Because Owning And Flying Your Beechcraft Can Be Done Safely AND For Less Money!
  CSOB EFB Options (Just Add Cheap Tablet PC & $13 NACO DVD or other IAP Options)

 

CSOB EFB: Are you sick of having tons of paper books of IAPs in your plane for the 4 or 5 states that you're going to fly over every time you take a trip?

 

Well here's something to consider:

 

  • Find a workable and low cost used tablet PC on Ebay or your favorite Computer Retailer. A nice used tablet like I found, the NEC Versa LitePad which weighs a whopping 2 lbs and is barely 3/4" thick! Usually seen on eBay for under $400.

 

  • WARNING: Are you thinking about a Garmin 696? Reports are the annual costs for software and database updates on the new Garmin 696 are a whopping $1,425! That's BEFORE an XM Wx subscription which would push this Garmin Cash Register to something in the range of $1,700 to $2,000/year out of your pocket! Flying 100 hours/year and that's $20/hour, that's nearly the hourly cost of operating your big bore Continental!!!!

 

  • Some people have found the Motion LS800 to work well for them in the cockpit. Another option might be the Samsung Q1 Ultra (9" x 5" x 1") weighing 1.5 pounds, selling new for about $880 at Sam's Club & specs HERE (used with a solid state hard drive by Beech Lister, Jeb, with success).

 

    

 

                                              NEC Versa Lite Pad                                                                                  Motion LS800*

 

 

  

                                                                                                                Samsung Q1 Ultra

* Overheating problems have been reported by LS800 users in high ambient temperature areas of the US.

 

 

  • Now go to the FAA NACO link HERE and purchase that $14 DVD which has every IAP, SID and STAR in the US. A year or 13 editions of this DVD is only $175! Load this DVD onto your CSOB tablet PC and presto, you've got a very nice chart solution for those once in a while surprises that can occur. It has an Internet Explorer access interface as well as a very nice Tablet Style interface for IAP searches and display selection.

 

  • The units with conventional hard drives should not be booted up above 10,000' due to potential head crash issues with these mechanical drives. If you can replace the hard drive with a solid state drive, that would be ideal. These units will not be stellar performers in direct sunlight, but I have found my NEC unit adequate for my cockpit use. Your definition of "success" may vary.

 

My personal IFR practice is to have full size pdf printouts from www.fltplan.com of the IAPs that I expect to need and a few others that might be alternates. Now I have my Sony ReaderPlates to back me up for that surprise stop or deviation when I would need a chart.

 

NEWS FLASH: See an amazing CSOB approach plate setup that uses the $275 Sony Reader + $10/month ReaderPlates subscription HERE

 

NEWS FLASH: Get FREE PDF IAPs at NACOmatic, created by Doug Ranz! An organized PDF download of the NACO approach plates, AFDs, SIDs and STARs HERE. Please leave a tip in his tip jar if you like his product.

 

Here's another idea, the Flight Cheetah FL190 at $1,495.

 

 

The Flight Cheetah training tutorial is HERE

 

Beech Lister and Bo owner, Scott N., provides this pirep on the FL190 Flight Cheetah:

 

To sum it up it costs half as much as a 696 for initial cost.If you update everything on the Garmin it will cost you $1400 a year, the FL190 is $298 which includes several things the 696 doesn't, such as approach overlays, holding patterns, DME arcs and approach altitude segments. It also displays sectionals, terminal charts and IFR enroute charts. as well as approach plates. It also will show the aircraft superimposed on all except the approach charts. It's half as thick and weighs half as much as the 696. It will also take the winds aloft information from the XM and give you your time enroute and fuel burn to destination in 3000 foot increments. On paper it kills the 696.

 

Here is my buddy's N35 mounting location for the Wx boxes of these kinds of systems:

 

 

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