EFlybook Pirep

"Pay for itself" might have been a bit of an over statement. You have to
compare it to other technologies to have charts available in the cockpit. If
you only fly in a small, defined region and are willing to spend time for
every flight picking airports, downloading free charts, printing them out
and sticking with your plan, then you can get by pretty cheaply.

If you want flexibility or fly frequently or fly over a large area, then the
eFlyBook is a very nice option. If you want the whole US, the eFlyBook is
cheaper then any Jepp solution and is even cheaper than NOS. If you can get
by with part of the US, then your mileage may vary. For me, trying to cover
the upper midwest for regular flying and occasional flights to the four
corners of the country, the eFlyBook comes out cheaper.

Jepp Paper for the whole country is around $1070/year. JeppView for the
whole country is around $780/year. If you want Jepp FlightDeck on a tablet,
then you are looking at $2500 for the tablet plus the $780/year. eFlyBook is
$1200 (which includes a one year subscription to the whole US) and
$250/year.

I figure that a tablet or the eFlyBook is good for about 3 years. Looking at
the costs over a three-year period.
Jepp Paper: $1070/year
Jepp View: $780/year plus time picking and printing
Tablet + Flight Deck: $1600/year which clearly includes a lot of extra
features
Tablet + just charts: $1080/year
eFlyBook: $567/year

Plus you need to add printed enroute charts to all of those options.

For flexibility and ease, the eFlyBook looks like the best deal. I ordered
one too. Supposed to arrive today. I can hardly wait.

--
-------------------------------
Travis
Lake N3094P
PWK

"Jose" wrote in message
t...
The unit will pay for itself within a year for the average cross country
flyer.

At over a thousand dollars for the EFlybook, how do you figure it pays for
itself?

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Howie Keefe's Airchart system is $379 for the entire USA per year...

denny

"Denny" wrote in message
ups.com...
Howie Keefe's Airchart system is $379 for the entire USA per year...

denny



Me too! That includes approach plates and IFR & VFR charts for continental
US
and updates.

Mark

Thank you for all the kind words..

The support so far for the eFlybook product (which we are doing in
partnership with ARINC) has simply been amazing. Its certainly
exciting times for us here at MyAirplane.com.

For Longsworth, I'm truely sorry you had some problems with us. As
mentioned previously, we are a small 3 man shop (well, not 3 guys
anymore) and do get overloaded from time to time. Please accept my
appologies and if you would like to call us, I would be more than happy
to send out our current CD's or DVD's for you.

if you call our 888 number, look me up in the company directory, you
can by-pass everyone here at our office and go straight to the top, if
I'm not at my desk, it transfers the call to my cell phone.

Someone mentioned AirCharts, that is a GREAT product and I use it
myself while flying. Our charts and products are all electronic, I do
fly mostly electronic now, but always have AirCharts close by.

On my device, I have my POH, Garmin Avionics, Handheld and even my
maintenece manual loaded on it (in PDF format). Got some eBooks there
as well to pass time when needed. I've also installed a Compact Flash
card and loaded some mp3's onto it. All in all, its used for more than
just charts.

We just don't sell products, we actualy use them..

Dennis
MyAirplane.com

Dennis, I mentioned the Howie Keefe products which I have used for a
long period... I will make it a point to look up and evaluate your
product... Thanks for checking in...

Dennis (denny and Fat Albert the Apache)

"Viperdoc" wrote in message
...
EFlybook arrived yesterday, so here are a few observations:
OVERALL: this is a new technology, not a tablet PC. As such it does not
rely on a hard drive or have the associated potential altitude related
problems or fragility. It is easily readable in incandescent light, and
gets better in outdoor light (no washout like an LCD). Requires external
lighting at night (not self illuminating). Extremely long battery life (up
to three days)

I thought the battery life was based on pages viewed and not a specific time
span?

On Fri, 11 Aug 2006 03:12:40 GMT, "Viperdoc"
wrote:

OVERALL: this is a new technology, not a tablet PC. As such it does not rely
on a hard drive or have the associated potential altitude related problems
or fragility. It is easily readable in incandescent light, and gets better
in outdoor light (no washout like an LCD). Requires external lighting at
night (not self illuminating). Extremely long battery life (up to three
days)

EFlyBook sounds cool. Especially the battery life. That's amazing!

I have a similar approach, but not as refined as I end up having to
manage all the SW and plate downloads to the tablet.

I have been using the Fujitsu ST4121 tablet PC in my Cherokee for
several years. The benefits: With one device, I get:
-Moving map GPS
-WxWorx Nexrad
-MP3 player
-Approach plates (via pdf)
plus a fully functioning Wifi enabled PC

The choice of tablet PC is critical. As you pointed out most
laptop/tablet displays are not made for outdoor viewing. It has to be
a transflective display, or the screen will be washed out on a bright
day.

So far, no HDD issues for me, even though I regularly fly at 10-11k
feet. I suspect the newer generations of hard drives are much less
susceptible to density altitude problems.

Problem with the upcoming Sony is that their receptiveness to other people's
software is limited, so it is unlikely that Myairplanes.com will ever be
seen on a Sony machine. Their big advantage is their compression algorithm-
otherwise all of their included info would be many gig.

"Nathan Young" wrote in message
news
So far, no HDD issues for me, even though I regularly fly at 10-11k
feet. I suspect the newer generations of hard drives are much less
susceptible to density altitude problems.

If 10K-11K is about as high as you ever get, I would not expect you to
notice any sigificant loss of lifetime for the hard drive. They are
typically rated to at least 10K feet, meaning they are specifically designed
to operate normally up to that altitude.

It's the people who fly much higher than that (without pressurization, of
course) who are likely to run into problems. I doubt it's a generational
thing. I think it's just that you're not doing anything that would cause
the drive to fail early.

That said, I do think that solid state, non-volatile storage, electronic
paper such as found in the eFlybook is the future. Personally, I'm hoping
for electronic paper configured as sheets with holes for a binder and some
sort of easy-to-use PC interface (maybe wireless, like Bluetooth, so you
don't even have to plug each page in individually), so that you can prepare
a binder of all the charts likely to be used (according to plan and backup
plan) and be assured they are imaged correctly before the flight starts.
The eFlybook is a good step forward, but it still has the problem that if it
fails in flight for some reason, you can't switch to the next page you need
for the flight.

Pete