Backup plates on PDA

There have been a number of threads in this and other forums about which
approach charts to use, and about how the availability of free downloadable
charts from NACO affects the decision. Some pilots purchase full US or
regional subscriptions, others download and print just the charts they
expect to use on a flight (primary and alternate), others fret that, if they
do that, they will not have charts available for an unplanned airport should
it become necessary to divert. I have two partners in our airplane. We
have been pondering these questions also.

Two of us have been buying the full U.S. set of NACO TPPs each year through
the AirChart system. I more and more find myself always downloading and
printing new charts for every flight and taking along the AirChart TPPs for
backup (and also other info like Departure Procedures), rather than going
through the updates. Of course, I still have to check NOTAMs and update the
charts for that.

We just upgraded our AnyWhereMap system to AnyWhereWx (XM Wx) with a new
iPAQ, and we decided to try something different. The idea is to download
from NACO and print the charts for our primary and alternate airports, and
to have current backup digital charts in the iPAQ for the event of having to
use an unplanned airport. The Sporty's digital subscription is lower cost
than NACO, but I don't know how their software is for accessing the charts.
Last night I loaded Adobe Reader for Pocket PC into the iPAQ, along with a
NACO chart, and as expected the display is small, but it looks usable. With
proper choice of zoom for readability, the amount of the chart that is
visible in one view is pretty good, and doesn't require too much panning.
It certainly is not like looking at the chart through a soda straw as I
thought it might be. So now I think we will take the next step and try one
cycle of the Sporty's charts.

If this works out, it will cost considerably less than two sets of TPPs.
Actually it is less than one set of TPPs, $120 for a year's subscription, or
$9.95 per 28-day cycle. It looks like it includes full TPP info.

The full set takes 3GB of storage, but the software allows downloading
selected states. With three 1GB SD cards for the iPAQ (about $50-60 each on
sale), it might work out OK. Actually, a 1GB SD and a 1GB CF will fit in
the iPAQ simultaneously, so about 2/3 of the country can be accessible at
once. There is still about 80MB of nonvolatile storage available in the
iPAQ 4700 for programs, databases, and backup.

The downside is that the storage cards will have to be reloaded every 28
days.

Control Vision also offers their product Pocket Plates, will display
aircraft position on the chart. These charts have to be individually
georeferenced by tapping on two navaids, as I understand it, plus they are
more expensive. We will first try the Sporty's charts.

I'll report back on how this seems to work. If anyone has already tried it,
comments are welcome.

Stan

In article ,
Stan Prevost wrote:
to have current backup digital charts in the iPAQ for the event of having to
use an unplanned airport. The Sporty's digital subscription is lower cost
than NACO, but I don't know how their software is for accessing the charts.

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 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.

Control Vision also offers their product Pocket Plates, will display

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.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

"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

On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 10:58:04 -0600, "Stan Prevost"
wrote:

Stan,

A few thoughts:

1. I'd worry about usability. I think the charts look OK on a PDF -- when
at home. But the situation I'd be using them in the air is that weather or
some emergency has put me in a position where I have to divert to some
probably unfamiliar airport. It would add to my workload to not have a
realy easy to see and interpret cockpit chart presentation, at a time when
the workload has already gone up.

I do carry backup electronic charts -- but I have them on a tablet PC,
where I can see the entire chart clearly, and don't have to scroll around.

2. Check out SeattleAviation's SmartPlates program as an alternative to
Sporty's DVD's. You can download all the NACO US charts, and then do the
cycle updates also over the Internet. The cost of the program is $100 and
then there's no subscription fees. Also, if you are away from home when
the updates come out, you can download them from wherever you happen to be
located.


--ron

Thanks, Ron.

As for the usability issues, I am going to test that on a trip this weekend.
Last night, I simulated use of one at my desk. I called up the chart, did
my enroute approach briefing by an orderly scrolling through the chart, made
notes on my (simulated) kneeboard for minima, missed approach, and
frequencies that I couldn't immediately put in the radios, then panned the
chart so I could see the plan view and profile view, where it would stay
during the approach. Readability for that seemed to be adequate. This is
not how I would want to do it routinely, but for infrequent backup use, it
seemed fully usable at my desk. In-flight evaluation remains. But I have
used the iPAQ in flight for about three years with the AnyWhereMap product,
and am quite familiar with its usability issues.

The Seattle Avionics products look very nice. I see they have a Pocket PC
version of their SmartPlates as an additional purchase. I don't understand
what they are talking about when they say they have preprocessed the files
for 5X download speed. I compared file sizes for their example chart vs
NACO, it was 388.4K vs 388.8K. Looks like they trimmed some border off is
all.

