Dear Sky Demon team,

 

I have recently become aware of the Sky Demon products and am new to this forum.  I have read through the information on the website and looked back over many of the forum posts.

 

I’m looking for a portable aviation GPS and I must say, from what I have seen on the website, the clarity of presentation and the functionality of the Sky Demon products are impressive.

 

I have a few questions for which I would be grateful for your clarification.  Apologies if these are explained in any previous forum posts that I might not have read.

 

1.       Virtual Radar (excellent idea)
– is it possible to toggle virtual radar on and off the screen display during flight?

2.       Active flight plan page
- is there a screen/page available where you can see a table listing all the waypoints of the currently active flight plan, with ETA at the next waypoint and forward ETAs at all the following waypoints, including destination?
(I have seen that you can tap on the screen on a point forward of your current position and Sky Demon will display time/distance to that point.  This is a great feature but I also think that a table, as described above, is helpful in monitoring your flight progress and also giving ATC any requested forward ETAs.)

3.       VNAV
Does Sky Demon have the functionality to define a cruise climb/descent?  For example: “descend at 300fpm to 2000ft AMSL/AGL by 3nm before WaypointX” and then give alerts before starting climb/descent and before reaching the target altitude/height.

4.       HSI
I see on the website that version 2.1 will include an HSI view.  Excellent enhancement.  As I read it, this will give vertical guidance along a glideslope when on approach to a runway.  Will it also be possible to use the HSI view for vertical guidance during other flight phases? eg. climb/descent as mentioned in 3. above (VNAV).

5.       Is there a larger screen Sky demon mobile GPS in the pipeline?  If so can you please give any details.

6.       I am in Switzerland:
- is there any way to download a portion of the Swiss chart to get an idea of its content and resolution?
- Switzerland is a small country.  I may make flights into neighbouring countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Austria – even to UK.
How many country charts can be loaded into the Sky Demon mobile GPS at once?
(For a flight to UK at least 3 charts would be required – Switzerland, France, UK.)

Thank you and regards,

Mark

See below for my views re some of your queries.

David

Hi David,

 

Thanks for your reply.

I would add the following remarks from my side (in bold).

 

Cheers,

Mark

 

-  -  -  -  -  -

 

2.       Active flight plan page
- is there a screen/page available where you can see a table listing all the waypoints of the currently active flight plan, with ETA at the next waypoint and forward ETAs at all the following waypoints, including destination?
(I have seen that you can tap on the screen on a point forward of your current position and Sky Demon will display time/distance to that point.  This is a great feature but I also think that a table, as described above, is helpful in monitoring your flight progress and also giving ATC any requested forward ETAs.)

Not really  .. best to do aprint out of plog.

I take your point, however a printout will not update itself automatically during the flight.  I think that Garmin includes this functionality.  It would be a nice-to-have on SD too.  (But then there are some things SD can do that Garmin doesn't.)

5.       Is there a larger screen Sky demon mobile GPS in the pipeline?  If so can you please give any details.

Depends what you mean by large. A number of us are experimenting with a Navsgo unit from USA with 7"screen and 400nits brightness.

Interesting although I personally am not a fan of using a third party device since it has not been tested by SD and is unsupported.  I'm also not sure about the GPS capability for aviation use.  Call me old-fashioned but I'd be happier to buy the hardware from SD - if there were an option of a little bigger screen size (6" diagonal is probably about enough).

Re PLOG etc onscreen. If you keep tapping it cycles through the waypoints and gives ETA for each.

Re mobile device. Old fashioned can also mean expensive. 4.3 Chinese hardware is £40 GBP delivered Europe  .. similar device but not the same from SD is £579 which means you are paying £360 for the device (same resolution and similar brightness). Both run WinCE, run SD mobile out of the box (no hacking) and its difficult to test every feature anyway I suspect.

Regarding reliability etc, blue screen of death can strike anytime! Garmin are dedicated and robust. But 496 is £1000!!

AS ever you takes your choice.

D

Hi David,

Re PLOG etc onscreen. If you keep tapping it cycles through the waypoints and gives ETA for each.
I think that would do it. Thanks.

Re mobile device. Old fashioned can also mean expensive. 4.3 Chinese hardware is £40 GBP delivered Europe  .. similar device but not the same from SD is £579 which means you are paying £360 for the device (same resolution and similar brightness). Both run WinCE, run SD mobile out of the box (no hacking) and its difficult to test every feature anyway I suspect.  OK.  For 40 quid I could be persuaded to try.

AS ever you takes your choice.  Too true.

Regards,
Mark

Hello Mark,

1. Yes

2. This is something a couple of people have asked for but not yet enough to warrant our developing it. It'll happen if demand is sufficient.

3. You can't currently define cruise climbs and descents. Our new flight model allows this but it's not something we have added tot he product yet.

4. No, vertical guidance during flight is not currently a feature.

5. We have no announcements about this yet but we are constantly researching potential hardware partners.

6. All SkyDemon charts are free to customers and people evaluating the software.

Hello Tim,

Thank you for the answers.
There is still just one open point, as follows:

Is there any limit on how many country charts can be loaded into the Sky Demon mobile GPS at once?

Regards,
Mark

That depends what you mean by loaded. You can install all SkyDemon's charts onto a device at once, and the device inspects them and loads them into memory as necessary (either when you're within their boundaries or approaching rapidly). Most little devices don't have enough memory to load more than 2-3 charts at once, hence this clever automatic loading mechanism.

There's nothing to stop you installing (for instance) all European charts on to your device then flying across Europe. SkyDemon should load and unload the charts as necessary.

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the answer.  It made me think of one more question as follows:

If I purchase SkyDemon Plan (with Navigation) or SkyDemon Mobile then which charts can I use?  Do I get all country charts or just one?  If just one then what is the cost to purchase additional country charts?

Similarly with updates - are all country charts updated when I purchase the annual update?

Regards,

Mark

Hello Mark

There are two options of buying the excellent SkyDemon product.

1. Just buy the software licence, which activates the 30 day trial software into the fully operational version and then you can transfer it to a compatible device,

or

2. Buy the Skydemon mobile device with software preloaded which also  comes with a licence to activate the trial software.

In either case all your updates whether software or charts are included in the price. There is no restriction to how many charts you can use. The annual subscription is so that you can continue to recieve updates after the first 12 months have expired.

Neil