Electronic Flight Bags

[Polar742]

I'm involved with the evaluation of the EFBs at our company. Basically, the equipment is picked out, and I get to see how to break (use) it.

So, I appeal to the JC community to help out, if you don't mind.

For those of you that use EFBs, I'd like some input to the following:

1) What type of operation are you (91, 135, 121)
2) What brand do you use
3) Is it Class I, II or III and is the software A, B or C?
4) What does it do well?
5) What do you wish it did?
6) What stuff did you find that you thought was "gee-whiz", but really find useful now?
7) Most importantly, what features do you wish it had that it doesn't


Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[minitour]

I've got a Fujitsu P1610 tablet PC (touch screen) running JeppView (actually NavSuite, but that's not important). The GPS is a Garmin something...it's no bigger than a pack of sigarettes. It sits up on the glare shield and connects to the EFB via bluetooth. The windows aren't electrically heated, so I get a good signal.

1) What type of operation are you (91, 135, 121)
I'm Part 91 mostly, but I contract to a 135 operator for some stuff. They're not EFB approved, but the POI says we can use anything we want for situational awareness as long as we "use the paper charts like the op spec says"...whatever that means. I guess that means have it out and on the yoke clip?

2) What brand do you use
Jeppesen software.

3) Is it Class I, II or III and is the software A, B or C?
Class I and not sure on the software. It's a "COTS" system, I think that's Class I and A software. It's just charts. I know of at least one operator using the system 91 & 135 and they're completely paperless. They use the EFB for performance, W&B, charts, weather, AFM, GOM, etc. So it is possible. They may even use it for checklists.

4) What does it do well?
I guess my favorite feature is updates. Insert CD into drive. Click, click, click. Done. No more filing jepps. It even makes Q Service seem like a waste of time.

5) What do you wish it did?
I'd like to see the ability to turn on JeppView then the bluetooth. It would make the battery last longer. We could shut the unit down in flight, power it back up when needed and then re-connect the bluetooth. As it is now, if we do shut it down we have to close JV, re-connect the GPS, then re-start JV to get ships position again. That's kind of a pain. More of an inconvenience than any real "trouble". If you have the power outlets installed and you can plug it in, this would be a non-issue.
Performance and W&B would be nice, but that's just because I get tired of looking through the charts and pulling out the graph paperwork, then writing down the W&B information 4 times before takeoff. I know the hardware can do this, but the software is limited to charts.

6) What stuff did you find that you thought was "gee-whiz", but really find useful now?
Ships position. It's not that big of a deal in the air, but low vis, busy on ground freq and it's really nice to be able to zoom in on the airport diagram to see where you are and make sure that's where you should be. That's saved my bacon once or twice in the year-plus that I've had it.
They recently changed the software up. You can now pick to have a "standard Jepp EFB" which will show you enroute position, enroute charts (including VFR charts if you so choose), an FMS option, etc. or you can just have it be a "terminal chart viewer". I've changed it to just that.

I think both options have their advantages, but I'm going to stick with the chart viewer for now. Certainly with the "standard EFB" you get more information including the ability to lay the approach chart & airport diagram out on the enroute chart. You then just "fly the arrow on to the approach" (of course, you can't use this unit as a primary nav source, so you'd obviously follow your needles as appropriate).

I do think with the terminal chart viewer selected you de-clutter it a bit. There's no more "planning" page. You can pick a few airports before you start your day, and then cycle through the charts as you need. If I were flying in a plane without a GPS/FMS, I'd go back to the standard EFB mode for more Positional Awareness information.

7) Most importantly, what features do you wish it had that it doesn't
See #5

Hope that helps a little bit. If there's any other questions you have, just drop me a PM and I'll do my best to answer them.

-mini

 

[SteveC]

We are 135 and use Fujitsu tablets, not sure of which model, put together by ADR. The older units came with 0.5G RAM, they have been upgraded so now all units have 1G RAM. Our units all came from Bombardier in new aircraft.

I don't know what Class or software level. We are not approved for paperless cockpit.

Here's a synopsis:

Our EFBs are in our Lear 40XRs. There isn't much room in the cockpit, so it can be difficult to get the tablet in a position that is usable. The Lear yoke is always in the way, no matter where we move the seats. Strike 1: not easy to physically use the unit in our aircraft.

