03-13
I’ve been a Flight Guide user for longer than I can remember. For many years one of the iconic little brown loose-leaf binders covering the Western States had a place in my flight bag—and more than once came in very handy when I needed to find an airport with a nearby hotel or restaurant.
To be honest, I was a little annoyed when Flight Guide switched to the current larger format for its paper product. It now takes two of the larger throwaway spiral bound books to cover the same area—but the larger format is easier to read, so at least one of those books still flies with me on every cross-country trip.
While the books are extremely well laid out, with a detailed diagram and notes for every public-use airport (and less detailed but still useful information for low-use and military fields) in the coverage area, they have always suffered from two problems.
The first is that unless you buy and carry all the books, you won’t have coverage for the entire country. That’s an issue if a flight takes you outside your coverage area. On my two trips to Oshkosh from the Left Coast, I’ve used Flight Guide for the start and end of the trip, then switched to AOPA’s Airport Directory (which isn’t nearly as detailed).
The second issue is common to any paper-based source for aviation information: it can easily get out of date. The current spiral-bound books are updated annually, and quite a lot can change in a year. Flight Guide deals with that by offering a web-based online version that’s available on its own for $19 per region, or free with the paper-based version (which sells for $24.95 per region).
The trouble with a web-based service is that you can’t access it in the air—which is where I’ve found Flight Guide most useful. Of course you can continue to carry the paper version (as I do) but that tends to get out of date. To get the best of both, you’d need a way to get an electronic version of the data on a device that you can carry with you.
The folks at Airguide Publications (publishers of Flight Guide) thought of that, and offer several electronic products. If you own a Sony PRS or Amazon Kindle eBook reader, you can get Flight Guide eBook for $35 per region. Essentially, that gives you an electronic version of the pages in the printed books.
On the iPad, though, Airguide chose to offer something much more extensive: FlightGuide iEFB is a nearly complete Electronic Flight Bag app, offering not only Flight Guide’s traditionally excellent airport data, but also flight planning, DUATS-based weather briefings, and electronic charting features.
The charts are geo-referenced; if you have an iPad with a built-in GPS (or a compatible external GPS) you’ll see your aircraft position superimposed on the chart.
The folks at AirGuide have gone beyond that—FlightGuide iEFB was the first iPad EFB app to offer on-screen traffic alerts when used with a $1,495 Zaon XRX portable collision avoidance device, and with the latest version (5.0.1) you can get in-flight weather with a $599 SkyRadar-L ADS-B receiver (according to AirGuide’s website, more ADS-B options will be available in upcoming versions).
In sum, FlightGuide iEFB turns an iPad into a pretty effective portable MFD!
The app retains Flight Guide’s outstanding presentation of airport information, including annotated airport diagrams, businesses on-field, nearby restaurants and hotels, and other attractions. This has always been Flight Guide’s strength—if the weather’s closing in and you need to find an airport with a hotel or car rental, Flight Guide’s a fast way to find options.
FlightGuide iEFB goes beyond any competing app by offering a full range of chart types (sectional, terminal, low altitude IFR, IFR area, WAC and Caribbean en-route)—and most area available in both a seamless version comparable to other apps and as separate stand-alone charts, which include all the data presented in the chart margins.
That can be significant if you fly in an area with special airspace—as I did on a flight over Yellowstone while on vacation last year. ForeFlight showed the boundary around the park, but not the note from the chart margin prohibiting operation below 2,000 AGL. FlightGuide iEFB’s option to show the complete sectional chart, including the margins, would have been very useful!
I’ve also found FlightGuide iEFB useful as part of an electronic trip kit on flights south of the United States border; the seamless WAC chart coverage includes Baja California. Unfortunately, while the app shows the chart, the database doesn’t include Mexican navaids and airports, so you can’t enter a flight plan using normal identifiers.
I’ve come up with a workaround: zoom in on the airport or navaid in question, tap on it and a pop-up lists the nearest locations in the database (all north of the border) and offers a “create point” option. That’s enough to put a line on the chart and get distance estimates.
What’s not to like? I personally find Flight Guide’s approach to flight planning clumsy, especially by comparison to ForeFlight Mobile, which offers most of the same features.
In ForeFlight, you can create a flight plan graphically, by tapping your departure and destination airports, and then dragging the line to any additional waypoints.
ForeFlight also lets you type a plain-text route into the search box at the top of the display. That’s a great time-saver for routes you fly regularly. My wife and I fly from our home base in Modesto, Calif. to Hawthorne, Calif. several times a year. It’s a route I don’t have to look up: KMOD EHF LHS KHHS.
While it’s possible to enter a plain-text route in Flight Guide, you have to switch to a separate Flight Plan page, and it’s not as easy to edit the route: tapping and dragging in Flight Guide just pans around on the chart. To add or remove a waypoint you have to tap, pick the appropriate airport, navaid or intersection from a list, and only then do you get an option to add (or remove) it from your flight plan.
Moreover, Flight Guide iEFB lacks one feature that I consider essential for flight planning in the 21st century. It does not provide a graphical view of temporary flight restrictions (TFRs).
While any TFRs should be mentioned in a weather briefing (which you can get from the Filing form on the app’s Flight Plan page), not being able to see any TFRs on the chart is simply unacceptable, in my opinion. This is doubly surprising as the app does offer a nice range of graphical weather maps, and can overlay NEXRAD imagery on the charts.
On the other hand, if you fly as a Mission Pilot with the Civil Air Patrol, you’ll find a couple of Flight Guide iEFB features not only useful, but potentially essential. One such feature is this: it can overlay a search grid on the chart, and will show “bread crumbs” to indicate where you have and have not flown in your search.
While I like Flight Guide iEFB’s chart presentation, I still find ForeFlight easier to use for routine flight planning. However, ForeFlight’s airport data (based on a combination of AOPA and FAA Airport/Facilities Directory info) isn’t nearly as good. My solution is to use ForeFlight on the iPad and carry an old-fashioned paper copy of FlightGuide in my flight bag most of the time.
When I’m flying to Mexico, I get a temporary subscription to FlightGuide iEFB so that I can use the seamless WAC charts, and I may consider getting a subscription for vacation flights outside my regular coverage area.
Just to complicate things, according to AirGuide’s website, there will soon be yet another option: Flight Guide Solo will offer only Airport data on the iPad, without the charts, weather and flight planning features, for an outstanding price: $4.99 per month (or $49 per year) for full U.S. coverage. That may tempt me to finally retire the printed book.
John D. Ruley is an instrument-rated pilot and freelance writer. He holds a master’s degree from the University of North Dakota Space Studies program (space.edu). Until recently he was a volunteer pilot with ligainternational.org and angelflight.org, two charities which operate medical missions in northwest Mexico and provide medical patient transport, respectively. He hopes to fly with both organizations later this year. Send questions or comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
Resources
Flight Guide
flightguide.com
ForeFlight Mobile
foreflight.com/ipad/
SkyRadar-L
single band receiver
skyradar.net
Zaon XRX
portable collision avoidance system
zaon.aero
