Pilots, have you thought about it yet? I mean, have you thought about the day when you must decide on how to maintain a current set of electronic approach plates when you get the urge to take to the skies? The day is coming, sooner than later, when paper approach plates will be a thing of the past. Long a pipe dream for pilots, the thought of having all your flying pubs neatly tucked away in an EFB (electronic flight bag), is now reality. A variety of platforms to host electronic pubs, from small laptops to the little handheld “palm” devices, are available today. With technological advances happening almost daily, more and more hardware companies are creating viable EFB solutions. However, all of these platforms have their pluses and minuses when it comes to usability. I could run down the list, screen size, sleep mode on screen, battery life, operating system issues, peripheral attachments, etc., etc….. But the clear choice currently for an optimized EFB is the Sony Portable Reader System (PRS-505). Best merits of the Sony, awesome screen! A company called E-ink created an LCD screen for the Sony Reader that only consumes power when it loads the page… Once the page is loaded, the battery use is very, very, very minimal. (Battery will last for days, not hours). This means that power supply for your EFB is not an issue. More importantly, the screen can actually be read in direct sunlight! Somehow, the E-Ink and Sony folks have created a device that is the next best thing to a printed document! Finally, the size and portability of the Sony Reader is outstanding. Like Baby Bear’s bed, the size of the Sony Reader is “just right.” Easily mountable on your airplane yolk or strapped to your kneeboard, the Sony Reader is very thin and unobtrusive… a perfect fit in a sometimes cramped flight deck.
So now that we have found the device to ‘carry’ our pubs around for us, how do we load them in the dang thing? Well, you can go out and download approach plates yourself from the Federal Government website and try to figure out how to format, compress, organize, and make them “Sony Reader friendly”, (a very daunting and arduous undertaking!) Or, you can find a company that has already done the hard part for you. I found two that actually specialize in doing this very feat. One is called Reader Plates … The other one is Pilot Plates .
When I thought about features essential to have for any electronic pubs, readability, usability, durability, portability, and availability come to mind. Also, how much will they cost vs. traditional paper products? Will I have tech support in case there is a problem? Is the company supplying them reliable? On all accounts, these issues are pretty comparable between both companies so I am going to focus the discussion on how their products compare from an operational standpoint.
While reviewing the two software companies currently supplying electronic pubs optimized for the Sony Reader, I sat down and wrote out my likes and dislikes with Reader Plates and Pilot Plates. I also did some “chair flying” to get a sense of how the products performed in the Sony Reader.
The first thing I noticed was how each product is presented in the Sony Reader. With Reader Plates, a book is created for each state which equates to approximately 130 books covering indexes, larger states split into two books, etc. You can select a book by state or go into the collections section where books are consolidated for each state. With Pilot Plates, there is only one book. When you go to the collections area, Pilot Plates is line selectable and from here you can choose your state. I found that having only one book allows you to better organize the Sony Reader in case you have other books in memory, (i.e. airplane pubs, FAA regs, operating instructions, casual reading for layovers, etc.)
So to pick your desired plate in Reader Plates, you enter the collections area from the main Sony Reader screen, select the appropriate state, select the grouping for your city, select the table of contents to view those cities, select the city, select the appropriate airport, select the procedure type, (approaches, arrivals, departures, etc), and then select what you want to fly. To pick your desired plate in Pilot Plates, you enter the collections area from the main Sony Reader screen, select the current Pilot Plates, select the appropriate state, select the table of contents where you can choose airports by city, name, or 3-letter identifier, select the airport, and then select what you want to fly. Both Reader Plates and Pilot Plates allow you to bookmark approach plates to view later from the main screen bookmarks section. This is a real plus for both companies. However, with Pilot Plates, not only can you bookmark individual plates, you can also bookmark the entire airport so that you can select any available procedure listed in case things change and you need to fly a different approach. This is also a great way to flight plan! You can bookmark all the airports along your route of flight and know that you are only a few clicks away from flying an approach to an alternate. With Reader Plates, you would have to bookmark all the approaches to those airports and try to find the right one from your bookmarks or go through the selection process all over again to find that plate.
I would also like to mention the point I made about selecting the “current Pilot Plates” in the previous paragraph. Because Pilot Plates is a consolidated book, you can have two complete collections on your Sony Reader. The authors have made it a point to let you know at a glance the effective date for the current plates because it’s right in the title. In other words, if you are flying on a trip and a changeover is about to happen on effective dates for pubs, you can have both a current set and the future set on your Sony Reader and select the appropriate ones when they become effective. Reader Plates does not give you this option.
Now that we have bookmarked our plates we need for our trip, let’s use them real time. Line selecting Reader Plates from the bookmarks section took some time to load. In fact almost 10 seconds from when I pushed to button to when the plate is loaded and was ready to view. With Pilot Plates, the same process took less than 3 seconds. This is OK when you are sitting around ‘chair flying’, but I would definitely consider this point when flying!
With an approach selected, Reader Plates solved the problem of the Sony Reader screen size limit by toggling from portrait to landscape modes using zoom and split screens. Personally, I don’t like to rotate my plates when flying… especially if they are mounted on a yolk or attached to your leg! With Pilot Plates, they solved this problem by maintaining portrait mode and using zoom and split screen as well. The difference again comes down to juggling and load speed. With Reader Plates, if you are shooting an approach and looking at the lower portion of the plate for the minimums, it takes almost 10 seconds to toggle back to the top halve to view go around instructions! With Pilot Plates, it took less than 4 seconds. Again, something to consider when you are in the soup and you have arrived at your decision altitude but still can’t see the runway and must execute a go-around!
One last thing about Pilot Plates that is hard to ignore. Somehow, the techs from Pilot Plates make it a point to enhance every plate so that the grey scale colors used showing elevations are omitted. This makes for a much easier plate to read on the Sony Reader! They also re-scan their plates at a much higher resolution for crystal clear readability.
To sum up the features of both products, I have created a chart for comparison:
While both Reader Plates and Pilot Plates provide great products for the burgeoning EFB industry, I have to give the nod to Pilot Plates. From how their product is organized in the Sony Reader to the clarity, speed, and ease of use, Pilot Plates is my choice for Electronic Publications.