December 2005- Many pilots dream about adding an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) to their flight equipment and throwing away 40 pounds of paper. You will see many advertised for $2,500 and up that do a great job.
On the other hand, can you make do with computers and software you already own and use every day? This is a story of how my own combinations finally clicked with the latest announcements at AirVenture 2005.
Paper sectional and en route charts plus approach plates are something you can touch and feel. Short of a cabin fire burning your charts or blowing out an open window, it is hard to lose them. An EFB raises different concerns.
When I presented the electronic flight bag idea to Bill, our 182, he started asking questions. “Gee, Charles, what is going to happen when we go somewhere and have to divert to a location for which you did not print out the approach plate?”
“Well, Bill, that is an easy question to answer. You just fire up the laptop or PDA and all the necessary information is available at the press of a button. In addition the approach is already in the Garmin GPS database.”
Bill asked, “What is going to happen that day when you takeoff with all those batteries plum worn out?”
I replied, “Bill, you have a good point about dead batteries—and that is why we carry the 12 volt DC to 110 volts AC converter that plugs into one of the three utility sockets in your instrument panel.”
Then Bill said, “Well, I guess you do have the contingencies covered.”
Let me describe the steps we took to get to the point where we can use an electronic flight bag for about the same cost as lugging about all that paper.
Electronic Flight Bag software
Electronic flight bag software needs to provide all the charts and approach plates for your flights plus the ability to print out a hard copy on demand. Both RMS Technology and Jeppesen provide software applications to meet these requirements.
I started using RMS Technology’s Flightsoft flight planning application 15 years ago operating under Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS/DOS). From the early days, the FlightSoft worksheet lists departure destination and intermediate waypoints, which the program retrieves from the navigation database. This information combined with specific aircraft performance creates your flight plan.
Then shift to the map page to see flight plan routing. RMS integrated DUATS into the program for weather briefings and flight plan filing. RMS Technology continued adding enhancements that include integrating NEXRAD returns on the charts, topographic features, and web linkage to AOPA on-line National Oceanographic System (NOS) Approach Plates for AOPA members.
Program and navigation data updates progressed from using mail delivery of five-inch to three-inch floppies to high speed Internet data downloads. Sectional, Low and High Altitude Charts downloaded via the internet now add trip chart for your review and printing to use in the cockpit.
Finally, NOS Approach Plates mailed every 28 days, for an additional $100 per year, load directly onto your hard drive. Now you have all the pieces necessary: flight planning including excellent weather analysis, approach plates and en route charts for anywhere in the US all located in your very own laptop.
The Flightsoft trip planning integrated with AirNav, an excellent gas pricing website, helps find cost effective fuel stops with savings up to $50 per fuel stop. FlightSoft includes an internet connection or 800 number dialup to DTC or Dyan DUATS.
After downloading a weather brief and reviewing en route weather, log on to AirNav to select a fuel stop. For example, flights from Waltanna, Kan. to Columbia, S.C. require one or two fuel stops. Routes as far north as Paducah, Ky. or far south as 30 miles south of Columbus, Ga. to get around en route weather are easy to plan with Flightsoft weather analysis from the comfort of your home office easy chair.
A story for another day is how the new Garmin GDL 69 NEXRAD receiver makes life more comfortable and safer traveling in Bill with a little help at the start from Flightsoft. With the route established and fuel stops selected, Flightsoft files the flight plans.
Then the departure and destination Approach Charts, the en route Low Altitude and Sectional strip Charts plus the flight log are printed and go into the “Paper Day Book,” a three-ring loose-leaf binder with tab separators, for ready reference during the flight.
Electronic Flight Bag hardware
Electrons have a way of not being there when you want them so redundancy is important. The primary backup requirement for an electronic flight bag is two ways to view the information in case one goes down in the air.
Numerous professional flight operations now use electronic flight bags including the Cessna Citation Demo Flight Crews. Cessna operates with two pilots and both crewmembers have identical tablet type PCs with the necessary information. Business aircraft are also just around the corner that will have approach plate displays in the instrument panel.
The best off-the-shelf cockpit electronic flight bag is a Tablet PC. These specialized laptops fit nicely in any aircraft cockpit and do not take up much room. John Ruley, our “Left Coast Pilot” and resident computer guru, last year guided me through the pros and cons of various tablet PCs. Maybe John will update the current state of Tablet PC cost and performance for use as an electronic flight bag and share information with all of us in a future article.
I already own an excellent lightweight Sony Vaio Laptop that I use on the road to write Flyer articles, check email and browse the web. A Canon portable printer answers the challenge to print plates on the road with destination changes and spur of the moment trips here and there. This good laptop makes the Tablet PC just another item on the wish list. Yes, the Sony laptop is not as compact as a Tablet PC but it does work satisfactorily in a Skylane cockpit.
