I considered myself lucky today. First I met one of the ardent supporters of SD face to face and briefly discussed SD compatible hardware. That was excellent and hope to repeat the experience without having to rudely rush away, as I did today due to time constraints.



However, the reason for writing here is to report my experience with the latest SD version 2.1.1, which I managed to put to the test in a flight, in marginal and IFR weather conditions. As we all expected SD passed with flying colours. here is my summary:



1. The colour moving map appeared enhanced, very clear to see and totally uncluttered.Ideal.

2. The options that we needed the most we found very easily acceptable, merely within a 2-4 touches of the screen. Changing from map to instrument was simply ideal. Go to nearest or more distant field was very simple and the selection list was intuitive.

3. The instrument screen we found virtually breathtaking, with its simplicity usability, clarity and above all accuracy.

4. Localiser, glideslope, and DME were very accurate and could easily have replaced our aircraft's own instruments. We would have liked to have tested these down to virtual ground level. I feel it would have shown it to be very reliable.

5. The colours of the instruments were well chosen and very clear. The ILS lines could be made thicker in future releases for better visibility inflight, particularly that screens in commonly used devices leave a lot to be desired.

6. My companion who is a seasoned flyer who survived two serious aeroplane accidents while doing low level aerobatics was extremely impressed with SD's accuracy.



Verdict: Full marks for SkyDemon and SkyDemon Team on a job well done. In my mind SD is by far the best software on the market. It has certainly come a long way since I subscribed first some 8 months ago. I am glad I did.

I would be interested to hear views from others.

Very Newbytheway

DurhamTeaseAirport

Thanks!

hice to hear.. and I hope to also try out 2.1.1. soon. which hardware did you use?



did you prefere the map view or the instrument view?




________________________________________________________________________
Galaxy Tab Plus 7 inch, NavsGo GO7100 as of March11

The GPS was a non-proprietory set from China. I tried a number of sets (six in total). I chose 5 and 6 inch screen sizes (ordinary screens) for he trial flight. The earlier (5") seemed o fit better in my cockpit, bought from chinavasion.com with a swivel metal base. Satellte Aquisition as well as the pocessor speeds were the the main deciding factors.

The moving map was used in the cruise. Simulated Instrument departure and actual IFR arrival with vectors to the ILS, were performed, on the SDs Instrument pannel. Both aircraft instruments as well as those of SD were in complete 'harmony'.


Very Newbytheway

DurhamTeaseAirport

Just to highlight that changing to and from instruments was smooth. No hiccups whatsoever. In particular no crashes were encountered.

Very Newbytheway

DurhamTeaseAirport

Today I was able to try SD 2.1.1 on a Boeing 737 on a trip from Spain to the UK, during the cruise and approach to lading. It performed very well indeed. It did shut down twice. Once over France and a second time over the UK. However, I feel that was a factor of the set attempting to deal with two maps of two countries at the same time, France & the UK in this instance. My gut feeling is that this was mostly related to the set handling these maps rather than the software itself.

On approach to landing the instrument panel was remarkably accurate. The glide slope needle disappeared as expected at about 500 feet.

I must say that the ease and simplicity of changing between instrument and moving map screens was impressive. The set worked solidly for 3 hours on its native battery. It did not need an in-flight accessory power supply. I feel the remaining charge could have easily lasted a further 45 minutes.

Very Newbytheway

DurhamTeaseAirport

If your device only has 64Mb of RAM, it's likely that you will need to turn off roads and railways or it will crash when it tries to simultaneously load both the French and UK charts.

It naturally would. That particular device I used yesterday in the Boeing 737 has 128MB.

Very Newbytheway

DurhamTeaseAirport

That suggests that the relationship between available RAM and the crashes whilst simultaneously loading the UK and French charts isn't as clear as first believed...

I totally agree. Having said that the crashes (there were only two) occurred at the interface between the two maps. Once the set was restarted the second time everything ran smoothly from then. I dare say that the required map redrawing at 450Kts may have been another factor that exceeded the set capability at the interface. Again, you are right in the fact that the colour moving map was left on with all the bells and whistles (roads, terrain etc) showing, as usual. As expected there were frequent alarms about entering and exiting airways as well as wind-mill farms at the final approach stages. So it all worked very well indeed.

Very Newbytheway

DurhamTeaseAirport