Electronic flight bags

[girlsandbeer]

Hey folks Im looking to pick up an EFB set up for our company (1 airplane operation)... anyone have suggestions on where to look for the equipment and what brands are best? Any info is appreciated... thanks!

 

[Flyerjosh]

I too am in the same process... Don't know what your budget is (ours is about 30K plus installation), but so far out of all the products we've tried we like the EFBs from "Paperless Cockpit" the most.

We're looking at installing the Fliteserve C3 EFB with a wireless connection and interlinked to XM weather and datalink.

www.paperlesscockpit.com

 

[girlsandbeer]

Ya, 30k is probably out of our price range, we were kinda interested in just finding a very small laptop that has a reversable screen that might work as well. Anyone have experience with trying to do this? I know there are a lot of palm pilot type devices that already do the basics of this but wed like to stick to a tablet pc or EFB specific type set up.

 

[Headwind]

I was looking at anywhere map. Check out anywheremap.com. You can get all charts, moving map, and weather for appr. four grand. This is one EFB and you can print paper charts and use your lap top for a back up.
If anyone is now using this systen please let us know your feelings.

 

[prpjt]

For a unit with an integrated keyboard we use this one from Toshiba. The dimming sucks, the daylight visibility is marginal at best and it's too big as an EFB. http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?seg=HHO&coid=-26373

This one is better suited for EFB use and has good daylight visability. The size is good. It doesn't exaclty play well with Jeppview right out of the box. A good overall unit. http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_ls.asp

We use a program other than Jepp and it has worked fine with it.

Edit: This is just personal opinion, but for single pilot ops I found that any Class I unit is just too distracting. I tried for a while but went to always printing out charts. In our crew operation the EFB works great but I never reached a comfort zone with it when flying a single pilot plane.

 

[thatpilotguy]

We are using the HP TC-4200 tablet PC. We really like it. It doubles as our work PC's as well. We ordered the ultra bright screen option. It works really well. A couple of things that we ran into during set up was changing the "standby" options so that the lap top would not go into a standby mode when we had it up and running. We are also using a long life standby battery in stead of cockpit power. Our aircraft will be approved of IFS sometime late this year and we didn't want to spend all the money to put power up front and then spend more money to get the IFS installed. The standby battery last for 10 hours. More than enough time if you ask me.

I have also used the Flight Deck Resources HB770 http://www.flightdeckresources.com/products/skytab_770HB.asp

It's a great option if you don't have a lot of cockpit space. It's small and is a very simple set up. I think they are going for around $6,000. Not too bad of a price when you are talking going paperless. They also have refurbished units available at reduced prices.

If you have any questions, PM me. Hope this helps.

 

[Diesel]

I called flight deck resources and picked up two used units for like 1500 bucks each. They were demo's and kind of worn but I really didn't care.

I've got it hooked up with bluetooth and an xm reciever in the cockpit.

I'm about to switch over to wxworx as a weather provider since anywheremap is too Cessna 172.

 

[Rick1128]

We use the Fajitsu from ADR nad have been happy with it. It will also do other computing. We have the FG4000, however the FG7000 has better viewing and brightness capabilities. Updates are a snap, plug in the internet and update.

 

[SabreFlyR]

We use the Fajitsu from ADR nad have been happy with it. It will also do other computing. We have the FG4000, however the FG7000 has better viewing and brightness capabilities. Updates are a snap, plug in the internet and update.

Same here we have the 4000 and the 7000, both good units, I prefer the 7000 though I find the screen easier to see in bright sunlight.

 

[Diesel]

An interesting note. The reason I went with FDR is because at the time they were the only one installing touch screens that was able to use without the use of a special pen.

I flew a bunch of trips that had one that had to use a special pen to select everything. It drove me friggin nuts i kept losing the damn pen. You couldn't use your finger to select anything. It drove me friggin nuts.

Get one with a touch screen not a special pen you'll end up needing that damn pen on a low approach.