Dublinpilot, thanks for replay and I am happy your get LKCL demise confirmed ;-) Unfortunately I have a direct visibility to this industrial zone at the moment from my office. I will have some more updates (not just removed airports), can we take it off line not to spam others here?
Clever
An external bluetooth GPS (I use an XGPS150) works perfectly but this raises two issues: AFAIK, there is no selection in any IOS app for which GPS to use the operating system will choose the internal or the external GPS and you can't see which one it is using, and can't force it to use just the external one, so it could switch to the internal one and then lose it...
AFAIK if you put the iPad in airplane mode it is unable to use the internal GPS. Now enable bluetooth and connect to your external GPS. Everything should work fine and you save a lot of battery not using the internal GPS. For some reason bluetooth uses much less power than the internal GPS.
Yes, sorry to be clear, I am using it for utilities - Flight plan filing etc and the Jepp plates. I have the Avidyne setup for navigation.
it is clear that for aviation right now (particularly with Jeppesen) you need an ipad.
The thing which concerns me with using the Ipad for navigation is
I have found the internal GPS very unreliable; rarely among GPSs, it will be running fine and then suddenly it drops the fix
An external bluetooth GPS (I use an XGPS150) works perfectly but this raises two issues:
AFAIK, there is no selection in any IOS app for which GPS to use
the operating system will choose the internal or the external GPS and you can't see which one it is using, and can't force it to use just the external one, so it could switch to the internal one and then lose it...
it is yet another thing to keep charged, and the battery life is not great
the app has no access to the satellite constellation data so you cannot easily judge the quality of the fix (with the XGPS150 there is a free app which runs separately and which does display the constellation)
However, others have found the internal Ipad GPS very reliable, so this may be aircraft dependent. Also I might be wrong about the GPS source selection options; my comments are based on what I have seen myself.
Whereas with an Android tablet, you can use any of the hundreds of plain common bluetooth NMEA GPSs, and some of these will support multiple clients concurrently.
Nothing I have seen matches the Ipad on the quality of its finger-gesture implementation which is why it works so well for document (PDF) browsing - particularly with Goodreader.
I am a huge android fan but have decided to dedicate an old iPad to the new plane as it is clear that for aviation right now (particularly with Jeppesen) you need an ipad.
Michal,
I'm part of the PocketFMS beta crew. (The beta crew test prerelease versions of PFMS...we don't have any finanical involvement).
I have reported your comments in relation to LKCL, and have just received word that they have confirmed that you are correct, and it has now been removed from the database (and will be corrected in the next update).
Despite this error, I think you'll find that the PocketFMS databse is the best there is in Europe by a long way, and I hope that you see that in the rest of your trial period. If you have any questions on it, feel free to ask me.
In relation to what else is out there for Android in Europe, the only other one that I'm aware of that hasn't been mentioned above is Air Nav Pro. They are best know for their iOS app, but they do have an Android app too.
dp
Jeppesen TC would be unmissable for me
Indeed, Jeppview is a nice product which doesn't actually crash all that often and if you want a consistent cockpit-usable presentation for everywhere it is the only game in town, but what drives much of the demand for portable solutions is the ability to use the free AIP airport charts and other freely available data.
The European sub for Jeppview 4 is around €2000/year (depending on how exactly you define "Europe").
Jeppesen TC would be unmissable for me
PocketFMS now have their AirspaceAvoid App which you could try out cheaply before deciding whether to go with the full version.
Barnes and Noble are about to Launch a Nook HD+ which will have a nice hi-resolution screen like the iPad3 but running Android (and thus side-stepping the many hassles of using an iPad such as trying to copy files to it, printing, Apple arbitrarily breaking things ...)