How are you going to power that tablet? Trust me, ALL these gadgets run out of battery a good bit sooner than they advertise. If all you're doing is poking around the local area, the onboard battery may be good enough, but a cross country, particularly if you're camping......then flying home......

Also, a feature of Foreflight is that it keeps the I Pad "live" as opposed to allowing it to sleep as long as Foreflight is open. That feature can be defeated in the menus, but that'll kill a battery quick if you park and forget to turn the thing off. Don't know if the program you're using has this feature or not. The feature is so you don't have to be constantly fiddling with the tablet to keep it from "sleeping".

Hope this setup works out for you.....all of these things are incredibly powerful tools, compared to what we had available just a few years ago.

MTV

mtv wrote:How are you going to power that tablet? Trust me, ALL these gadgets run out of battery a good bit sooner than they advertise. If all you're doing is poking around the local area, the onboard battery may be good enough, but a cross country, particularly if you're camping......then flying home......

Also, a feature of Foreflight is that it keeps the I Pad "live" as opposed to allowing it to sleep as long as Foreflight is open. That feature can be defeated in the menus, but that'll kill a battery quick if you park and forget to turn the thing off. Don't know if the program you're using has this feature or not. The feature is so you don't have to be constantly fiddling with the tablet to keep it from "sleeping".

Hope this setup works out for you.....all of these things are incredibly powerful tools, compared to what we had available just a few years ago.

MTV

http://www.amazon.com/Powermax-Lithium-12-Volt-18000mAH-Portable/dp/B0154EH2CK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453144193&sr=8-1&keywords=12+volt+lithium+jumper+batterys
http://www.amazon.com/ALLPOWERS-Charger-Technology-Portable-Battery/dp/B00G6C5NR6/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1453144095&sr=8-5&keywords=12+volt+solar+charger

I bought one of those little earth-x type battery'd that come in a little zip up cover for a just in case to charge my phone, I pad, camera, and to have enough juice to flash an alternator if needed in the Bush, or even driving down the road as 1 of my rigs the power point is toast.
Left the Ipad on it for a couple of days, was still on the middle light. $60 and has a flashlight also.
700 amp bat. Not sure it will turn over any engine!!
Have a fold up solar charge that seems to work to keep it charged.
Just my $.02

I have my Garmin 196 hardwired to a 5A (?) circuit breaker,
kinda thinking I might do the same thing for the tablet.
The tablet charger is 120V in, 5V 2A out, with a cord that has a USB connector on the charger end and a mini-USB connector on the other.
I imagine they sell a cig lighter adapter for it, just have to do some googling.
My Samsung "hotspot" uses a similar set-up, only the output of the charger is 5V .7A.
I guess the same cig lighter adapter would work for both, as the output is controlled by the draw of the device?

Here's how I roll

What's the white gizmo up on the glareshield-- looks like a GPS / ADS-B receiver?

hotrod180 wrote:What's the white gizmo up on the glareshield-- looks like a GPS / ADS-B receiver?

Looks like a Stratus 2.

Stratus 2 - provides GPS waas signal and ADS-B in, via Bluetooth to IPad mini and/or iPhone

Hoeschen wrote:Stratus 2 - provides GPS waas signal and ADS-B in, via Bluetooth to IPad mini and/or iPhone

It's wifi, rather than bluetooth.

Is fore flight showing a glide slope on rnav approaches? I know it shows a left/right needle for course, but assume it could easily show glide slope based off satellites? If not i wonder if they will add it.

I'm a daytime VFR pilot who spends most of his time over the Pennsylvania mountains (big hills) and the DC area.
I use ForeFlight for weather briefing and SFRA flight planning. It works wonderfully.
When I'm in the air, I use my Garmin Aera 510 as its 10 times easier to work and read while flying.

</$0.02>

mtv wrote: How are you going to power that tablet? ...

Been googling car chargers that plug into the cig lighter. Quite a few out there, but most are only 1 amp (aka 1000mA) output. I found one however that has two USB outlets that will put out 2 amps each. I can plug the cord to my tablet into one, and the cord to my hotspot into the other. Even 4 amps @ 5 volts is only 20 watts, which works out to less than 2 amps at 14V, so no worries about putting a big strain on the cig lighter circuit-- I think they're usually fused at 5A.

http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Char ... b_title_ce

hotrod180 wrote:Been googling car chargers that plug into the cig lighter.

Here you go. I use this. Internally pinned to provide max power for both android and Apple devices (which use different "high power" charge pins, apparently). I've got about 115 hours on mine and it'll charge two iPads running foreflight at the same time.


http://www.amazon.com/Charger-Samsung-M ... B00M6QODH2

I'm pretty pleased with the android tablet / Avare combination, but the Avare weather info leaves something to be desired. A buddy's WingX app shows wx radar in a loop display, pretty much real time (within 5 minutes or so). The Avare must be downloaded each time you want an update, and it's a stationary display. You can select to display the wx displayonly if it's less than 10 / 30 / 60 / whatever minutes old, and several times I've downloaded weather only to find that it won't display unless I hit the 30 or even 60 minute cut-off button. So it must only update once an hour or so-- not too good, as we all know how quick wx can change.

