DoD to remove FLIP's from public

I highly doubt this will actually take effect.. This WILL cause many
companies their business, and its a safe bet the number will be in the
thousands. Jepp is already known for raping people on prices, they want
$500 a year to include their data in your software per copy! Not to mention
it will cost lives because people simply will fly with outdated data due to
the high costs Jepp charges.

In my eyes, this will destroy aviation safety, destroy our aviation
infustructure, destroy businesses and some of us will pay for it with our
lives. I know some pilots that already fly with outdate data in their GPS's
because of Jepp's $30 a month charge. Just about any flight planning
software either PC, handheld or online depends on this data. Imagine the
fallout from this? I for one will do my part and have already contacted
people at the NGA and the FAA with inquiries on how they intend to pull this
off. If I get any answers, I'll let people know. But in the mean time,
everyone should do their part as well and start sending emails, letters,
faxes and phone calls to anyone who will listen, a good start would be to
your congressmen and to the AOPA.

This should go down in history as the most stupid thing our government has
ever done. The impact this will have on worldwide aviation is equivalent to
a terrorist attack on the world.. Soon, no doubt, will be to outlaw general
aviation because it could be used for terrorist attacks.. Very sad day for
us all and one step closer to a police state.

Maybe its time to exercise our constitutional right to install a new
government? Clearly ours is working against us.

Dennis.

Nice post Dennis.

I believe that the only flight planners on the market right now that use
Jeppesen data are Jeppesen's Flitestar and the AOPA Online planner which is
provided under contract by Jeppesen.

Flitesoft, Destination Direct, Aeroplanner, AirPlan, Voyager, the EAA
Planner (provided by Aeroplanner) and FlightPrep are flight planning apps
that all use DAFIF data.

I believe that virtually every Pocket PC moving map application relies on
DAFIF data. This includes Anywhere Map, NavGPS, MountainScope, NavAir, and
several others.

I wonder if perhaps Jeppesen didn't lobby the government to have this action
taken to recapture their monopoly position as a flight data provider. It
will certainly have the desired effect of taking out their competition, and
bring those few that survive groveling at their door to pony up large sums
of money for their data.

The ultimate effect will be that the number of products available on the
market will dwindle, and prices of the remaining products will rise. This
won't be due to natural selection from normal market forces, but from the
chokehold that Jeppesen will be able to exert on the industry. In the end,
it will be the consumer pilots who lose.

This data has been available so far due to a wonderful piece of legislation
called the Freedom of Information Act. It appears that our government is in
the process of dismantling the Freedom of Information Act along with other
freedoms that we have enjoyed in the name of security.

I certainly hope that this proposal gets shot down. I would even settle or
a compromise in which users of the DAFIF are allowed to pay a reasonable
licensing fee to have access to the data, and doing this could provide a
means by which the NGA could provide payment to those forgeign bodies that
want fees for their data. The fact that the Australian data provider want
to sue is assinine because they don't provide their data in electronic
format... you have to buy it on paper! How worthless is that? This is true
of Nav Canada as well... they don't sell digital data, only paper data.

Dean Wilkinson

In a previous article, "Dean Wilkinson" said:
Flitesoft, Destination Direct, Aeroplanner, AirPlan, Voyager, the EAA
Planner (provided by Aeroplanner) and FlightPrep are flight planning apps
that all use DAFIF data.

I believe that virtually every Pocket PC moving map application relies on
DAFIF data. This includes Anywhere Map, NavGPS, MountainScope, NavAir, and
several others.

Let's not forget CoPilot, GPSPilot, AeroCalc, and non-aviation GPSes that
can use my GPX data.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
`I was all fired up to write a big rant, but instead found apathy to be a
more worthwhile solution.' --- Ashley Penney

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 10:46:28 -0700, "Dean Wilkinson"
wrote in
::


I wonder if perhaps Jeppesen didn't lobby the government to have this action
taken to recapture their monopoly position as a flight data provider.

Recall, Boeing (Jeppesen's parent company) still has a lot of clout
with the Pentagon. Apparently all they have to do is offer a DOD
buyer a $250,000.00/year job in order to (almost) obtain a 23 billion
dollar contract.

So how come the alphabet groups aren't raising a big stink about this?

John

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 12:30:59 GMT, "Dennis" wrote:

I highly doubt this will actually take effect.. This WILL cause many
companies their business, and its a safe bet the number will be in the
thousands. Jepp is already known for raping people on prices, they want
$500 a year to include their data in your software per copy! Not to mention
it will cost lives because people simply will fly with outdated data due to
the high costs Jepp charges.

So Microsoft is eating $450/copy of their ~$50 Flight Simulator which
contains Jepp navdata? And they're then paying $500/year/copy of FS
sold thereafter?

LOL!! Flight Simmers crack me up sometimes..

Dennis

"Peter Clark" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 12:30:59 GMT, "Dennis" wrote:

I highly doubt this will actually take effect.. This WILL cause many
companies their business, and its a safe bet the number will be in the
thousands. Jepp is already known for raping people on prices, they want
$500 a year to include their data in your software per copy! Not to
mention
it will cost lives because people simply will fly with outdated data due
to
the high costs Jepp charges.

So Microsoft is eating $450/copy of their ~$50 Flight Simulator which
contains Jepp navdata? And they're then paying $500/year/copy of FS
sold thereafter?

What's funny? You're the one who made the statement that Jep charges
the software publisher 500/yr/copy recurring for each copy of the
database (apparently regardless of updates or whether the end user
continues to use the program) and I asked a logical question since MS
uses Jepp data and doesn't have a price point anywhere near $500/copy.

And the $800 or so /yr for updates I pay King for my 172's Jepp
derived KLN94 and MFD datacards isn't because I'm a simmer.

