Charting Solutions...

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This question's goal is to find the best charting solution out there right now and also what the best charting solution would be in an ideal world.

JEPP, NOAA or AirCharts? paper charts or digital? Tradeoffs? Ideal solutions?

So far, the UPS MX20 plus a laptop seems like the ideal solution. I learned (at Oshkosh) that their updates give you all the charts needed to run JeppView with - so one $420 per year update subscription covers their CNX80, MX20 and the paper (laptop) backup needed.

I'm flirting with writing a solution of my own, but haven't gotten all the legwork done. It seems like digital NOAA/NACO charts + navigation information + AFD should be cheap-to-free. A good opensource project to display them on a tablet computer (of which, very functional cast-offs are appearing at low-cost) seems like the ideal low-cost solution.

By the way, here's a small list of links that I've found that seem interesting... (stolen from my bookmarks.html, pardon the formatting)

Charts

Dead Trees

Air Chart Systems
National Aeronautical Charting Office - NACO
Jeppesen - browse

subscription services

Echo Flight
EchoFlight - Plate - About EchoPlate

National Aeronautical Charting Office - NACO
Maptech MapServer - Online Topo Maps, Nautical Charts, Aero Charts, and Nav Photos
Maptech: Topo Maps Charts Navigation Software GPS and FREE Online Mapserver
NIMA: Digital Aeronautical Flight Information File
NIMA: Digital Aeronautical Flight Information File
DF Subscription



-- Rudy Moore, August 6, 2003

Answers

Garmin enhanced its GMX-200 MFD to include SafeTaxi (airport diagrams) and FliteCharts (terminal procedures) from NACO. You can buy one-time updates which are much more affordable than the $1,000/year you would fork over to Jeppesen. It doesn't appear these options are available to MX-20 owners.

Does anyone know if you can get SafeTaxi and FliteCharts for the MX-20?

-- Don Shade, November 5, 2007