Skydemon sure is great for anyone using gps as their main navigation source but it is useless for referencing with what you actually see (old fashioned navigation).
I can't agree.. happily using Skydemon for what I see - after all it's a VFR tool - one of the main selling points of SD is the uniform representation of all covered maps. Having flown for the last 25 years with DFS charts I chose the DFS representation in SD which has served me well.
I also really like that I can switch to the airways representation in my planning to follow airways were I like and switch back to the VFR chart for scud running.
I actually use SD on all three platforms: PC, IOS and Android.. PC for planning and to print my logs, IOS as onboard tool on the Ipad while the autopilot feeds off the GTN and Android on my HTC One as a backup.
Skydemon sure is great for anyone using gps as their main navigation source but it is useless for referencing with what you actually see (old fashioned navigation).
Like mrfacts, I disagree, SD is very good. Except, there is one thing that niggles me and that is even if you ask it to unhide disused airfields, it doesnt show all of them which are on the NATS UK chart. Yesterday somewhere west of Newbury I saw what looked like a perfectly good disused airfield for the purposes of a power out landing, which wasnt on SD but was on the NATS chart. Thats why I still keep my NATS chart close by.
As for AirNav Pro I, good looking app, but I found it not intuitive at all, and gave up on my trial of it. That said, it was much better than the Jepp MobileFlite deck VFR, which lacks a lot of features.
And what about PocketFMS, EasyVFR to be precise? Anyone using it?
I'm using it now on a 30-day trial license on a Android Phone (phablet size 5.3 inch). Getting used to it takes some time, because I find it not intuitive enough. It is rather slow when setting up a flight plan, but in the air (Flight Mode) it works pretty neat.
Next month I will try SkyDemon on a trial. I'm figuring out which one will be my companion for the next years, depending mainly upon price and availability & up-to-date charts/maps/NOTAMS. PocketFMS says their (map & NOTAM) information is up to date with the AIRAC-cycle.
I think Jepp just ran out of resources for producing the real charts
To all those who state "for my VFR flying, nowadays I use Skydemon and really don't need anything else", I will riposte that they probably don't do a lot of real european touring then. I will summarize the situation once again:
-in Italy, the TMAs are completely mis-presented
-in France, all National Parks (handled like prohibited areas) are missing completely
-in UK, the presentation of the airways is - arguably - not optimal and confusing
I am sure that if one compared the ICAO chart and the Skydemon chart, one would find similar issues for certain other countries. Sp how can one decide to rely entirely on these maps? Again, I like SD as a product and Jeppesen sure doesn't pay me, but it is an obvious fact that the only company so far that really put a lot of effort into producing (as far as reasonably possible) 100% accurate charts for all of Europe is (was!) Jeppesen.
Pilots flying to Italy are now screwed because
a) The italian ICAO charts are unreadable
b) Jepp stopped doing the VFR/GPS paper charts
c) Jepp MFD VFR does not cover Italy
Even if c) changes in the near future, people who prefer a paper chart will still be screwed.
Well, Philipp, I beg to differ.. I do about 100hrs annually, not much compared with what you and others do but I haven't found any faults in Skydemon relevant to my flying. I like to follow airways where possible, I stay in touch with FIS and I haven't busted any airspace based on Skydemon.. As far as I know SD have corrected errors when they were made aware of them and about every time I open Skydemon on my devices one or more charts need updating.
I don't get paid by SD either but I find the Jeppesen MFD VFR on IOS only inferior to what SD offers at four times the annual price. Please remember that some people still fly with maps that are either issued annually or were current several years ago. You'll find people who claim not to use any approach charts because "all relevant information is on the DFS chart".
This thread is about discontinued paper charts and I for one say: it's about time..
There is a way to continue VFR charts: make your own.
The Greeks have done it, using the 1998 ONC chart (which was all they had before that) and marking it up. In fact I did the same thing (not as comprehensively as they did) in 2004.
If there is now a fairly usable VFR chart for Italy, get it in an electronic form (screenshot tiles is one way, but they also come up on torrents) fix it up in Photoshop, "Save As" in whatever format you need. Oziexplorer is the obvious format; you save it as a TIFF and open it in Ozi and calibrate it using 9 points. Some of the torrent charts I've seen were already calibrated (.ozf2 and .map files). Oziexplorer is the way forward - it is a hugely widely used program, runs under windows and android, and I believe there are IOS apps which can run Ozi format files.
Firms like Skydemon will always face the issue of low feedback from countries where their sales are low and perhaps whose pilots are not keen to be writing detailed error reports in English.
I've said it before (here and also in feedback to Jepp), and I'll say it again: Jeppesen should create a map product that can be used as add-on to ForeFlight (or any of the other US programs). Would be a winning combination.
No, in the cases of Italy and France, they know perfectly well about the "problem", but refuse to implement any data that is not featured "numerically" (i.e. with coordinates defining the airspace boundaries) in the AIP. Officially because it wouldn't be sufficiently accurate, but it's obvious that it is more an issue of workload/effort.
Philipp, i was not aware of that, but it doesn't sound good... I was awre that there MIGHT be some little things missing but i had no idea about the magnitude of the problem, because i only used SD in Germany so far, and it seemed pretty good here ...