Recently I was in a situation where I had to divert due to weather at the destination airport. Approach issued a clearance for an ILS approach that was missing from the on board paper updates. This left two choices; confess to get another approach or fire up the laptop and review the approach in RMS FlightSoft.
The approach appeared on the laptop display and concluded with an uneventful landing. Two years ago, RMS announced Flight Express for Microsoft-based PDAs manufactured by Hewlett Packard/Compaq and Dell. (Sorry, Flight Express does not operate on a Palm Pilot PDA.)
My flight bag already contained a Compaq IPAQ 3970 previously purchased to keep up with all the “stuff” a fractional aircraft captain tracks during a hectic day in the cockpit: expenses, other company reports, logbook entries and Microsoft Outlook for my address book. Therefore, the one-time purchase price for Flight Express was a no-brainer.
Adding an SD 1-Gigabyte memory card to the PDA provides storage for the approach plates. At first these plates were not scalable and you saw only a small portion of the plate on your PDA screen. RMS software developers continued to make improvements and announced at Oshkosh this summer a scalable Approach Plate display from 100 percent to 50 percent for Flight Express.
The problem of the backup plan now had a solution. The remaining problem was the old technology display in my four-year-old IPAQ 3790 did not show approach plate details very well for my “mature” eyesight. The RMS Oshkosh demonstrations on a newer Hewlett Packard 4700 series IPAQ display were crisp and showed amazing detail on this small screen at the 50 percent display scale. The backup hardware is a new HP 4705 IPAQ PDA with a four-inch screen.
Microsoft Active Synch manages the data transfer between the PC and PDA. This PDA application synchronizes Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and Flight Express application flies between the master PC and the PDA.
RMS Express program and navigation data updates require approximately five minutes every 28 days. A one-gigabyte compact flash card stores the Approach plates and takes significantly longer to load 620 megabytes of data. Rather than take 12-plus hours to load these plates through Active Synch, I insert the compact flash card in a card reader attached to the Desktop PC and transfer the Approach Plate data in approximately 45 minutes.
Costs & Savings
The savings for paper charts and approach plates are $350 to 600. For a smaller area, these savings will be less. You will need to evaluate the pain associated with the update chores and up-to-the-minute accuracy for your own personal situation. In my case, I used a service that sends a hard copy annually and then mails printed descriptive changes. The possibility of overlooking an important change increases as the year progresses using this system.
Jeppesen Q Service is the least painful but costs considerably more than other methods.
RMS Technology’s FlightSoft US version software costs are:
•Professional Edition Initial Cost: $198
•Flight Express one time charge for PDA as an add-on to FlightSoft: $145 (note: Flight Express is not available as a stand-alone program without PC Flightsoft.)
•Annual 28 day update renewal after the first year: $109
•Annual NOS Approach Plate CD 28 day revision: $99.95
The hardware costs are clouded by what PC hardware you already own and previously justified in one way or another. If you already own a desktop and use it at home then all you need is a Windows Operating System PC plus 50 megabytes space on your hard drive.
Maybe you use a laptop both at home and on the road so a laptop with modem and internet port for around $1,000 and up will handle the additional electronic flight bag software.
Tablet PCs cost slightly more than a laptop but like other PC hardware continue to become more affordable every day. Canon portable Bubble Jet printers are approximately $250—handy if printing is a requirement for you on the road.
The HP IPAC or Dell PDAs cost $300 to $600 to provide backup for the laptop or tablet PC.
Are you the steely-eyed cost accountant who tries to justify all costs versus the paper chart and plate savings versus software cost to use on your present PC hardware? The $99.95/year for approach plates plus the onetime charge for Flight Express is the only additional software cost.
In my case, the personal computers are part of my way to cope with modern day life and no additional hardware is necessary. Well maybe the new top-of-the-line IPAQ 4705 is a net new cost for backup. Backup is a subjective consideration and is up to the individual pilot. In my case; flying solid IFR, backups are essential. Eliminating paper subscriptions cost will take three years to recover transition cost.
This is your own personal decision; I find the no-hassle updates and ease of use worth the investment.
The electronic flight bag wish list is rather small. The only item is possibly a tablet PC. The current Sony Viao is less than two years old and typically laptop replacements occur every five to six years. Now, Bill and I will fly off into the wild blue yonder with less paper and a bag full of electronic goodies to find new and interesting places to go and write about in the “Adventures with Bill” series.
Charles Lloyd has logged 7,900 hours since his first flying lesson in 1954. He worked for Cessna Aircraft in Citation Marketing and Finance for 16 years. Charles’ current day job is as a Citation Excel Captain for a major fractional aircraft ownership company.
