Jep p or NACO Charts?

Last week I finally got checked out in the club's Arrow.

During the training, the instructor noticed that I was using the NACO
charts and plates.

He uses the Jeppeson stuff and excitedly indicated that it is far superior
to the NACO charts. He gave me a few reasons, but when I looked at it for
myself, I just can't figure out how to justify spending all that extra
money for really not all that extra features.

So what do people here think? Are the Jepp charts worth shelling out the
extra money?

Not if you're only going to fly in the U.S. Forget the over-priced Jeppesen
product.

Judah wrote:

Last week I finally got checked out in the club's Arrow.

During the training, the instructor noticed that I was using the NACO
charts and plates.

He uses the Jeppeson stuff and excitedly indicated that it is far superior
to the NACO charts. He gave me a few reasons, but when I looked at it for
myself, I just can't figure out how to justify spending all that extra
money for really not all that extra features.

So what do people here think? Are the Jepp charts worth shelling out the
extra money?

Are the Jepp charts worth shelling out the
extra money?

Nope.

There was a time (twenty years ago) when they were, but now the NACO
charts have improved a lot, and Jepp is more expensive than it was.
So unless you'll do lots of IFR flying, stick with NACO.

Jose
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Judah wrote:

Last week I finally got checked out in the club's Arrow.

During the training, the instructor noticed that I was using the NACO
charts and plates.

He uses the Jeppeson stuff and excitedly indicated that it is far superior
to the NACO charts.

Excitedly? Gee, I wonder who that might have been :-)

I used to use Jepp, but switched to NOS/NACO/whatever a while back. On
the "Jepp is better" side of the story:

Better cartography, better printing, better paper.

The Jepp 7-ring binder is a lot more convenient to use than what NOS
does; it's a lot simplier to pull an individual plate out of the binder
to clip on a kneeboard or whatever.

Jepp has a better notam system. If there's a notam published for a
while, Jepp will usually produce a new plate with the new info right on
the plate. NOS makes you keep up with their "change notices" booklet,
etc.

You look way cool hanging around the FBO with a Jepp binder. Especially
if it's the real leather one, not the cheap immitation kind I used to
carry around. Extra coolness points if it's old and battered.

If you fly for an airline, Jepp makes up special subscription packs just
for you, with just the routes you fly and internal ops stuff printed on
the same 7-hole paper.

On the "NOS is better" side:

Cheaper.

You don't have to file revisions. Every 8 weeks, just get a new book
and toss the old one. Filing revisions gets old fast. Running an
end-of-year checklist to make sure you haven't lost any pages gets
really old, really fast.

NOS is available anywhere. Every dinky pilot shop in every dinky
airport will stock NOS plates. It's very rare to find anyplace that
stocks Jepp. So, if you travel out of your normal area and use Jepp,
you need to plan ahead and order what you need. With NOS you can just
stop by the FBO and pick up a new book.

You can download NOS-format PDF's from the web now.

The military guys all use NOS and they manage to look cool carrying
their NOS books around with them. Must be the nomex flight suits that
really complete the look, I guess.

Been using NOS charts for years.

Saved many dollars, got many good laughs when I went flying as the
Jepp guys spent the afternoon heads down, updating their charts, and
then helped them out later when they couldn't locate a particular
chart becuse they had misfiled it.

And I never saw an approach that they could fly and I couldn't because
they had info on their charts that I didn't have on mine. (except for
an occasional military airfield chart, available only on DOD FLIPS if
you are an NOS user.)






On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 02:26:39 GMT, Judah wrote:

Last week I finally got checked out in the club's Arrow.

During the training, the instructor noticed that I was using the NACO
charts and plates.

He uses the Jeppeson stuff and excitedly indicated that it is far superior
to the NACO charts. He gave me a few reasons, but when I looked at it for
myself, I just can't figure out how to justify spending all that extra
money for really not all that extra features.

So what do people here think? Are the Jepp charts worth shelling out the
extra money?

Roy Smith wrote:

Cheaper.

Note, that if you get all the NOS things, including the intermediate
changes, plus the class II notams (all of which is embeddeed in the
basic Jepp subscription), makes the Jepp a little closer in price.

In article ,
Judah wrote:

During the training, the instructor noticed that I was using the NACO
charts and plates.

I had the Northwest Express Jepp subscription for a year. One day I was
at the best stocked local FBO buying NACO plates for California (not
covered by my Jepps) and realized that I'd happily pay for a full book
of charts for every approach I ever fly -- if only I didn't have to carry
them all around with me just in case!

Even during my IFR training, when I flew 60-something approaches, one
book at $4.25 per approach would have been about $250. And I doubt I'll
ever fly that many approaches in such quick succession again. Heck, if
we assume I could re-use plates it'd be a tiny fraction of that.

The two things I want to avoid are 1) lugging around a bunch of charts
of which 95% I'll definitely never use and 5% I'll probably never use,
and 2) paying a lot of money to have charts "just in case" because when
I finally know exactly what chart I'll need I'm in no position to buy it.

I keep waiting for an approach-plate-sized ebook that I can load up with
the DVD of plates. So far I can't find the right hardware...

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:19:16 -0500, Ron Natalie
wrote:

Roy Smith wrote:

Cheaper.

Note, that if you get all the NOS things, including the intermediate
changes, plus the class II notams (all of which is embeddeed in the
basic Jepp subscription), makes the Jepp a little closer in price.


Maybe, but the Class II notams are available to anybody doing a DUATS
briefing, for free and more current (and again, no updating pages)

Judah wrote:

Last week I finally got checked out in the club's Arrow.

During the training, the instructor noticed that I was using the NACO
charts and plates.

He uses the Jeppeson stuff and excitedly indicated that it is far superior
to the NACO charts. He gave me a few reasons, but when I looked at it for
myself, I just can't figure out how to justify spending all that extra
money for really not all that extra features.

So what do people here think? Are the Jepp charts worth shelling out the
extra money?

Not for me. I've used guv charts since I started instrument flying in
1993 and they work fine for me. And with the recent redesign, they are
even better.

Matt

Jose wrote:
So unless you'll do lots of IFR flying, stick with NACO.

I'm curious what you mean...

Hilton