"Ben Jackson" wrote in message
news:9Z0td.213977$R05.19991@attbi_s53...

I think that at the root of all the distributions is a collection of PDFs.
When I was considering something similar I converted a few to images at a
resolution suitable for zooming on a PDA and I think you could fit the
whole shebang on a 1G card.


I don't know how to resize them, especially en masse.

I absolutely wouldn't want to try it with a stock PDF reader, though. I
want an app that's going to know about the various regions of the plate
and be able to zoom to them quickly (with a single hardware button press,
for example).

Plus a custom app could use a textual database of things like elevations
and frequencies so that they could be presented in a "native" display
rather than as part of the rendering of the plate.


Those sure would be really nice features, but I don't know where to get them
and I'm surely not going to generate such an app myself.

As for the stock reader, the one I tried seemed to give a good enough
result, sitting at my desk. I have used the PDA-based system in flight
quite a bit and am familiar with usability issues in turbulence and under
workload, night and day. How this particular usage will turn out remains to
be seen. I have a trip to Florida this weekend and will try it then as I
approach my destination airport while flying through Tampa Class B.

I expect to use the backup charts very infrequently. While infrequent usage
doesn't allow the digital charts to not be fully usable, it does mean that I
can tolerate a less convenient usage as long as it doesn't cause an
intolerable increase in workload. Fortunately, the PDA can be dedicated to
the chart when it is needed for that, as I don't use the PDA for navigation
on approaches anyway.

In forums where I've seen Pocket Plates discussed people fell into two
categories: They had seen it briefly (in a review, on the web) and
thought
it looked neat. Then there were users, who seemed to uniformly dislike
the product and some who had grudges against the whole company. Scared me
off, anyway.

My observations are consistent with yours.

Thanks,
Stan