flight sotware for iphone?

I am now the proud owner of an iPad mini 4, and now I need to get a GPS receiver so I can use IGlide. It looks like there are two options. Sky pro xgps160 (uses blue tooth), or bad elf gps for lightning connector. Does anyone have any experience with these?

On Tuesday, July 12, 2016 at 10:21:54 PM UTC-4, wrote:
I am now the proud owner of an iPad mini 4, and now I need to get a GPS receiver so I can use IGlide. It looks like there are two options. Sky pro xgps160 (uses blue tooth), or bad elf gps for lightning connector. Does anyone have any experience with these?

I have the Garmin GLO and it works very well. 12 hour battery life, you can pair more than one device to it and it also receives GLONASS. Connection is wireless, so you can position the GLO where it can see the sky all the time and put the phone where you want.

I've also found that the iPhone 6 GPS works pretty darn well (east coast, U..S. flying)- within a couple hundred feet at worst, usually much better. Using just the iPhone I have lost the GPS signal from time to time -pretty infrequently, and it always reacquires after a few seconds.

In fact, the phone GPS works so well, I would only use the external GPS for flights I wanted to log accurately or lengthy XC flights that you want a stable GPS signal for. The advantage of the external GPS is, of course, you have two receivers instead of one. I'll point out that the glider I'm flying also had a 302 in it as a completely separate backup. The GLO has no screen on it, so you couldn't rely on it to give you heading info if you iPhone quit for some reason (say, it overheats because of sunlight and shuts down for awhile to cool off). If the Bad Elf has a way to guide you to a waypoint and you have no backup GPS device, that would swing the balance for me to the Bad Elf.

And +1 for iGlide. EASY to use and plenty of features. Once you swallow the Pro purchase price, you don't need to look back and each time you upgrade your phone, you get new hardware without needing to include new software cost in it. I've had no problems reading the screen in flight and use a suction cup mount from a GoPro with a phone holder for it.

I have added an external battery pack for the iPhone. I keep it in the side pocket and if the phone gets below 50%, I plug it in and it recharges the phone. Pretty simple. I've had no failures with the iPhone but that's the kind of thinking that lulls you into believing you'll *never* have a failure. I believe in planning accordingly, so always have backup systems (separate GPS and paper map) with me.

I ended up spending the extra bucks for the iPad cellular, which includes a GPS chip. Yesterday and today were the first flight tests for IGlide on the iPad mini 4. And wow is it fantastic!

Task planning, including in flight decisions about how deep to fly into a cylinder, is a breeze. You just touch the way point, move it, and IGlide instantly recalculates the task distance and ETA to finish. The map is easy to read, very detailed, and scalable in any proportion.

The only wrinkle that I didn't like is that the "glide ratio" to a waypoint is the ratio that puts you in the ground there, not the ratio that puts you there at your safety altitude. My other minor complaint is that I does not recognize a start out the top of the start cylider. But you can start the task manually, so it's a minor inconvenience, but I suppose the joy of starting out the top of the cylinder makes up for that!

Overall it's really fantastic. Maybe I'll be able to retire that old pocket pc after all.

On Sunday, July 17, 2016 at 8:09:07 PM UTC-7, wrote:
I ended up spending the extra bucks for the iPad cellular, which includes a GPS chip. Yesterday and today were the first flight tests for IGlide on the iPad mini 4. And wow is it fantastic!

Task planning, including in flight decisions about how deep to fly into a cylinder, is a breeze. You just touch the way point, move it, and IGlide instantly recalculates the task distance and ETA to finish. The map is easy to read, very detailed, and scalable in any proportion.

The only wrinkle that I didn't like is that the "glide ratio" to a waypoint is the ratio that puts you in the ground there, not the ratio that puts you there at your safety altitude. My other minor complaint is that I does not recognize a start out the top of the start cylider. But you can start the task manually, so it's a minor inconvenience, but I suppose the joy of starting out the top of the cylinder makes up for that!

Overall it's really fantastic. Maybe I'll be able to retire that old pocket pc after all.

There is a quirk in iGlide that you should be aware of when flying AAT type tasks. The statistics including finish ETA etc. will show be based on: the your excursion into the cylinder, or the actual waypoint, whichever is furthest. If you turn short of the actual waypoint, the statistics will be off.. The way to fix this is to move the waypoint within the cylinder by touching and dragging it to a point closer than your actual turn. iGlide will then calculate the furthest excursion and snap the waypoint to that location.

Another quirk is that until you exit the cylinder, statistics for the rest of the task are calculated assuming you have not yet reached the waypoint and still need to. For example if you have a large cylinder around the last waypoint before the finish, as you glide towards the finish (but still inside the cylinder) you will see the altitude and time required to finish increase, even though you are getting closer to it. As soon as you exit the cylinder, it is all updated correctly. This is mainly a problem only on large cylinders.

