The grotesquely named Apple iPad – which apparently broke the internets – has great potential as an electronic flight bag, and may well end up a category killer for legacy equipment.
There are pdf applications for Amazon.com’s Kindle that allow assiduous aviators to download airport diagrams, departure procedures, arrivals and approach plates, but from everything I’ve heard the navigation is klunky, and the Kindle has a tendency to go dim on you, just when you’re over the middle marker.
Apple’s iPhone already has a couple of cool features just waiting to be ported over. On my phone I have Aero Weather, Flight Plan (with DUATS), AOPA’s Airports and Foreflight, as well as the well-intentioned but ultimately unusable WingX, which – theoretically – combines all of the other features with GPS terrain avoidance.
Which would almost be enough to get me flying at night again, if it weren’t for the fact that GPS service is sketchy and the mountains so very unyielding.
All of them are pretty good for different applications on the ground, but not quite the thing for dependable use in flight: The iPhone’s screen is too small for the presbyopic among us, it’s rather slippery when you’ve got one hand on the yoke (or stick) and the other on the throttle and the battery saver puts you in a do-loop when you least expect it.
Garmin’s top-of-the-line handheld/bolt-on is the GPSMAP 696 model, with weather, moving maps, approach procedures and terrain avoidance – but it retails for nearly $3000, while the iPad starts at $500.
Which is, oh – wait: A whole lot less.
There’s no technical reason why the iPad – I really hate that name – can’t do all the tasks of an EFB while providing GPS tracking, live weather updates and terrain avoidance. Once you’ve landed on your cross country, you can email home, browse the web, read a book or work on your presentation. Which, just try that with your MX20.
Build it, developers. We will come.
Oh, so the IPad does come with wings.
I never noticed that there appears to be a blue dong pointed at the Eiffel Tower.
I’m more the multiple points of failure kind of guy, but I’d be willing to leave one in the hands of a mostly non-interactive Navigator in the right seat.
For the record: I did NOT pay Mongo to make that statement.
Also, the iPad has a max altitude for use of 10,000 feet. Why, when it has a flash HD not a mechanical one? I dunno, it just does. Probably something to do with the touch screen, although Garmin’s new touch screen aircraft GPS’s don’t have that problem.
And, I’m wondering how much they had to pay Fox Network for the rights to the name:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNQE_TzQNI&feature=player_embedded
Just sayin’…
A max altitude usage of 10K feet? It might be the touch screen, but those tend to have no problems with air density at altitude and more problems with temperatures. My guess is that the GPS navigation accuracy falls off at higher altitudes, obviously being closer to the sat makes for the measures angles to be lessened thus the ol’ Law of Sines no longer holds so many significant digits.
But 10K feet? That’s practically a rounding error in the distance between terra firma and a satellite in geosynch orbit.
So, no, that limitation doesn’t make sense to me.
– Max
I suspect, from 30 years hanging around computer system development groups, that it’s more a fallout of standard product compliance certification. The specs are set up for sea level to 10K’, non-condensing humidity limits, etc etc etc.
You can test/certify for higher limits, but it’s expensive, and generally provides no benefit to the developer, marketwise. Then too, look at the cost of aviation product certification.
Where was I … Oh. The gadget would probably work just fine as high as you would be comfortable breathing, it just won’t be certified for operation there.
I still want one for my (much) more modest needs, flyingwise; I like what I’ve got to use on my iPod Touch, but it’s sometimes really hard for this geezer’s eyes to read it comfortably. Bigger here would be better.
I would buy an IPad to be used as an EFB in a heartbeat if it was an approved IFR Navigation System. However there’s standards that it’s just not designed to meet.
The local FAA FSDO manager mentioned to me that hard wiring into aircraft power, RAIM (Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring) and connections to a remote altimeter are but a a few of the many requirements. The FAA uses two specifications for IFR GPS installations that are covered by a technical standard order, TSO C129 (A1) and TSO C129 (A2). A1 being en route, terminal and non-precision approach-certified (A2) drops the approach ability. The TSO’s have specific installed requirements and tests which regular portables (especially an IPad) can’t meet.
The costs of getting a unit certified are substantial and no manufacturer would accept the liability involved without the FAA stamp of approval. If you really have the time, here are 36 pages guaranteed to have you doing head snaps in no time.
