Ton,
Many thanks for this, I had exactly this problem and solution 2 solved it.

On a slightly different topic, does anyone know of an app that will give the satellite data such as you get with Garmins and Skymaps?

db

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Purely in the interests of furthering aviation research - and not because I, in any way, doubted your profound words of wisdom(!) - I switched my iPad on, loaded SD and then selected "Go Flying". Sure enough, the 'plane icon was yellow as it started to use its internal GPS. Then I took my iPad down to the garage under the house where I was sure it could not "see" any satellites, closed the garage door and the little 'plane icon turned red signifying a loss of GPS reception.

Then I switched on the bluetooth GARMIN GLO and noted that, although it paired instantly with the iPad, there was a flashing green LED signifying that it, too, had no GPS reception and the iPad SD 'plane icon still stayed red.

Then, I got the household's C-in-C to take the GARMIN GLO and stand outside the garage door. Lo and behold, the GARMIN GLO's green LED became solid - signifying that it had locked-on to some satellites - and the SD's 'plane icon turned yellow again!

Not only that, but when I instructed her to 'make like an aeroplane' outside the garage (without sound effects, of course!), the SD 'plane icon started moving about on the iPad screen! Fantastic!

Conclusion: An external GPS receiver bluetoothed to an iPad does override its internal one and you do, indeed, have to leave "Location Services" enabled!!

Thanks again!

Paul

Yep - quite simply, don't disable Location Services!

Please can someone help me?

I have a new iPad2 (iPad3?) with wi-fi and 3G. I have SD installed on it and it works brilliantly.

Today, I bought an external "Garmin GLO For Aviation" GPS receiver as I thought it might be even more accurate and reliable than the internal iPad GPS receiver as it uses GLONASS & GPS satellites.

It says in the manual that is has been made for the iPad / iPhone, etc, and I had no problems pairing it to my iPad with bluetooth. I get a solid blue LED telling me that it is talking to the iPad and a solid green LED telling me it has found out where it is!

So then I decided to disable the internal iPad GPS in order to use the external Garmin GLO GPS. Therefore, I went into Settings - Privacy and disabled Location Services. The problem now is that when I try to open Google Earth for instance, it just doesn't find my location and asks for Location Services to be turned on. When I open up Maps, it wants me to turn on Location Services to allow Maps to determine my location.

When I open up SD, it asks me to go back into Settings to turn on Location Services. When I don't do this and simply open up SD in Flight Mode, I see a red aeroplane icon instead of my usual yellow one meaning that my GPS hasn't found my location.

The iPad and GPS receiver are still bluetoothed to each other and I have tried all the solutions listed in this thread such as switching the iPad off & on, doing a hard reset and resetting everything back to factory defaults. Now, I am at my wits end!

Are there any 'boffins' out there who can see what I'm doing wrong ....or not doing?

Thanks.

Paul

I was about to follow up the suggestions I found on the web when I saw that there is a software update available for the Ipad (6.0.1). After upgrading the software and do some test, the issue seems to be solved..pffff

My first post also ... I have an iPad 2, WiFi only, recently upgraded to ios 6, and I just purchased a GNS 1000 external GPS today. The indicators on the GNS showed a good Bluetooth connection and GPS position received OK. iPad settings showed that the GNS 1000 was connected. However, I found that SkyDemon in flight mode was not recieving a signal, i.e. the aircraft symbol was Red. (To be precise, the symbol was Yellow for 5-10 seconds when entering flight mode, then went red permanently after that.)

I powered the iPad off and on and saw the same results. I spoke to Skydemon (who were REALLY helpful by the way) and they suggested a set of things I should try. Before starting on the suggestions, and for no particular reason, I turned the iPad off and on again and everything then worked - huh?

I can honestly say that nothing changed between the 2 power off/on cycles, so I can't see any logical reason it should have worked after the 2nd cycle, but that's what happened. I hope this helps someone out there.

ps I am evaluating the software, but now ready to buy. Great product and a great service guys, please keep doing what you're doing!

There seems to be an issue after upgrading your Ipad to IOS 6 and using your external GSP. Although it looks the connection is well established, it's not. This issues seems to have 3 solutions which I have not tried at the moment:



Solution1

Settings –> General –> Reset –> Reset Location & Privacy



Solution2

Go to the main iPad Settings app.

Tap on “Privacy”.

Tap on “Location Services”.

Toggle the top row to “Off”. This will turn off location services for all of your apps.

Reboot your iPad (press-and-hold the top button for 5 seconds, slide the red slider to power off, wait 5 seconds, then press the top button to turn your iPad back on).

Go back to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services and turn location services to “On” for your iPad. Also make sure that location services are set to “On” for ForeFlight Mobile.

Leave your iPad connected the Internet for a few hours (the screen can be off). This might not be necessary, but we have encountered a few rare cases where this fixed the problem



Solution3



This method requires resetting the settings on your iOS device back to the factory defaults, and then restoring your old settings from a backup. The good news is that if you follow our instructions carefully, you can fix this problem with no loss of data or settings on your iOS device.



PLEASE make sure you sync and back up your iOS devices via iTunes to your Mac/PC before attempting any of this. To back up your device:



1. Connect your iOS device to your Mac/PC using the USB cable.

2. In iTunes, click on the iOS device in the left pane. In the right pane you'll see a Backup section on the Summary tab. Make sure this is checked, and then click the Sync button in the bottom right corner of the screen.

3. You should then see a "Last backed up at..." with the current date and time.



Now, on your iOS device:



1. Go to the Settings app, and navigate to General > Reset.

2. Press the "Reset All Settings" button. You device will restart and show a progress bar. When it restarts again your device will be "wiped" but still have all the apps and contents (music/video) that it did before.



You can then verify the GPS accessory with the Maps or other 3rd party location-based app. You'll know it's working if the green LED on GPS starts flashing when the Maps or other 3rd party app is launched.



To restore the settings, reconnect your iOS device to iTunes. Right-click on the device in the left panel, and select "Restore" to reload the settings from your backup.

Hi hope this helps plus its my first post!

I bought a Bad Elf Pro external bluetooth gps. Having tried the Skydemon software trial version I took the plunge and bought a subsciption inc. navigation. Clutching my shiny new Bad Elf dongle and Ipad I went for my first flight on Sunday down to Goodwood for lunch with a friend.

However no matter what I tried, the Skydemon software would not work in flight mode with the Bad Elf Pro. On the point of giving up, I shut down all the active apps apart from the ones you need for Skydemon to run and then restarted the Ipad. Skydemon then started working perfectly with the Bad Elf dongle!

Skydemon easily outperformed the built in gps in the plane with both the ease of flight planning and its navigation features.

Well done all at Skydemon HQ and Bad Elf for an excellent bluetooth adapter!

Best Regards

Roy Pike

My experience of using an iPad2 on its internal GPS has been very good in an aeroplane with a perspex bubble canopy - so no metal between the iPad and the sky. But in our Arrow mounted on a kneeboard, it consistently loses it's GPS signal - so much that I bought a GNS1000 external bluetooth GPS receiver. The GNS1000 is the replacement to the earlier one with the slidey-switch issue. Since the chipset is WAAS/EGNOS enabled I expect its accuracy and reliability to be better than the internal one.

The internal GPS seems to work fine for most people. If it doesn't, you can always get an external one later.