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Ram Mounting a Small Tablet (and RS232 connections to Android)

A good friend of mine has recently been involved in an infrigment and although I often have EasyVFR running its usually in my pocket as I have no where to mount my phone.

I also used to fly an aircraft where the owner had fitted a flush mounted ipad into his certified aircraft. It was lovely. It turned on the minute you turned the master switch on and booted straight into skydemon. However it was a bit of a pain as before every maintenance review he used to have to unscrew and remove the lot.

So what I am looking at is a mount that is rugged enough to hold a 4-5 inch device in steep turns and spinning. I’m also not keen on having anything yoke mounted and I don’t want cables running all over the place. Finally I can’t be doing with having to remove it every time it goes into maintenance.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Last Edited by Bathman at 25 Feb 11:57

What plane is it for? In some (like mine) this is virtually impossible due to a lack of a location where even the smallest tablet would not obstruct some instrument.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Cessna 150

Depends on the panel space you have. Air Gizmo runs a variety of panel mounts for ipads or ipad mini, they look great when mounted. They also have panel mounts for most Garmin devices. In a Cessna 150 space might be tight, so the only thing I can think of might really be a yoke mount, but depending on the panel, maybe an ipad mini mount could work.

Air Gizmos mounts are here:
https://www.aircraftspruce.com/categories/avionics_instruments/av/menus/av/mounts_0airgizmos.html

on the same site on the left, you can check all other mounts available. Surely something will do the trick.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

If it was me I would buy some mount which holds the tablet of choice securely, possibly chuck away the rest of it (most of them are designed for quick and dirty mounting only) and construct a proper mount which is attached to somewhere solid.

I would also get myself a new (non anal) maintenance company But if you can’t, put in some nutplates or rivnuts somewhere so it can be unscrewed, and if they ask what the holes are for, just say “doooont knoooow, they have alwwways been there”.

You then need to provide power, which is best done with a connector. You can get that signed off on an EASA-reg plane. Even I had that done when mine was originally delivered in 2002 and went on the G-reg.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

RAM X-grip works well for phones and small tablets, as does their suction mount. I’ve never known one come adrift in helicopter (vibration) or CAP 10B (up to about 4g) – provided that it was released and re-secured as part of the pre-flight ritual.

A fixed panel mount is much better and easy to install under the FAA’s NORSEE, or the EASA equivalent.

Glenswinton, SW Scotland, United Kingdom

Bathman wrote:

[the iPad] turned on the minute you turned the master switch on and booted straight into skydemon.
How did he achieve that? Both that it turned on automatically and booted into SD?

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

I don’t know and with it being flush mounted in front of the P2 position it looked great to.

Jack would the X-Grip hold it during spinning. It doesn’t look that strong to me

Airborne_Again wrote:

How did he achieve that? Both that it turned on automatically and booted into SD?

An iPad will boot upon application of power and to go directly into an App you can use either “Kiosk” or “Guided Access” mode. How-to here.

Interesting that you can do that, but I think most people who use an Ipad are planning to run more than one app on it. For example a GPS moving map app, plus some weather app, Tinder etc. Also the Apple Configurator requires the device to be wiped, according to a previous post here somewhere.

A more comprehensive solution to a straight boot into a particular app is to use Android, and I don’t think you need to root the device for that; there are various background managers which can be used to customise the device. That said, I have never tried this.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
20 Posts
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