I did find a number of free wx radar apps, I downloaded "MyRadar". Real time (within about 5 minutes), about an hour's worth of loop display, and several choices as to background map etc. It also has some aviation features- sigmets, TFR's, etc. It has a dot to indicate your position, and you can scroll around or hit a button to center yourself on the display. There's even a "flight plan" option- haven't explored what that entails but I plan to do that tonight.

Chargers: I've bought two of these but haven't installed either. I think they are the solution to powering portable devices in the cockpit though:

https://www.aircraftspruce.ca/catalog/i ... 0p-usb.php

.
I am not an Apple fanboy, but have to admit that I may soon buy an iPad mini because of the Aviation Software choices. Looking at the different choices in January 2016, the new Seattle Avionics’ FLYQ-EFB Version 2.0 looks very impressive vs. Foreflight and WingX. FLYQ-EFB also supports something like 15+ different brands of ADSB receivers. Simple menu navigation and execution seems better than in the competitors, IMHO. YMMV.

I’d say anyone in 2016 looking at a tablet and aviation software, ought to evaluate FLYQ-EFB. Here is a nice Youtube video that gives a nice overview.


Here is the company’s website. https://www.seattleavionics.com/FlyQEFB.aspx
All just my two centavos worth. I have no connection with the company.

Denali wrote:.
I am not an Apple fanboy, but have to admit that I may soon buy an iPad mini because of the Aviation Software choices. Looking at the different choices in January 2016, the new Seattle Avionics’ FLYQ-EFB Version 2.0 looks very impressive vs. Foreflight and WingX. FLYQ-EFB also supports something like 15+ different brands of ADSB receivers. Simple menu navigation and execution seems better than in the competitors, IMHO. YMMV.

I’d say anyone in 2016 looking at a tablet and aviation software, ought to evaluate FLYQ-EFB. Here is a nice Youtube video that gives a nice overview.

Here is the company’s website. https://www.seattleavionics.com/FlyQEFB.aspx
All just my two centavos worth. I have no connection with the company.

I gave up on FLYQ a year or so ago as if you do not have super fast net, it takes forever to down load every week or so the new stuff to keep up to date, I was in the bush so it would shoot all my net in one down load for the month!! Might have changed since then? Up dated everything, not just what was new and needed. Had a real screwy down load percentage value also you never new how close you were to being done.
Like I said this was a year or so ago, so hopefully they fixed those!

hotrod180 wrote:....... "MyRadar". Real time (within about 5 minutes), about an hour's worth of loop display, and several choices as to background map etc. It also has some aviation features.....There's even a "flight plan" option- haven't explored what that entails but I plan to do that tonight.

Turns out the "flight plan" feature involves entering your (airline) ICAO flight number and then seeing what weather you'll encounter or are encountering. Not much use to me.

I did take my home hotspot along for an airplane ride today to try downloading real-time wx in flight....worked great. In fact, it worked better in the air than it did on the ground at a buddy's airport. There's a good spot to Velcro it in place on the windshield sill in front of the LH forward door post-- better than the glare shield cuz I'm less likely to forget to turn it off or to take it home with me.

How are you going to power that tablet?

I am using an iPad mini 4G tablet with Garmin Pilot and a Garmin Glo gps to feed precise location data.

I carry a couple of intovate.com 5000mAh thin charging batteries. These can be used to charge any USB device. They sit nicely on the glare shield or velcro'ed to the back of the iPad for long trips.

This outfit is (or was) located in Hillsboro, Oregon. Saw them at the PNW aviation conference a couple of years ago.

If not them, than another slim charger to keep your toys alive unless you want to wire a usb charging outlet into your panel.

mtv wrote:How are you going to power that tablet? Trust me, ALL these gadgets run out of battery a good bit sooner than they advertise. If all you're doing is poking around the local area, the onboard battery may be good enough, but a cross country, particularly if you're camping......then flying home......

I decided against a cigar lighter USB adapter gizmo, I hate wires dangling everywhere. I bought a 12V-5V converter that will hard-wire into the airplane bus and has a micro-USB on the other end. Both my tablet & my hotspot charge via a mini-USB, unfortunately my dumbphone uses a different connector-- like a micro-USB but about twice as wide. But I don't use the phone much so a full charge on it lasts several days.

I changed the hotspot mounting location, it's now adjacent to the tablet so the charging cord can come out of the panel with just a short pigtail exposed & connect to either the tablet or the hotspot . I'll wire it to the same circuit breaker than my Garmin 196 is wired to.

Here's a link to the charger I bought. $7.99 and free shipping from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/HitCar-Inverter-C ... +12v+to+5v

I am not a guru in any sense of the word but do have a question. This direct wired charger you bought puts out 3.5amps. Does this cause any issues with having too much amperage since most of the tablets/phones/etc. I have all seem to have chargers rated at 0.5-1 amp. Only reason I ask is because I inadvertently used a wrongly rated charger on my phone and it discharged the phone instead of charging it. This was the type that plugs into a 12V recepticle.

Another question, are you finding 8gb enough for storage size on the tablet for the Avare app?