EFB's and Older Flightdecks

[rice]

We're looking at going paperless in our 900B and was wondering what you FLOP's guys (or anyone else for that matter) use for equipment in the older aircraft? The boss wants me to "investigate all the options". Is it practical to hard mount it or do most of you use them in a knee board type fashion? His plan is to have two EFB's in the cockpit and with our onboard printer have the crews pre-print the Dep/Arr/Alt plates as we get familiar with whichever unit is chosen. Bottom line is, I know very little about the subject and a looking for some experienced /real world user advice.

Thanks!!!!!

 

[Gulfstream 200]

non built in EFBs (tablet type like Fujitsus etc..) fit nicely behind the seats of your DA900.

Pre-printing dests/alts/coast out area airports and keeping the EFBs handy seems to work well.

I dont think I would want a hard mount in a Falcon. Limited space as it is up there...might get in the way of the crossword puzzles or your steak or something...

 

[JetCapt69]

Jeppview

Flight Options uses a fujitsu unit to display the Jeppessen Jeppview charts. Since we have the older units, the screen is difficult to use in bright light situations. The newer units have a much better screen and that problem has been eliminated. We currently use these units like a knee board. We are testing a wireless printer that uses the infra-red port to print out hard copies of the approaches. This is required by our FSDO for 135 operations.

One thing for sure, it is nice when it comes time to update the charts. Nothing better than plug-n-play.

 

[FracCapt]

You don't want them hard mounted...several problems can stem from that. First, sometimes they are hard to read well in direct sunlight. If hard mounted, you can't really move them out of the sun...so you have to shield them from the sun while trying to read them/manipulate the chart. Second, if one of them fails, you may want to be able to pass the good one to the other guy to set everything up and call everything out for you. It's very simple to build a small box that they fit in that rests behind a seat, beside a seat, etc...wherever there is room. Just make sure it's protected - it's too easy to slam a seat into it if they sit behind the seat with no protection. The Fujitsu models that we use are small, light, and easy to deal with...but, as with everything electronic, do have some problems. I flew 2 legs today...and had my Fujitsu lock up on me twice, both times requiring a 2 minute reboot. It definitely teaches you to plan well ahead, just in case it crashes. Of course, if you have printed charts as well, it's a non-issue.

 

[Diesel]

hey rice check your pm's