Shrinking the Brain Bag....

[rainsux]

The Oct 23rd bundles of 'free' NACO IAPs and A/FDs are
now available for your downloading pleasure:

http://www.NACOmatic.com

[rwhittier]

Originally Posted by dtaylor

So how do you download your charts???

I assume you use your pay service right???

There is no easy way to download from the FAA yet. You have to download them one at a time currently, right?

Does anybody know anything different??

David T.

Sorry, I am very late to this thread. Not knowing about this capability separately I tripped across a service that does the same thing, albeit not for free. I have been using it for a few months now.

I subscribed to the service mentioned before in this thread at http://readerplates.com/. The reader you use is the same Sony unit shown above and I concur that the readability is extremely high. Since the equipment is identical, there are 3 (maybe 4 - but I haven't used the this version so I do not know) differences that I can see:

1. The Reader Plates (RP's) service is 9.99 a month. Clearly free is better
2. RP's has a service that puts the entire US plates on one 2G card that is updated by simply clicking an icon on your desktop. Click, walk away and come back in about an hour or so. They compress it somehow to fit it all in and the organize it as chapters by state. You can get to any plate in 10 seconds or less.
3. Reader plates worked on shrinking the margins around the entire edge of the plates so the plate is able to be zoomed to be marginally larger. Makes it a tad bit easier to read.
4. This is the one I am not sure of, but I think its unique to RP's. In RP's you can press the right center button and focus only on the top half of the plate. If you press it again you get only the bottom half. The lettering then is proportionally larger and quite a bit easier to read. With a modern GPS like a 430 you need the bottom mainly, so thats what I use. Then if you page up (or down) the unit will reverse contrast (black background, white lettering) and it can be very helpful in some lighting situations.

All in all I have been very pleased with RP's. Still, I might fool around with the free version and see if I want to save the 10 bucks a month - that would be cool. Otherwise I carry paper in the cockpit of my planned destinations, but this is my source for plates if my plan changes. It works well...

I would post pictures, but you can see all of this on their website. I am not affiliated with the company in any way, but I have been impressed with it. YMMV...

[breister]

Originally Posted by rwhittier

Sorry, I am very late to this thread. Not knowing about this capability separately I tripped across a service that does the same thing, albeit not for free. I have been using it for a few months now.

I subscribed to the service mentioned before in this thread at http://readerplates.com/. The reader you use is the same Sony unit shown above and I concur that the readability is extremely high. Since the equipment is identical, there are 3 (maybe 4 - but I haven't used the this version so I do not know) differences that I can see:

1. The Reader Plates (RP's) service is 9.99 a month. Clearly free is better
2. RP's has a service that puts the entire US plates on one 2G card that is updated by simply clicking an icon on your desktop. Click, walk away and come back in about an hour or so. They compress it somehow to fit it all in and the organize it as chapters by state. You can get to any plate in 10 seconds or less.
3. Reader plates worked on shrinking the margins around the entire edge of the plates so the plate is able to be zoomed to be marginally larger. Makes it a tad bit easier to read.
4. This is the one I am not sure of, but I think its unique to RP's. In RP's you can press the right center button and focus only on the top half of the plate. If you press it again you get only the bottom half. The lettering then is proportionally larger and quite a bit easier to read. With a modern GPS like a 430 you need the bottom mainly, so thats what I use. Then if you page up (or down) the unit will reverse contrast (black background, white lettering) and it can be very helpful in some lighting situations.

All in all I have been very pleased with RP's. Still, I might fool around with the free version and see if I want to save the 10 bucks a month - that would be cool. Otherwise I carry paper in the cockpit of my planned destinations, but this is my source for plates if my plan changes. It works well...

I would post pictures, but you can see all of this on their website. I am not affiliated with the company in any way, but I have been impressed with it. YMMV...

$10 / month is not much, but I REALLY don't like that you cannot simply search on Identifier. C'mon, almost EVERYONE has GPS these days and clicking on the airport gives you four short letters to search by.

I'll vote for the slower download / better interface.

[rwhittier]

Originally Posted by breister

$10 / month is not much, but I REALLY don't like that you cannot simply search on Identifier. C'mon, almost EVERYONE has GPS these days and clicking on the airport gives you four short letters to search by.

I'll vote for the slower download / better interface.

Sorting by identifier would be a better way to go. Didn't know the other one sorts that way - haven't played with it yet.

I thought RP's interface was pretty easy - frankly about the way you would look it up in a Jepp book. Go by state, then city. Then each city with IAP's are sorted alphabetically and the identifier is shown.

I will play with the other one to compare - but right now my canopy fitting is taking my extra time...

[rwhittier]

Originally Posted by breister

$10 / month is not much, but I REALLY don't like that you cannot simply search on Identifier. C'mon, almost EVERYONE has GPS these days and clicking on the airport gives you four short letters to search by.

I'll vote for the slower download / better interface.

Obviously a personal choice. The product works well and the price is right so I don't want to sound like I am complaining about a free product, because I am not - I just didn't know it existed when I signed up for Reader Plates. Somebody is doing us one heck of a service providing this for free.

This evening I had a chance to play with this download. Frankly the identifier issue you mention is a pretty minor difference IMO. Both list it in the chapter line and you can't search on it anyway as the Sony reader does not have input capability. So really I do not see an advantage of either one in this respect. YMMV.

You did comment on ease of download (which is important to me because I download every 28 days), but did not comment on those other differences like zooming in on the top or bottom half and the ability to reverse the contrast - they do differentiate the two products although its a personal thing how much you value those.

In the end, both offer a great paperless chart capability and one should go with what they are comfortable with. Cheers.

[cawmd82]

So has anyone besides Control Vision-Anywhere Map come out with a portable device of this sort that uses a GPS overlay to position your plane along the approach? Sounds like their real world readability makes their's near useless.

If I read correctly the 696 will only display the plate, not your position on it.....

[L.Adamson]

Originally Posted by cawmd82

So has anyone besides Control Vision-Anywhere Map come out with a portable device of this sort that uses a GPS overlay to position your plane along the approach? Sounds like their real world readability makes their's near useless.

If I read correctly the 696 will only display the plate, not your position on it.....

I assume it's a legal issue. My 11 year old Garmin 195 would show approach overlays, that todays units won't.

L.Adamson

[dhall_polo]

You people with flying rv's go on an on about such things.

I think it would be cool to load a reader up with all the build plans....

[rainsux]

New IAPs and AFDs are now available for downloading from:

http://www.NACOmatic.com

-doug

[breister]

Originally Posted by rwhittier

Obviously a personal choice. The product works well and the price is right so I don't want to sound like I am complaining about a free product, because I am not - I just didn't know it existed when I signed up for Reader Plates. Somebody is doing us one heck of a service providing this for free.

This evening I had a chance to play with this download. Frankly the identifier issue you mention is a pretty minor difference IMO. Both list it in the chapter line and you can't search on it anyway as the Sony reader does not have input capability. So really I do not see an advantage of either one in this respect. YMMV.

You did comment on ease of download (which is important to me because I download every 28 days), but did not comment on those other differences like zooming in on the top or bottom half and the ability to reverse the contrast - they do differentiate the two products although its a personal thing how much you value those.

In the end, both offer a great paperless chart capability and one should go with what they are comfortable with. Cheers.

Ah, sorry - actually I was complaining about both in general on the search feature. And, I have no experience with either - yet.

What I really want is a 696 with lifetime updates for $100!