We wish we could tell you that the days of schlepping a heavy flightbag stuffed with charts and plates is a thing of the past. We wish we could say that through the magic of modern cockpit technology, all the navigation data once available only on paper is now accessible at the touch of a softkey.
We also wish we had a Learjet for our weekend rides to the beach and a handsome trust fund to support it. Unfortunately, all these desires reside in the same place: The fat chance file. The paperless cockpit has been around the corner for five years but for the average GA owner, it remains a shimmering mirage; paper is still king.
Much has changed since we last examined chart systems six years ago. From Jeppesen, charts are available electronically-on the desktop and, just becoming available, in the cockpit. Thanks to the Web, you can download current government plates and database revisions for your GPS from Jeppesen.
Where NOS used to prepare and publish aeronautical charts, the FAA has now taken over the task. Last, Air Charts, a service which repackages the governments publications, has improved and simplified its offerings. Yet with all these changes, one thing remains the same: The serious IFR pilot still needs paper charts and plates in some form; the advent of electronic presentation hasnt altered that thus far.
Whats Needed
Ostensibly, for IFR, youre supposed to have current charts and current database revisions for your GPS. The dirty little secret is that many pilots ignore this requirement in varying degrees and, frankly, we don’t blame them. The risk of an accident, incident or violation due to out-of-date charts is miniscule but, of course, always possible. Real sticklers will want nav data thats as fresh as possible and we don’t blame them, either.
So we’ll examine how the various charting systems revise data. Are they painless? Awkward? Hopelessly complex? Or something in between.
Second, how readable is the chart typography? Jeppesen excels in this regard but the FAA chartmakers have improved recently, closing the gap. Next, how easy is the stuff to handle in the cockpit, with regard to binders, clips and overall size? For many pilots, this is the overriding issue.
Last, cost. If you have an IFR GPS (or two), youre spending big bucks to duplicate navigation data on your paper charts so the cost of those products matters. Who delivers the best value for the buck?
Jeppesen
Its no exaggeration to say that Jeppesen invented aeronautical charting as we know it; the government got into the act later. In both paper and electronic forms, Jeppesen offers a greater variety of chart products at various price points than any other source.
The basic Airway Manual service consists of a new content package with current plates and enroute charts designed to slip into a seven-ring binder. Jeppesen sells basic service for the entire U.S. or geographical areas such as the northeast, southwest and northwest or east or west of the Mississippi.
Plate revisions are sent every 14 days, along with updated enroute charts as needed and, an important note here, chart notams and/or critical notams already incorporated on the plates. (On government charts, incorporation of notams is slower and youre expected to buy a separate and expensive publication to keep abreast of these changes.)
Although it may be the most up-to-date charting system, the Jeppesen 14-day revision requires tedious insertion of new plates into the binders and the larger the coverage area, the worse the revision hassle.
Responding to complaints about this, Jeppesen introduced two services, Q-service and Express Service. Both work similarly. For a hefty price premium, Jepp starts the service with up-to-date contents and revises it with entirely new contents on a periodic basis. With Q-service, revision packets are sent every two weeks but filed en mass, rather than individually.
Every eight weeks, you get fresh new contents, tossing the old stuff, and the cycle begins anew. Lots of wasted paper, yes, but considerable savings in time. Q-service covers only the entire U.S. and at the princely price of $1336 a year, convenience aint cheap.
Express Service is similar to Q-Service but it breaks the country down into smaller geographic areas, so you can buy coverage for only limited areas, say the northeast, southeast and, in some cases, individual states. As with Q-service, new contents are sent every 56 days or, optionally, every 28 days, but there’s no two-week revision option.
To help far-ranging corporate pilots avoid backstrain, Jepessen also sells what it calls high-performance coverage, limiting the plates to runways of at least 4000 or 6000 feet.
This dramatically reduces paper volume in the binders. As with standard airway service, the high-performance option is updated every two weeks. Unlike the other chart services, Jeppesen tosses in lots of extras in standard, Q- and Express service, including an extensive legend, ATC preferential routing and a tabular listing of minor changes not incorporated in the plates.
Top Typography
Although opinions vary, our view is that Jeppesens paper and typography makes for more readable charts than the FAAs offerings. The paper is bright white, not the governments newsprint, and in general, chart elements are larger and easier to read.
Three years ago, Jeppesen began incorporating the so-called Air Transport Association format, which groups frequencies, critical courses and altitudes in a single box across the top of each plate, significantly simplifying data pickoff. With each new revision, Jeppesen converts more plates to this format. The FAA recently introduced its own version of this format, called the Volpe design.
Jepps enroute charts have also been redesigned since our last analysis of charting systems and now include more color, quadrangles with minimum instrument altitudes and ATIS frequencies for towered airports.
Jeppesen enroutes, however, are on flimsier paper than the FAAs version, making them easier to fold into manageable segments but also more susceptible to tearing than are the government charts.
NOS to FAA
For as long as we can recall, federal aeronautical charts have been provided by the National Ocean Service, a bureaucratic marriage only the government could devise.