Roy Smith wrote in
:

Judah wrote:

Last week I finally got checked out in the club's Arrow.

During the training, the instructor noticed that I was using the NACO
charts and plates.

He uses the Jeppeson stuff and excitedly indicated that it is far
superior to the NACO charts.

Excitedly? Gee, I wonder who that might have been :-)

Hahaha!

I used to use Jepp, but switched to NOS/NACO/whatever a while back. On
the "Jepp is better" side of the story:

Better cartography, better printing, better paper.

That was a big one for Larry, and the one big benefit that I considered.


The Jepp 7-ring binder is a lot more convenient to use than what NOS
does; it's a lot simplier to pull an individual plate out of the binder
to clip on a kneeboard or whatever.

While I was doing my IFR training last year, I went to Staples and picked
up a box of free-standing Binder Rings (like the rings that go inside a 3-
ring binder, without the binder) for about $2. Now, when I get my 2
subscribed plate books every two months, I take the rings out of the old
one, punch them through the new one, and I have an instant 3 ring top
binder without the big bulky cover. I don't even have to take off the
plastic until I am going to use it, and if I need to flip to a particular
chart, I can just flip the pages over themselves quickly and easily and set
it on my lap. Works really well.

The only negative side to this is that it's slightly more effort if I want
to yank them out and put them on a yoke clip. But since the club doesn't
have them (I bought one separately and used it for a while, actually) it's
not that big a deal to set it on my lap...


Jepp has a better notam system. If there's a notam published for a
while, Jepp will usually produce a new plate with the new info right on
the plate. NOS makes you keep up with their "change notices" booklet,
etc.

Yeah, that's an interesting one. Actually, as I recall from my cursory and
limited observation way back when, the Jepp books are organized slightly
more conveniently - related info is all together and nearby the main plate.

You look way cool hanging around the FBO with a Jepp binder.
Especially if it's the real leather one, not the cheap immitation kind
I used to carry around. Extra coolness points if it's old and
battered.

Yep... Larry's Jepp binder is definitely worn out and cool looking. I am
thinking about hitting some garage sales to see if I can find an old
leatherbound Classic Book or something that I can buy for 50 cents, rip the
covers off, punch 3 holes and the top, and make my binding solution look as
cool and authentic. But it's just not worth the effort.


If you fly for an airline, Jepp makes up special subscription packs
just for you, with just the routes you fly and internal ops stuff
printed on the same 7-hole paper.

Doesn't apply to me, so just not justifiable.


On the "NOS is better" side:

Cheaper.

You ain't kidding! Jepp seems to cost about 3x NOS!

You don't have to file revisions. Every 8 weeks, just get a new book
and toss the old one. Filing revisions gets old fast. Running an
end-of-year checklist to make sure you haven't lost any pages gets
really old, really fast.

That's a big plus. Amazing that the Jepp stuff is triple the price for what
I am guessing is about 20% of the paper and postage!

NOS is available anywhere. Every dinky pilot shop in every dinky
airport will stock NOS plates. It's very rare to find anyplace that
stocks Jepp. So, if you travel out of your normal area and use Jepp,
you need to plan ahead and order what you need. With NOS you can just
stop by the FBO and pick up a new book.

That's a big one. Before I got my IFR rating, I flew with a guy from HPN to
Little Rock, AR in his Bonanza (A35). He had a briefcase full of Jepp
plates with him, but during one of the stops he needed to pick up a Low-
Altitude Airway chart. Of course, they only had NOS, and he was annoyed. It
took him a minute or two extra to find stuff and look it up and all. But
the message that I got was that if everyone has the NOS charts, just use
them and be comfortable with them, because one day you may have to depend
on them...

You can download NOS-format PDF's from the web now.

That's a nice big plus - if I know I'm going somewhere, and I don't want to
buy the whole book, I can download a handful of PDFs for my destination
area and I'm set. Of course, I would have to punch the holes myself to fit
in my fancy shmancy 3 ring leather binder!

The military guys all use NOS and they manage to look cool carrying
their NOS books around with them. Must be the nomex flight suits that
really complete the look, I guess.

I'll have to buy a flight suit.