I mention these things not to detract from the program which I think is the best out there, but because they are not well documented in the manual and can be confusing until you understand what is going on.

jfitch...I look forward to your review of the "new" WinPilot Live.

Jerry posted" We have put a lot of effort into making WinPilot more stable." I certainly hope this is true as stability is more important than all the new whistles and bells.

Regarding the second quirk...

"Another quirk is that until you exit the cylinder, statistics for the rest of the task are calculated assuming you have not yet reached the waypoint and still need to. For example if you have a large cylinder around the last waypoint before the finish, as you glide towards the finish (but still inside the cylinder) you will see the altitude and time required to finish increase, even though you are getting closer to it. As soon as you exit the cylinder, it is all updated correctly. This is mainly a problem only on large cylinders."

Once you have decided you are headed to the next cylider (but are still in the previous one), you can push the route button, then select the next cylinder and "activate" it. This tells iGlide you are done with the cylinder you are in and are headed to the next one. Once you activate the cyluder you are heading to iGlide marks the cylinder you're still in green, and then it recalculates the time and altitude required.

On Monday, July 18, 2016 at 3:57:31 PM UTC-7, wrote:
Regarding the second quirk...

"Another quirk is that until you exit the cylinder, statistics for the rest of the task are calculated assuming you have not yet reached the waypoint and still need to. For example if you have a large cylinder around the last waypoint before the finish, as you glide towards the finish (but still inside the cylinder) you will see the altitude and time required to finish increase, even though you are getting closer to it. As soon as you exit the cylinder, it is all updated correctly. This is mainly a problem only on large cylinders."

Once you have decided you are headed to the next cylider (but are still in the previous one), you can push the route button, then select the next cylinder and "activate" it. This tells iGlide you are done with the cylinder you are in and are headed to the next one. Once you activate the cyluder you are heading to iGlide marks the cylinder you're still in green, and then it recalculates the time and altitude required.

Thanks for that tip - I thought it might be the case but was afraid to try it while actually flying a racing task for fear of losing the stats.

One thing to be careful of is if you are viewing the active racing route, don't hit "Clear" unless you mean it - the route is cancelled and all statistics are immediately lost. They really should have a confirm dialog for that one so it doesn't happen by accident.

wrote on 7/17/2016 8:09 PM:
Yesterday and today were the first flight tests for IGlide on the
iPad mini 4. And wow is it fantastic!

How good is the iPad mini 4 display in the cockpit, compared to the
iPhone 6 (for example)? I have an older iPad mini, and it's usable but
marginal, but my iPhone 6 is very good. For my Phoenix, however, the
iPad mini size fits easily and would be a better choice - if the display
on the mini 4 is better than my old mini.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"

https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Dec 2014a" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm

http://soaringsafety.org/prevention/...anes-2014A.pdf

The brightness is about the same as my iPhone 5, but the display is much larger which makes everything easy to see. It's somewhat brighter than my old compaq pocket pc.

However, it need to be mounted so that you're viewing it close(ish) to vertical. I tried the iPad sitting on my leg, and I couldn't see anything. But when mounted facing me, it was great. It does not need to be at exactly 90 degrees, but laying it down on your leg (while you are reclined) doesn't work.

Another thing about the iPad is that it allows for 8 info boxes across the top and another 8 across the bottom. With the phone I got 8 total. Also the menus work better on the iPad.

If you go with the iPad, you'll need the cellular version. Or you can use the wifi only version with an external Gps. You don't need cellular service, just the cellular version of the iPad.

On Monday, July 18, 2016 at 9:00:37 PM UTC-5, Eric Greenwell wrote:
wrote on 7/17/2016 8:09 PM:
Yesterday and today were the first flight tests for IGlide on the
iPad mini 4. And wow is it fantastic!

How good is the iPad mini 4 display in the cockpit, compared to the
iPhone 6 (for example)? I have an older iPad mini, and it's usable but
marginal, but my iPhone 6 is very good. For my Phoenix, however, the
iPad mini size fits easily and would be a better choice - if the display
on the mini 4 is better than my old mini.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"

https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Dec 2014a" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm

http://soaringsafety.org/prevention/...anes-2014A.pdf

I have an iPad Mini 4 in my Phoenix. It is totally readable. I have been using the free version of the FltPan Go app to give me a moving map sectional display. A great redundancy for the Dynon Skyview system, particularly if you are flying around Class B airspace, where you need to see a bigger picture than what you can easily see on the 7" Dynon display.