have other ways e.g. Oziexplorer can overlay a grid on say 30 min intervals, which makes any miscalibration blindingly obvious. I have thus calibrated many many maps since 2003. However I don’t generate GEOTIFFs in this case; I go straight to Ozi’s internal format.
Yep, I really like how open it is. Now my only wish would be to be able to have more than one User Chart open at the same time. Right now, if you activate the VAC chart for example, the ICAO chart disappears. Hopefully they will improve this in the future…
I forgot to mention that the VAC charts come from the Skybriefing platform. Another CHF 53 down the drain. And they are not georeferenced, so I had to do that manually – it’s actually quiet easy in MapTiler.