Our Lears have XM radio, so the EFBs are hooked in to WxWorx weather service. This is, by far, the best part about the units for us. The ability to download current weather during a trip is very useful.

Almost none of our pilots ever bother with JeppView on the tablets. The software is non-intuitive and runs slowly on our tablets. We print paper copies of Jepp charts for all intended airports on the current trip before we leave the office so we don't need the JeppView for normal use, and if we need to divert, or change itineraries it is easier to pull out the NOS books than to fire up the EFB and wait and wait and wait for JeppView. Besides, the problem of limited room in the cockpit makes it difficult to use the EFB in any practical way while in the terminal environment.

Contributing to our non-use of JeppView is the fact that our units are not hooked up to a GPS, so we don't have present position shown on the charts. I know that our previous chief pilot spent a fair amount of time with a bluetooth GPS receiver but was unable to get it to work consistently in our aircraft. Probably because of the heated windshield. This is one area that would make our units more useable.

We have performance software loaded on the EFBs (UltaNav), and this gets a fair amount of use by the guys. It's nice to have an easy way to check second segment numbers in mountaneous areas, but some of the guys use it everywhere for calculating V speeds, take-off and landing distances, and such. I tend to only pull it out for the more difficult airports, but then again I don't normally turn the thing on unless it looks like it's going to be a bad weather day. The QRH in the Lear is pretty user friendly so the old fashioned way of getting numbers works just as well for me.

We used to have two EFBs in each cockpit, but have since pulled one out. They get used so little, and the cockpits are so tight, that just having one unit onboard at a time works just fine for us. It's easy to share the unit when looking at the weather.

The way that the USB cable plugged into the unit left the cord sticking out and prone to being knocked against things. We had a spate of USB port failures on the units because of this. Our MX guys found a neat little universal joint style USB connector that allows us to route the cables tight against the end of the unit, then inside of the carrying case, and out the opposite end so they are much less likely to damage the connectors.

I'm not a big fan of the updating process. Our units do not have a built in CD drive, so we either have to bring the EFB inside and update JeppView wirelessly, or we make an update pack, install it on a USB memory stick, and send those out to the plane. Either way is a hassle. If we do the update pack thing, the desktop computer that we use has to have the same JeppView serial number software as the EFB. This means that we have a different desktop/notebook computer to match up with each aircraft. If I have to do multiple update packs I have to do it at different computers! I suppose the third option is to hook up a portable CD drive to the EFB while it's in the aircraft and use a disk to update, but I might as well just bring the unit inside as go through that hassle.

Our units have a power cord and a USB cord (for the XM radio connection) hard wired into the aircraft. I really wish that we had a location to mount (and use) the units in our airplanes. That, and more user friendly chart software, and we would use our EFBs a lot more. As it is, there are many, many flights where the units never even get turned on.

 

[seagull]

I'm involved with the evaluation of the EFBs at our company. Basically, the equipment is picked out, and I get to see how to break (use) it.

So, I appeal to the JC community to help out, if you don't mind.

For those of you that use EFBs, I'd like some input to the following:

1) What type of operation are you (91, 135, 121)
2) What brand do you use
3) Is it Class I, II or III and is the software A, B or C?
4) What does it do well?
5) What do you wish it did?
6) What stuff did you find that you thought was "gee-whiz", but really find useful now?
7) Most importantly, what features do you wish it had that it doesn't


Thanks in advance for the help.

OK, not all of this is readily available to me at home, but going from memory (and I'm sure your Ops can call our Ops for more info, as I believe we are the first carrier fully certified for this).

1. Part 121.
2. Navaero
3. Class III, believe software is B. We use LIDO charts, which provide far more features than is possible with Jepp currently.
4. it's pretty impressive, plus has all the aircraft performance, wt and balance, flight manuals, etc., in it as well.
5. Still waiting FAA approval for real time position. FAA is still concerned about it for an air carrier.
6. Not sure anything qualifies for this.
7. See number 5. Most of what I want is pending, such as linking to the FMS, etc. FAA AEG is just not that fast, even with our own DERs.

 

[Polar742]

Guys thanks so much for taking the time to write so much for me. I just want to make sure I don't miss out on any little highly useful features that might be layered or hidden from us.

I appreciate your help.