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Comment by heelix | Hacker News Reader

The nice thing with the digital charts is you can print out a cut up bit of your cross country, scribble it all full of notes and frequencies, and chuck that page of the flight behind you when it is no longer relevant. A nice, zoomed in sectional and entirely disposable.

The actual files are here, for those who are interested. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/digital_...

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Looks like your comment was enough to send the poor FAA server into meltdown - all I get is speeds like "250 Byte/s - 9,9 KB von 155 MB".

Man I wish Canadian charts were free. You've gotta buy them as paper charts. There's no digital download let alone a free digital download.

Why not just use an EFB?

Because batteries die, stuff overheats and shit hits the fan, sometimes. I always carry backup paper charts even if I am flying with a EFB and a glass cockpit.

personally I carry a second efb (eg. my phone) and spare power banks rather than try to deal with a mess of paper charts. it's certainly cheaper than trying to keep my sectionals up to date (which, now that I think about it, I don't think I've actually bought since I took my private checkride).

Yeah as much as I love the graphic design of VFR sectionals, I have to admit it’s an end of an era of sorts. ForeFlight etc. with proper backup devices have the entire database at your fingerprints at all times. And it’s a good thing, anything that makes GA easier/safer is a welcome change.

ever heard of software bugs and gps jammers? Your second EFB idea is still having a common point of failure, the E.F.B. And being a software engineer, I really do not trust software. :)

GPS availability for the tablet/phone is a nice-to-have and not absolutely necessary for using an EFB. Intentional GPS jamming by the military happens from time to time in many parts of the US (esp. Socal) and it doesn't prevent people from using EFBs.

Personally, I fly with two EFB apps on my ipad and a backup on a separate device. The avionics in the airplane is probably a lot more robust than either device as well.

Having ff on an ipad and phone is really not having a “common point of failure”

You do you, but I find relying on a second device (third really, the plane has gps and nav radios) and battery backups much easier than buying a new chart supplement and a bunch of charts every 2 months. Plus I have all the approach plates for every airport …

trying to duplicate the functionality that I get from my setup with paper charts and plates is just practical.

> Having ff on an ipad and phone is really not having a “common point of failure”

The “common point of failure” is GPS, which does have regular local/regional outages. Your instruments may be able to use VOR/DMEs, and hopefully you're able to use the VOR MON:

* https://www.flyingmag.com/flying-the-mon/

* https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/acf/medi...

But if you're relying on a GPS approach, you may be SOL (many places don't have ILS, and only visual and GPS).

MON just means that there are a certain number of VORs that aren't going to be decommissioned. it's not a different kind of VOR. and they're decommissioning all of these VORs precisely because GPS is so reliable.

Having the same software app running on two devices is still subject to any faults in that software package (or their compilation of their database). I think it’s fair to call that a common point of failure.

You can judge that failure mode to be unlikely, of course, but you’re still making a judgment about an uncertainty.

For me, I do that too. The tablet is my primary and tied to my stratux for ADSB/weather/GPS for navigation and awareness.

Having a list of frequencies and VOR settings on the old junk I use, a marked up map is really handy. I like doing a loop around MSP (KFCM > KLVN > KSGS > KSTP > KANE > KMIC > KFCM) so a lot of frequency jumps. You can see what the EFB is more or less going to look like - so a sharpie on paper to supplement a 7" screen helps. Especially at night when everything is harder to read.

https://skyvector.com/?ll=44.86894876350407,-93.339629167906...

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