Paul Sodagar of PPL/IR Europe has asked me to repost this, which is of general interest to IR pilots regarding Jeppesen’s decision to withdraw JeppMFD.
Tim Dawson and I held a couple of meetings with Jepp/Boeing about the potential of integrating Jepp charts into SD [SkyDemon].
Boeings position is that, in the US, they’ve seen an acceptable enough conversion from JeppMFD users to ForeFlight, for them to not be interested in further discussions at this stage. However they’re waiting to see what happens over the next 12 months in Europe and accept the FF market in Europe is different.
They wanted to open the door to customers to give them direct feedback on demand for Jepp Chart integration with products such as SD.
If this would interest you then please email Jepp Europe (Frankfurt office) and ask them to send on to:
Scott Reagan
Director – Product Marketing & Development
Boeing Global Services
The e-mail address of Jepp’s Frankfurt office is [email protected]. Please copy [email protected].
Done. The sooner this is done the better as far as I am concerned.
Done !
Airborne_Again wrote:
Paul Sodagar of PPL/IR Europe has asked me to repost this, which is of general interest to IR pilots regarding Jeppesen’s decision to withdraw JeppMFD.
I understand there’s general interest for such info but I don’t understand why those people don’t post such stuff themselves. If some software is GA tool then contribution of manufacturer would be highly appreciated here. Something like ForeFlight or Golze does. I didn’t notice any contribution of SkyDemon, RocketRoute or Jeppesen here regardless the fact that many of us use these products. Yet they are happy to be advertised here by the pilots writing about features and making comparisons.
I was going to comment in more forthright terms given how much some slag off EuroGA.
So hypocritical.
Well… I’m almost speechless.
Some people take a great initiative and are accused of hypocrisy when they try to spread the word. It’s true what is sometimes said that (private) pilots are their own worst enemies.
For the record, I’m one of the people who contribute the most to EuroGA. (At least in the number of posts. Other people will have to judge the contents of my contributions.) I have also been a member of PPL/IR Europe for 7 years and have never seen any “slagging off” of EuroGA on the PPL/IR Europe forum, or heard any member say such a thing. That some people don’t get along is another thing and not something I care much about. That always happens.
Anyway, it’s not a competition. EuroGA must have in the order of 100 times more visitors than the PPL/IR Europe forum.
@Airborne_Again, I think @Peter’s post was more directed at Skydemon and Rocketroute. AFAICT they have never posted or engaged here, in contrast to ForeFlight (which indirectly includes Jeppesen) and of course Golze. Note that I have no dog in this fight. I have never used Skydemon and – for obvious reasons – never will.
172driver wrote:
Airborne_Again, I think Peter’s post was more directed at Skydemon and Rocketroute. AFAICT they have never posted or engaged here, in contrast to ForeFlight (which indirectly includes Jeppesen) and of course Golze. Note that I have no dog in this fight. I have never used Skydemon and – for obvious reasons – never will.
I didn’t think it was directed towards me, but the problems caused by Jeppesen’s decision to drop JeppMFD has been discussed on EuroGA as well, so it is certainly relevant here. I agree that it would be good if representatives of SkyDemon participated here, but for some reason they don’t. Possibly because they have their own forum. They don’t participate in the PPL/IR Europe forum either, but there are some people there who do talk with Tim Dawson. (Main person behind SD, if someone didn’t know.)
have never seen any “slagging off” of EuroGA on the PPL/IR Europe forum, or heard any member say such a thing
You may have forgotten 
I was there 2005-2015 and EuroGA started in 2012. It’s not “not getting along” – it’s a clear strategy at the top of PPL/IR (well, the guy who runs it; never had any issues with others there, IIRC, except that you do get excommunicated if you are “high up” in there but are seen posting GA-relevant matters on EuroGA, which is why they have all disappeared ). I am not in PPL/IR; I am a mod/admin here and have (had) to deal with this nonsense, which I don’t like doing because it creates work. Anyway, this was all done here before. The amusing thing is the huge about-turn on the part of SD (nobody flies IFR) but that’s a good thing.
Yes; Jepp’s dropping of MFDVFR is a loss in theory (it was the app with the very best VFR maps) but it was always too pricey, ~€350, to get anywhere in the tight European GA business (well, outside of Germany). However, if SD carries Jepp terminal charts, its price will go up from approx £100 to around £800. How would there be a market? To compete with Foreflight (which offers a “sort of” autorouting, and autorouting is absolutely mandatory in European IFR) they would also have to license the Autorouter.
And I would be surprised if Boeing allowed one group company, Jepp, to damage another group company, FF, by Jepp licensing its data to an external satnav company, SD. But who knows?
Maybe SD is considering offering the Jepp VFR plates only (basically, what is called “VFR Europe”). That would make more sense; also avoiding the above competition angle. I think you can buy VFR Europe for about €300 (for the real (“political”) Europe).
It does seem a surprising about-turn for SkyDemon to express an interest. They were always very clear that they were VFR-only.
SD engage with the principal UK forum. That forum ’doesn’t like’ EuroGA, presumably because it’s a commercial enterprise and EuroGA has taken most of the quality discussion. It would probably damage their relationship with that forum if SD were seen to engage with EuroGA.
I use SD because I think it’s a great product. Jepp plates would be a very expensive add-on that I wouldn’t buy, and I suspect most of their customers wouldn’t either.