I would pay for DVD updates rather than very large downloads. Also, I don't
like having to generate backups for individual trips, I would rather have
the whole thing available, or at least a large area. For an alternate
airport when conditions are really poor, I often choose one that is more
than 100 nm away, a Class B or C, where I can find good approaches with good
approach lighting and food, transportation, and lodging, and hopefully out
of the weather system that is causing the problem at my primary destination.
Generating a per-trip backup pack for that size corridor about my route
would be a lot of downloading.

Stan

"Ron Rosenfeld" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 10:58:04 -0600, "Stan Prevost"
wrote:

Stan,

A few thoughts:

1. I'd worry about usability. I think the charts look OK on a PDF -- when
at home. But the situation I'd be using them in the air is that weather
or
some emergency has put me in a position where I have to divert to some
probably unfamiliar airport. It would add to my workload to not have a
realy easy to see and interpret cockpit chart presentation, at a time when
the workload has already gone up.

I do carry backup electronic charts -- but I have them on a tablet PC,
where I can see the entire chart clearly, and don't have to scroll around.

2. Check out SeattleAviation's SmartPlates program as an alternative to
Sporty's DVD's. You can download all the NACO US charts, and then do the
cycle updates also over the Internet. The cost of the program is $100 and
then there's no subscription fees. Also, if you are away from home when
the updates come out, you can download them from wherever you happen to be
located.


--ron

In article ,
Stan Prevost wrote:

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

I'm not sure how proficient you are at scripting, but GhostScript can
render PDFs as images. What I was trying to work out was just how high
the resolution of a PDA or Slate computer would have to be in order to
read a plate all at once. Somewhere between 480x640 and 600x800 (in a
portrait orientation) is enough that I figured you could just store pre-
rendered images and have no zooming at all. I didn't experiment with
ClearType-like technology, which would probably help quite a bit.

However, the 240x320 PDA resolution definitely requires panning and/or
zooming. If you like the PDF reader you have for your PDA it might be
the best bet. There's a decent chance these days that it does
antialiasing and supports ClearType which improves the legibility a lot.

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.

I've been considering writing one ever since they started shipping plates
on DVDs. The only PDA I have runs Linux, though, so the target audience
would be pretty small compared to a PocketPC/WinCE app.

Anyone have an old PDA they want to donate to the cause?

I expect to use the backup charts very infrequently.

Which reminds me -- the other feature that would be great for the PDA is
the ability to print plates from the archive. That's an area where the
original PDF would have a big advantage. In a pinch you could probably
fax it to the front desk of your hotel or something like that.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

"Stan Prevost" wrote:
We just upgraded our AnyWhereMap system to AnyWhereWx (XM Wx) with a
new iPAQ,

How do you like that setup, Stan?

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...

"Stan Prevost" wrote:
We just upgraded our AnyWhereMap system to AnyWhereWx (XM Wx) with a new
iPAQ,

How do you like that setup, Stan?


I don't know yet, Dan. I'll try to give a PIREP when I get back from the
trip. There are several choices in configuring the equipment. The iPAQ PDA
has Bluetooth, XM satellite receiver has Bluetooth, and they have a
Bluetooth GPS. You get to choose either XM or GPS to have the Bluetooth
connection to the PDA. The other one gets a cable. Since we already had
the GPS with a cable, we went with the BT XM rx. We experimented some, and
wound up just dropping the XM rx in the pouch behind the pilot's seat.
Actually, now it behind the copilot's seat, both work well.

The new PDA is nice but I have all of about ten minutes using the weather.
Others have reported it as being valuable.

Stan

In article ,
Stan Prevost wrote:
You get to choose either XM or GPS to have the Bluetooth
connection to the PDA. The other one gets a cable.

Why? You can have up to 8 devices (1 master, 7 slaves) in a bluetooth
network. And there's more than enough bandwidth for a couple of serial
connections.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

"Ben Jackson" wrote in message
news:h0btd.201375$HA.5047@attbi_s01...
In article ,
Stan Prevost wrote:
You get to choose either XM or GPS to have the Bluetooth
connection to the PDA. The other one gets a cable.

Why? You can have up to 8 devices (1 master, 7 slaves) in a bluetooth
network. And there's more than enough bandwidth for a couple of serial
connections.


I don't know why, and I may have that wrong. That's how I understood they
told us it had to be, but I didn't pursue it because we wanted to use our
existing GPS. And I didn't know any better, not being knowledgeable about
BT networks.

Stan