Alpha_Floor wrote:
Does the same apply for PPL/CPL skills tests or are tests treated separately?
From what I’ve seen in part-FCL, there’s no difference for skill tests. The descriptions of skill tests both for the PPL(A) and CPL(A) state that the applicant shall ensure that all documentation for the execution of the flight are on board. It doesn’t say anything about the media used for that documentation.
The practical situation differs, however, because examiners have their own, shall we say, preferences 
Some bizzare stories out there…
Peter wrote:
preferences
I do not doubt that. However, the fact is that most us (my generation) are brought up in a world of paper charts and at some point were quite comfortable about it. Paper charts are not perfect. Apart from being obsolete almost by definition, they tear apart, crease, blow out the window (along with the paper checklist, in my case, once in a Grumman Tiger when I opened the canopy in-flight), but we all know that. I have as an instructor flown both x-country training and final checks with PPL students who used electronic charts, and while some managed that well, others lost their maps when an overheated iPad shut down, had to put it out of the sun down to their feet in order to read the screen, ran out of juice and had to ask me for help finding a charger cable, or they were unsure of whether an internet connection were required for the map to be correct. And some more problems. It mainly points back to our flight school and fellow instructors, who had not, and maybe still have not, taken the use of electronic charts seriously enough. It is somewhat complicated by the fact that there are many electronic products out there, and the instructor has to understand all of them reasonably well in order to teach good practice. As the skill test is all about making the examiner feel assured that all is well, I can see the challenge that can sometimes arise when there is an issue with an electronic chart. A good SOP is clearly the way to go, but we are not quite there yet in my school.
Malibuflyer wrote:
One could obviously scan the paper one – but that is quite some work…
I believe that’s something everybody should do to be honest, I personally consider it a bit reckless not to.
Nowadays, having important documents in paper form ONLY is a risk that calls for trouble and has a very easy solution. Scanning a POH is not that much work because the pages are in a ring binder, so you can feed them into an automated scanner. And you need only do it once and then you have it, keep the original POH in a safe somewhere, and use the electronic PDF whenever you need to consult it.
