Ones and Zeros

I tried the iPad with the ForeFlight app for charts, plates, and airport information on a recent IFR flight.  ForeFlight is an app that for $75/year subscription will supply you with all the charts, plates, and airport information cached on your iPad.  This post is a review of a flight I did with the iPad/ForeFlight combination for charts and plates.

I took an IFR flight that happened to be to CHO from JYO, the return was via OHM.  I was either in the clouds or on top of them for the majority of the flight.  I did my pre-flight brief and filed my flight plan with FF (the iPad/ForeFlight combo).

The brief worked well, the usual DUATS information was broken into separate sections in a table view.  I needed to tap on a section to read it, then tap the back button, and tap the next section I wanted to see.  I would have liked a “next” button to tap on, it would have been smoother.  Not a major issue though, but a “nice to see”.

The flight plan was there in ATC when I called in - so that worked.  I set FF to show my flight plan (that I’d entered in earlier in planning) on the low-enroute chart.  I could have selected high-enroute or a sectional/TAC.  When the iPad has cell reception, I can get radar, satellite, current conditions, etc.

I have the Apple iPad case which has a kind of microfiber coating, it doesn’t want to slide off my knee and stays more stable than my paper charts did.  FF tracked my position, heading, and altitude and showed me a moving map of where I was on the chart and with respect to my flight plan.  The icon that FF used for my plane looks like a larger plane - might be cool thing to be able to change that.

Coming out of JYO the first waypoint is STILL, but ATC turns you before that which I appreciated.  I ended up on radar vectors to CSN, my next waypoint.  I found that the usual buttonology management of the panel GPS was doubled as I had to mess with FF as well.

After CSN instead of going to WITTO, I was redirected to KENNI for the ILS.  More buttonology.  I kept wanting to tap on the airport on the map screen to bring up the airport information.  The approach plates are listed with the airport information in FF.  To get from the chart to the airport the easier way is to 1) make sure the flight plan is showing (tap the flight plan button on the chart screen if not), 2) scroll if necessary to show the airport on the flight plan, 3) tap the airport code on the flight plan.

I’d prefer to just tap the airport on the chart screen.  I can do that for VORs, NDBs, airports, fixes and arbitrary locations to add to my route.  But I can’t get to the airport screen that way.  This was the worst issue I had with FF.

When I broke out at the top of the clouds on the way down to CHO, and even in the clouds, I had a big glare problem with the iPad screen.  I prefer to buy matte screens, but the iPad doesn’t come with one.  While a glossy screen is brighter, it also reflects much more easily creating glare problems.  And with my sunglasses (yes, I had to wear sunglasses in a cloud, it was that bright) the screen wasn’t visible at all.

I found out later that my polarized sunglasses lined up with the iPad polarization in the vertical position to block the screen view.  That’s my problem, but in any case the glare is an issue.  I’m going to look into a covering for the screen to reduce glare.

The battery life was great.  After my leisurely flight planning and preflight brief, a return flight planning and brief, and a 2.7 hour flight, I’d used just half the battery capacity.  More than enough for my purposes, especially since charging is fast.  You can also get a car charger cable for in-flight use too.

I found the iPad/FF combination was, aside from the issues above, very usable.  I need to practice the buttonology, and I hope ForeFlight adds a direct way from the chart to the airport screen.  But there are some things I liked better: Everything was there and available.  The iPad stayed put more easily that paper charts and plates.  And it’s cheaper than paper charts.  I didn’t have the heat shutdown problem that some have reported, and I don’t fly high enough to cause problems with the GPS.

It’s been a while.  I don’t talk about my day job and don’t plan to start, but it’s part of the reason it’s been a while since I’ve posted.  Here’s a short vignette.At a meeting recently there were nine people in attendance, seven of us physically present and two called in to the meeting.  We’re discussing the project that I and one other engineer are working on  (both of us are there in the meeting).   The other engineer is part-time. He’s also very experienced but near retirement and as the titular head of the technical effort handles more of the official paperwork.  Both the ideas behind this project and the large majority of the code are mine.  So the critical path for almost all of the actual technical work runs through me.The nine of us in the meeting were from the client (government agency) and my day job’s company.  We spent over an hour and a half discussing what this project is to do.  Essentially we were discussing what the next six months of my working life and what time I would be able to have off and what I expected to be able to accomplish.I’m not important enough that this many people need to plan my activities.  Something’s wrong when seven people are managing two workers.  And we’ve got yet another meeting today too.

Ah.  That’s the problem.  I’ve been chasing a bug lately, it works fine in the sim but the feature doesn’t work on the iPhone. Turns out the simulator isn’t a perfect simulation.  We all know about the obvious stuff: no GPS for example.  But on application termination with iOS 4 there’s a little detail that can be important:An app exits on the simulator by first calling first applicationWillResignActive then calling applicationDidEnterBackground on the application’s delegate.But on the phone, we get first applicationDidEnterBackground, then applicationWillTerminate. In both cases this is when the home button is pressed. If you kill the app with the debugger then it’s just killed and none of these gets called at all.This isn’t a big deal till you’ve got some data that you want the app’s delegate to save when the app goes background or is quitting.  This is also one of the behaviors that changes in iOS4 too with the advent of multitasking.  Unfortunately the Apple docs on the application delegate don’t go into the order the delegate calls are made, nor the variations between the sim and phone.And, since the test phone is a 3G, it may behave differently on a multitasking phone like a 3GS or 4 model.Sometimes, testing is the only way to find out what really happens.

Well, not my first.  But my first attempt at a publicly-released app in the iTunes app store.  This is a small app about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  It was a fast development process of only a week, with a one-day beta process.

Thanks to my beta testers (family) for their quick response and helpful comments.  I chose beta testers for their ability to respond quickly due to the short product cycle.  My wife did wonderful work in alpha testing, content editing, and UI testing.  This app is significantly approved by her contributions.

The iTunes submission process isn’t really as clear as I would like.  That’s ok for me, I’ve worked it out now and understand the process.  It does raise the bar some though!  But it’s been a long week and I’m glad it’s done now.

Now I’ll see what the Apple app store approval process is like.  I’ve been hearing it’s faster and easier than it used to be, that’s good news.   I’ll let you know what happens.