IPads at OSH

Wow, there are is a lot of movement of Ipads in the aviation community. This is great.

Just wondering what cool things people found for the Ipad. Apps and accessories.

There was a bunch of knee boards that looked interesting. Not sure if I want to use it on my knee yet.

Apps wise Foreflight had a big crowd (there is already a thread on foreflight). And I saw other apps like a ADSB weather and traffic viewer for the ipad. There was a AHRS unit that wifi's to the ipad. TrueTrack made A engine monitor app.

What else? Or any apps that you wanted to see and didn't?

Christopher.

GlobalNavSource

GlobalNavSource had a booth and 60-days free. Looked a lot like ForeFlight. I am going to gine it a test drive after I get home.

http://www.globalnavsource.com/ipad.php

According to a Cessna ad in the new Issue of Sport Aviation, Cessna now has apps for many of their airplanes...checklists, flight manuals and such!

Best,

Ipads and more

Looked at all the knee boards but concluded each had issues for me in the RV, I wanted one with a flip cover with a clip that flipped up/forward, but each variant flipped right or left which would be a pain with two up (especially with the wife). Closest was the airgizmo with a half cover with clip. I ended up buying the cheapest version which was the kneedock ($29.95) as it was simple and straightforward and has some expansion options coming which will allow you to slide in a flip cover from the top.

With respect to other iPad apps I went on a search for real time weather on the iPad for its bigger display and ended up concluding that it does not appear there is a cohesive solution yet. If you want XM weather you need a XM receiver and a wifi link (most vendors appear to have settled on wifi versus bluetooth for the iPad as it is a more robust standard) and a XM subscription. The apps like Foreflight and WingX will all support this at some point. If you have a 496 with weather (which I have) the receiver is not compatible with other products and you cannot use the one XM subscription for multiple receivers so you end up needing two subscriptions for the XM weather (one for the 496 and one for the iPad) and about $2000 worth of hardware and cables.
Seemed to me that a cool approach would be a small box that you plug the 496 XM receiver into that passes the data unmodified to the 496 and also wifi's it for use on the iPad but I was told the data is proprietory to garmin and hence not available and of course there is no reason for garmin to do that as they would want you to buy the 696.
ADS-B weather and traffic was just as confusing and after looking at the coverage map (I am in Oklahoma where there is no coverage until 2013) I decided to take the advice of the Stein folks who said in my case to wait a while for things to settle out.
iPads were everywhere so I suspect market forces will help develop cohesive solutions.

I don't want to steal the thread but I tested the iPad on the way to Oshkosh using a kneepad mount I made. It shutdown because of over temp. Also I almost broke the screen because the seat belt almost landed on it. I think you would need to mount it on the panel and/or use a hard cover. There were a lot of nice mounts, but in the end the Ram mounts looked the best and were rigid.

Many of you know I think touch screens have no place in a small resopnsive plane like an RV. This was confirmed on the trip to Osh. So, the iPad is not a good 1st choice for critical data like flight instruments. I also would not use it as a primary means of traffic or weather. But, I did start up Foreflight and unplug the power when I saw lightning.

I was suprized by the number of iPad items.

Issue?

On the way home in turbulence, I had the iPad2 in "sleep" mode and it woke up in turbulence. Thing it may be a ForeFlight "feature" I exited ForeFlight and it still would come on. Next time I will close the smart cover.

Has any one else had this issue?

I treat my iPad just like a paper chart or book. I do not want it mounted in the cockpit. A cheap leg clip works great as well as sitting on the PAX seat. Flew with it from SoCal to PIT then to OSH ann back to SoCal. No in flight issues with heat shutdown or screen visibility in my RV-6. It is not perfect but it is the best EFB for GA that I have seen so far. In 3 or 4 years, I am betting that the Android Tablets will be much better than what is in the market today.

Jeppesen upgrade

Jeppesen upgraded their iPad application to now include enroute. I spent some time talking with the designer, Sully, and he was very eager to make the application even better. For those flying outside the US the Jeppesen is really the only game in town, so I was very happy to see this upgrade.