I've been looking for an electronic solution to approach plates and the Airport/Facility Directory (A/FD). Typically, I carry in my flight bag an A/FD for the Northeast, and at least the current version of NE-2 approach plate pack (NY and NJ). If I am flying somewhere else, my bag might also NE-1, 3 and/or 4. Each measures something like 5x8, and are about an inch to inch-and-a-half thick. More importantly, all that paper starts to weigh quite a bit. I suppose I could just print out the relevant information for the airports I plan to use on any given trip, but there's a sense of security knowing that I can land at any airport along the route should I need to. The A/FD gets updated every 56 days, the approach plates every 28 days, so that's quite a few trees as well.
Initially, I tried the Sony Reader and Reader Plates, since I happened to already have a Sony Reader. The Reader Plates folks do a good job within the constraints imposed by the Sony Reader. They crop out as much of the white borders as possible, so as to maximize the screen real estate. (I think they also down-sample the images so as to minimize the memory footprint.) The updates show up promptly on their password accessible site.
But the 6 inch screen of the Sony Reader is just not big enough. On a trial run, I found myself squinting to see the small print. Even the frequency list at the top of the plate (in bold) was sometimes hard to read---for example, it was hard to tell between an 6 and an 8. Mixing up a 6 for an 8 in a radio frequency list is one thing, making the same mistake on, say minimum descent altitudes would be an entirely different matter all together. You could enlarge the plate by using the Reader in landscape mode, but that would only put about half the plate on the screen at a time, requiring constant scrolling up and down. I decided that in real instrument conditions in rough air, squinting at the screen or fiddling with the controls while trying to shoot an approach was not something I was prepared to do.
(Kindle DX vs. printed plate vs Sony Reader. DX display is about the same size as printed plate.)
(Rotating the Sony gets you close to full size, but with only half the plate viewable at a time.)
So, when Amazon announced the Kindle DX (with its 10 inch screen as opposed to the Sony's 6 incher) this past spring, I promptly pre-ordered one. I've been flying with the DX for a couple of months, and have shot a number of approaches with it. Some observations:
- The 10 inch screen is perfect for this application. It's dimensions (8x5) is just slightly smaller than the size of printed plates. You see the approach plates in full size. And the crisp e-ink display has enough resolution to make reading a plate quite easy even in fairly rough air. The e-ink display itself is crisp and contrasty, and is perfectly readable even in direct sunlight---a necessity in any cockpit especially if you fly low wings. (But its no backlight reflective screen means that you do need a map light if you fly at night.)
- Nacomatic makes the process of downloading PDF versions of government plates simple and painless (and it's free!). The plates and A/FD are organized by state or by region. (Much better than the convoluted approach offered by the government site.
- The battery life is quite respectable, especially if you consider the fact that the Kindle has a cell radio inside (more on this below). A full week without recharge is perfectly common---so if you remember to recharge the night before, there is almost no chance that you will run out of juice mid-flight.
- DX is quite stable---no random resets or any such thing.
- The DX is a bit large, but is thin and light, which makes it easy to handle in flight. It's big well placed buttons make navigation quite easy. It's chicklet keyboard, however, is another story (more on this below).
- Remember to turn off the cell radio before flight! Otherwise, the cell will continue to hunt for a signal, rapidly draining the battery.
- The PDF reader implementation is half-baked. Most critically it does not support PDF bookmarks/TOCs. So, getting to the plate that you want is more of a hassle than it needs to be. Nacomatic provides a TOC page listing the airport and the page on which its associated plates can be found. Then you need to use the page number to jump to the relevant page. This is a bit of a problem since it requires the use of the tiny keyboard. Compounding the problem is the fact that there are no dedicated number keys---so entering page numbers is quite cumbersome. Workable, but not great. Here's hoping Amazon provides proper TOC support in its PDF reader soon.
- The other issue is that the Nacomatic's TOC page only lists airports by their 3 letter identifier, so figuring out which one is the right one might take some doing, especially if you are flying in an unfamiliar area. (Their PDF TOC actually contains the airport name and town information, so again the proper support for PDF TOCs would improve usability significantly.)
- The size of the DX makes it a bit awkward to use in a cramped cockpit. The device itself is about the size of a standard 8.5x11 notepad---too big for most kneeboards. No yoke mount for it yet, either, though I'm not sure I want something that big on the yoke.
- The cost of the DX ($489) is a bit high. I can sort of justify it given the amount of reading I do (occupational hazard). Whether it's worth it as a plate reader alone is debatable (though in fairness the dedicated eFlybook is much more expensive).
[Followup 11/30/09: The Reader Plates folks have started offering the electronic plates in Kindle DX format as well. One nice thing about this is that they actually create proper TOC hierarchies, which make navigation a lot easier. They allow you to find plates by state/city or by airport code. It's not free like the other PDF plates, but the ease of navigation is worth the reasonable subscription fee of $9.99 per cycle.]