For those who fly with just an Ipad :) (shutdowns at high or low temperatures, and GPS losses)

Just back from Venice, with brutal temperatures. At one point I had my phone overheat just by having it lie in the rather cool cockpit in 5000 feet, but in direct sun.

My installation of the Ipad right behind the air vent works perfectly and since I found out that I can have issues when on the ground without airflow, I keep it in the shade then and only connected it to the power bank when we were in the air.
So I can really recommend this simple solution. The only complaint is that I would have liked the air vent for cooling myself.

Here’s what I did. First, the bill of materials (exact details in pictures below):

• cheap Peltier cooling fan from Alibaba (about €20)
• two cheap plastic iPad cases from Amazon – they’re made of some kind of slightly flexible clear plastic, which is easy to drill and machine
• 6 30mm M3 standoffs, from Alibaba (or anywhere else)
• some M3 5mm bolts to hold it all togethe

Unfortunately I can’t find the drilling template I made, but it’s pretty clear from the picture below. The top and bottom should be drilled identically, apart from the slots ofr the strap which are only needed on the bottom. I drew a template, made two copies, then glued them to the two covers, rather than trying to measure each one separately. Obviously use a glue that can be removed easily afterwards.

• The cooler is as close to the top as possible, and slightly offset because of the camera opening.
• The six standoffs are placed around the edges, again with an allowance for the camera cutout.
• once the holes are drilled, cut out the fan openings and the strap slots. I did this very crudely using a cutting disc in a Dremel – and it shows. The best thing would be a CNC router, if you have access to one.

The fan comes with a self-adhesive metal pad that can be stuck to the iPad, and then the fan attaches with a magnet. You don’t need to do anything else for that.

Overall picture, from the bottom:

Screenshots of the orders from Amazon and Alibaba:

Not heat-related, but probably the best place…?

I have a 4 year old Ipad Air. Recently it has frozen twice, luckily not while flying. Google says to restart it by holding down two buttons, then sliding a virtual button on the screen. Except you can’t because it’s frozen 😡

In case anyone else has the same problem, the workaround is to power off by using Siri voice control.

It’s actually quite worrying and I really don’t want this happening on e.g. a missed approach. Easy backup is to have a phone handy.

I followed online advice the first time (deleting apps, history, etc) but it had no effect. Any suggestions welcome. 😃

johnh wrote:

cheap Peltier cooling fan from Alibaba (about €20)

Great thing, I didn’t know this existed!

Capitaine wrote:

In case anyone else has the same problem, the workaround is to power off by using Siri voice control.

Probably not possible in a noise cockpit. It’s a long time since I owned an Apple device, but I seem to remember that holding down the power button for a few seconds (5-10 seconds) forces a shutdown also.