I find that my somewhat antiquated Garmen Rino120 works wonderfully well on flights. Marry the Rino to the suction cup from the car GPS and attach it to the window of a commercial airliner and one is provided with a compas rose, arrow pointing to destination, distance to dest., altitude, air speed and ETE. You sure as hell won’t find me overflying a destination on a commercial flight. Must be the NFO in me.
XAirboss: New look. Didn’t recognize ya’
Yep, too many ladies trying to get my phone number so I had to change. Recognize the lady?
Being somewhat of a technodweeb, all this fancy lingo makes me a little queasy. However, I’m totally down with that not flying at night thing because I believe God intended, whilst shaping us in his own image, that his mortal progeny should choose between only 2 nocturnal courses of action. Conjugal lust, and catfishing. And yes Virgil, those Louisiana “swamp” cats do taste a little muddy. Unlike the flavorful purity of their Colorado River brethren.
Lex, you raise some interesting points. Dunno if it’s a deal-killer for you, but from what I’ve heard the iPad (comes in slender, regular, and Maxi) does not multi-task.
Actually, it can, and does. The iPhone/Touch can and do, too, within limits. Things like playing music while you read or play some games, etc. has been possible from the beginning.
The issue is one of policy, so far, specifically of not allowing third-party applications to multitask, said to be to guarantee UI responsiveness. Sort of like the policy of not allowing VOIP applications on the iPhone/Touch, which policy was dropped this week.
Policy could change; capability has been there from the beginning.
The Vodkapundit tells me that email, syncs, downloads, updates, and alerts all run in the background.
The iPad doesn’t have a real GPS, it’s just a cell tower based system. The non-G3 versions of the iPad have no GPS at all.
For use in flight you’d need to be able to interface a separate gps, probably with Bluetooth. That’s certainly technically possible, if Steve will let someone do it.
Wilko, a non-approved GPS is fine to use in flight, and they are great backups to a TSO system. Most general aviation pilots I know who fly much IFR have a handheld GPS even though their planes have TSO approved systems.
Actually, there seems to be some confusion because it has “assisted GPS”. Which is a way of getting around long GPS startup times by cheating, if you’re close to a cell tower. If you aren’t, then it’s in regular mode, and can take up to a couple minutes to find and fix your location. The iPhone has assisted GPS, which is handy if you’re in, say, an office building trying to figure your location. It doesn’t *need* local cell coverage to work.
The iPod Touch doesn’t have GPS at all, but it does support finding your location using WiFi locating. Which works in town, not so much in the woods.
The iPad non-GSM models don’t have it at all, correct. Here’s one explanation of it:
http://www.wmexperts.com/articles/gps_vs_agps_a_quick_tutorial.html
As might be evident, I’m something of a recovering geek.
Broke the internet? This just warms the cockles of my heart. Maybe more in the sub-cockle area, it’s getting difficult to tell at my age. Somebody click-n-drool tool couldn’t get an update from Twitter in what was deemed a reasonable time and the whole internet, across every country and every ISP, is broken.
This, folks, is why I’ll always have a job and why I’ll never be able to retire. It would seem to the younger generation that if their particular bit of convenience doesn’t arrive fast enough it can’t be their problem, or an overwhelmed service, it’s a problem that is world-wide.
These are people who’ve never heard a SIT tone and the message, “We’re sorry, all circuits are busy.” To them the internet has always been graphical in nature, accessed via a browser, and in fact if it’s not http or https it’s something to be ignored. There’s 65534 usable ports in TCP/IP, and they’ve reduced the functionality of the network to two.
Good publicity for Jobs, a sad state of the knowledge of our pundits in the IT industry who should, presumably, understand this if they’re attempting to relate how this new device actually means something.
— Max
Cool idea, Lex. If nothing else I’ll be saving this post to check-out all of the other apps you mentioned. Don’t see this thing ever getting used in the front seat, but I could see hundreds of tactical applications for my WSO.
For those of you that are averse to paying for iPhone apps, I just made an icon for fltplan.com and skyvector.com on the home screen. Fltplan.com is largely text based, so it runs pretty quickly even without 3G. It definitely makes going on the road and last minute flight planning much easier.
You don’t need to be afraid to go to the Apple store to buy iPads, Lex. But then, she might prefer the iTampon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsjU0K8QPhs
PS GPS is sketchy? Whatchoo mean?
Hitler doesn’t like it.
wait- what? Something by Apple is CHEAPER than the competition?