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 22:59:02 GMT, "Dennis" wrote:

LOL!! Flight Simmers crack me up sometimes..

Dennis

"Peter Clark" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 12:30:59 GMT, "Dennis" wrote:

I highly doubt this will actually take effect.. This WILL cause many
companies their business, and its a safe bet the number will be in the
thousands. Jepp is already known for raping people on prices, they want
$500 a year to include their data in your software per copy! Not to
mention
it will cost lives because people simply will fly with outdated data due
to
the high costs Jepp charges.

So Microsoft is eating $450/copy of their ~$50 Flight Simulator which
contains Jepp navdata? And they're then paying $500/year/copy of FS
sold thereafter?

Using a "game" as a comparison to my statement was quite funny.. at least
when I thought you were trying to be..

So.. when you purchase Microsoft Flight Sim you get monthly data updates
from Jepp for free? and current, legal for flight data? Crap! I'll make a
trip to CompUSA tomorrow..

Yes, Jepp charges a software Vendor a flat fee of $500 which includes a year
of updates for each product they sell regardless if the user wants cycle
updates or not. That is why you don't see many vendors offering Jepp
outside of the big manufacturers that can afford to negotiate better deals
through volume sales.

Dennis

"Peter Clark" wrote in message
...
What's funny? You're the one who made the statement that Jep charges
the software publisher 500/yr/copy recurring for each copy of the
database (apparently regardless of updates or whether the end user
continues to use the program) and I asked a logical question since MS
uses Jepp data and doesn't have a price point anywhere near $500/copy.

And the $800 or so /yr for updates I pay King for my 172's Jepp
derived KLN94 and MFD datacards isn't because I'm a simmer.

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 22:59:02 GMT, "Dennis" wrote:

LOL!! Flight Simmers crack me up sometimes..

Dennis

"Peter Clark" wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 12:30:59 GMT, "Dennis" wrote:

I highly doubt this will actually take effect.. This WILL cause many
companies their business, and its a safe bet the number will be in the
thousands. Jepp is already known for raping people on prices, they want
$500 a year to include their data in your software per copy! Not to
mention
it will cost lives because people simply will fly with outdated data due
to
the high costs Jepp charges.

So Microsoft is eating $450/copy of their ~$50 Flight Simulator which
contains Jepp navdata? And they're then paying $500/year/copy of FS
sold thereafter?

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 03:57:37 GMT, "Dennis" wrote:

Using a "game" as a comparison to my statement was quite funny.. at least
when I thought you were trying to be..

So.. when you purchase Microsoft Flight Sim you get monthly data updates
from Jepp for free? and current, legal for flight data? Crap! I'll make a
trip to CompUSA tomorrow..

Yes, Jepp charges a software Vendor a flat fee of $500 which includes a year
of updates for each product they sell regardless if the user wants cycle
updates or not. That is why you don't see many vendors offering Jepp
outside of the big manufacturers that can afford to negotiate better deals
through volume sales.

OK, so leaving out the arrangement that Microsoft has with Jepp (it
would be nice if they'd make some sort of update arrangement though,
but I digress)...

So, you're saying the system is such that Jepp makes the product
vendor give them a list of subscribers and charges them
$500/user/year? Seems like King has a huge discount then at $380/yr
for KLN94 downloaded updates, which is their retail price after they
get and then post-process the data for their equipment, verify it, and
get it on the website (which also has to include some markup for the
cost of processing and releasing the file, having people who handle
1800 calls, etc). How does Jepp handle the situation of people who
only update randomly, or quarterly? Get a list monthly? The King
system basically boils down to "you have x downloads, use them
whenever you want - consecutively, every other month, once a year for
the next x years, whatever". It seems to me that a license fee per
product would be more sensible for Jepp "we'll license you to make
updates available for product x, $20k/year please" (a-la what I was
assuming with the Microsoft deal - one time fee, regardless of copies,
or even what a normal vendor software update arrangement would be -
a/la Cisco) rather than the nightmare of attempting to administer a
system of a per-cycle/per-user fee, where it seems the vendor will be
charged even if the end user doesn't collect their update, but I
admittedly have no knowledge of the internal workings of a Jepp source
electronic data license, I haven't had to try and license with them
for source data rather than the packaged end-user product.

I have no qualms with the view (and fully agree) that they're
expensive, monopolies are bad, and since they get their data from the
source originators (like the NOS, etc) we should also, at a minimum,
be able to get directly from NOS in an electronic form the source US
data for low/no cost similar to the way they distribute approach
plates now - free website, pretty cheap CD-ROM subscription, or pretty
cheap printed book.

Dennis

"Peter Clark" wrote in message
.. .
What's funny? You're the one who made the statement that Jep charges
the software publisher 500/yr/copy recurring for each copy of the
database (apparently regardless of updates or whether the end user
continues to use the program) and I asked a logical question since MS
uses Jepp data and doesn't have a price point anywhere near $500/copy.

And the $800 or so /yr for updates I pay King for my 172's Jepp
derived KLN94 and MFD datacards isn't because I'm a simmer.

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 22:59:02 GMT, "Dennis" wrote:

LOL!! Flight Simmers crack me up sometimes..

Dennis

"Peter Clark" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 12:30:59 GMT, "Dennis" wrote:

I highly doubt this will actually take effect.. This WILL cause many
companies their business, and its a safe bet the number will be in the
thousands. Jepp is already known for raping people on prices, they want
$500 a year to include their data in your software per copy! Not to
mention
it will cost lives because people simply will fly with outdated data due
to
the high costs Jepp charges.

So Microsoft is eating $450/copy of their ~$50 Flight Simulator which
contains Jepp navdata? And they're then paying $500/year/copy of FS
sold thereafter?