Skydemon (merged thread)

It depends on how dependent you are on mobile data when travelling.

I think most pilots flying reasonably far are very dependent on it working.

On my recent trip around Corsica and Greece, I found my Vodafone UK contract (yes the one which Jason mentions, with the normally great value 2-3 quid a day Euro Traveller add-on) to work pretty well – except when it didn’t. And it didn’t work just when needed. There was only GPRS on some Greek islands (Ikaria I think) and it was so slow as to be useless, and no voice connectivity (evidently no roaming) so I could not phone the next airport (Samos) to arrange the fuel man. Luckily I had the Greek 5GB SIM thingy (in the E585 3G to WIFI modem) so I emailed a Greek friend to phone them. The hotel wifi was useless – presumably because the whole place is downloading videos these days.

Very frequently when travelling I find that Vodafone doesn’t connect for data to the local cellular company…

So having two ways to do the job can be very useful and I would not buy a tablet without a 3G SIM slot.

but today all models have GPS

Not so for iPad according to the Apple tech specs. Only the cellular version has GPS. One point with iPads relates to the display. I found that the earlier display e.g. on an iPad2 was not fine enough resolution for viewing UK AIP plates. On some of the smaller print it is possible that certain digits are not resolvable – such as “is it a 3 or an 8”. The smallest amount of zooming in would correct this. The retina displays are much better, excellent in fact

Then the iPad is worse than I thought… no such problem on modern Android tablets.

Also never had problems with data roaming in the last years (T-Mobile) other than being terribly expensive once you leave the EU.

Just to add to the discussion, I’d recommend buying an iPad Mini without cellular. Instead, buy a GarminGLO which you then pair to the iPad using bluetooth.

Advantages:

• Because there’s no data or cell connection from the iPad, you don’t suffer from audible interference on the radio (the noise you hear when you put your phone near a speaker – the only way to stop this is it put it in to Airplane mode, which disables the GPS)
• The battery life on the iPad lasts longer

This is the setup I have and it’s proved great so far. As others have said, if you do wish to get weather/notams etc then you can simply bluetooth to your phone, and use the personal hotspot.

I have an iPad Mini 3G but without a sim card so I have the benefit of the just about adequate GPS receiver but without the radio noise. A Garmin Glo or DUAL XGPS160 gives much better GPS reception. On the iPad Mini I run:

Garmin Pilot
Jeppesen Mobile Flite DeckVFR
Jeppesen Flite Deck
SkyDemon

We did this one before … how badly is the Ipad GPS affected if there is no GSM network connection?

I know for a fact that the GPS on some devices works absolutely terribly. I would think that is true for many or most smartphones because on those it will be a reasonable assumption that a working GSM connection will always be present, and anyway the phone manufacturer sells most of its output via phone shops and is not interested in making life easy for people who buy a phone on Ebay for 50 quid, leave out the SIM, and just use it for the free and excellent Nokia Maps, for example.

One could put a prepaid PAYG SIM into the Ipad, and just spend a little bit of money every 2 months to keep it going. Most expire after 90 or 180 days. Unfortunately an Ipad cannot send or receive texts – unless jailbroken (Swirly Texts). It can receive texts from cellular networks only (network notifications will pop up).

I have this iPad mini 3G and have never had any problems with acquisition or loss of GPS signal….maybe just lucky…

It did overheat once though….so now I direct an eyeball air vent next to my left knee directly at the underside (it is yoke mounted)…and it always feels cold as steel…

And to answer Peter’s question, I believe the GSM assist feature of the GPS is no longer used….ie it makes no difference whether there is a GSM signal or not….

And to answer a previous post, it is possible to disable Cellular without having to use Airplane mode….thus maintaining GPS

i have an iPad mini and an iPad 4 – no problems whatsover, all works fine both with the internal GPS and with my external GNS2000 Bluetooth GPS. In direct sunlight im the summer the iPad has overheated once or twice – but not anymore since i have air condition (;-))

I’ve an iPad 3.

Screen and interface is excellent.

I do occasionally lose GPS signal. I use my iPad on a home made kneeboard, so it tends not to be in a great position for GPS signal acquisition. It does regularly lose signal, but if I hold it up to the window it gets it back in maybe 10-15 seconds.

In our PA28, I’ve gotten an overheat shut down just once. I left it on top fo the panel for maybe 2 minutes on a reasonably hot day (maybe 22-24C) (while on the ground) and it overheated. Took about 5 minutes to come back.

I’ve had it overheat in Peter’s TB20 on two occasions, but on both of those we were at high altitude, which probably contributed to it. It took a few minutes in a cool airflow to recover.

As Anthony said, you can turn off “Celular data” in settings to avoid the chirping on the radio, without disabling the internal GPS.

An external GPS will probably improve reliability, but it’s one extra thing to keep charged.

When it comes to Android, I think you get what you pay for. Samsung do great devices, but the best are just as expensive as the iPad. Plenty of cheap models around, but performance is a lot worse (as is screen readablity outdoors).