FOR RECREATIONAL PILOTS. Sport Pilot^57
Whole fleet rate Jabiru rate Rotax rate Jabiru hours Rotax hours Whole fleet hours0500000.00.51.01.52.02.53.03.54.04.5100000150000200000250000300000HOURSRATE PER 10,000 HOURS FLOWN2009 2010 2011 2012 2013350000I
RECENTLY had to replace my ancient iPhone.
Ancient is a relative term, but Apple had
stopped updating the operating system on
this model and the battery was failing. I also re-
alised that my Garmin GPS was long in the tooth.
So, what to do?
I bought another iPhone. Apple has this trick
of sucking people like me into its world, through,
for example, commitment to other programs in
which I have invested and the simplicity of updat-
ing. And they look cool.
While I would love to build another plane, this
is not currently on the cards. But, if I were to do
so, I would not be making provision for a dedicat-
ed GPS in the panel.
OzRunways allows a subscriber to run a phone
and a tablet on the one licence, and AvPlan al-
lows three devices, which in theory provides me
with the redundancy I would like. While I have now
flown around 200 hours with OzRunways and not
found a problem, perhaps there is something that
might just go wrong when it is least convenient. A
solution to this problem is to run different devices
running different software, so that the problem
will not occur simultaneously on both devices.
Lest this discussion devolve to one of avia-
tion safety, I should make it clear that I am talking
about devices that are not related to immediate
safety. No one has died because their GPS sys-
tem had a glitch during a VFR flight.
This, as you can imagine, is a contentious area
of discussion in fly-by-wire aircraft. It is dealt with
mostly through custom real time operating sys-
tems, very well developed programming environ-
ments and specific hardware requirements that
allow for self-checking of their integrity. There are
very tight specifications for the operation and in-
tegrity of the thousands of peripheral processors
in a large aircraft, and for the computers which tie
these processors together.
Similarly, TSO certified devices comply with a
set of quality control standards, that, I contend,
are irrelevant to our environment, and in all likeli-
hood provide no more reliability.
What is done in sophisticated airliners and
aircraft designed to fly in IMC is largely irrelevant
to our environment. While there is no aspect of
the development of the software and hardware of
an iPhone that is likely to meet stringent avionics
standards, Apple sold 33.8 million iPhones in the
last quarter, which is significantly more sales than
those of Airbus. Each of these devices and the
14.1 million iPads Apple also sold can report er-
rors back to Apple and the company is able to dis-
tribute updates to users very simply - and does so
frequently. There is an overwhelming commercial
imperative to get it right through a user database
driving quality and error correction that aviation
suppliers cannot hope to emulate.
It is difficult to get information on the devel-
opment protocols of companies such as Garmin,
so it is difficult to work out whether there is anyinherent reliability advantage. Their volumes are
much smaller, so the budget for their operating
system, user programs and hardware must also
be much smaller than Apple, Google, Samsung
and the like, and so they do not have the user
base to identify problems.
So, my decision is to run OzRunways on my
mini iPad and on a new iPhone in place of my old
Garmin. I performed perfunctory tests on both
OzRunways and AvPlan and my decision to go
with OzRunways was pretty arbitrary. Both prod-
ucts blew me away with the quantum leap in func-
tionality compared with what I was using before.
OzRunways tells me that it developed its An-
droid version using Java as the development en-
vironment and it uses Objective C as the develop-
ment environment for the IOS devices. There is
no shared code, so this reduces the probability of
simultaneous crashes. The underlying hardware
of the devices is similar, both use ARM proces-
sors, and both use versions of the Unix operating
system, but it is quite possible that there is suffi-
cient diversity to provide some level of protection
against a simultaneous crash. Of course, the prob-
ability of a crash in just one device is doubled.
The probability of a problem in my navigation
software, not related to the hardware, occurring
on both devices simultaneously, at some critical
time when I can’t use my compass is so diminish-
ingly small that Apple won, even though theoreti-
cally they should not have done so for my second
device. If I was making my decisions right now I
would have considered an Android tablet instead
of my mini iPad, now that OzRunways is available
on this platform. However, the advice on the Oz-
Runways site concerning the selection of Android
tablets does not fill one with confidence.
The issue of TSO’ed devices and other avia-tion specific devices compared with generic de-
vices from Apple and Google (Android) seems to
me to be a topic deserving some discussion in
these pages.A COUPLE OF WHINGES
I have to renew my ASIC. I don’t know why I have
to have one. I am never asked for it and it provides
precisely zero protection for anybody. I have written
in these pages about this before. I asked for infor-
mation under Freedom Of Information (FOI) for sta-
tistics concerning ASIC applications and, you won’t
be surprised to learn, no one has been knocked
back because they were found to be a terrorist.
As a Jabiru owner I was very concerned about
the flight limitations proposed by CASA. Many
homebuilders now select Jabiru engines for
homebuilt aircraft such as the Sonex. There was
a bald statement about a worrying rise in engine
incidents, but no further information concerning
which model of engine, hours flown, mission, air-
frame, or expected reliability. So I asked under
FOI for the data set underlying this decision. Now,
it is a general principle of government that such
information should be freely available, but after
some considerable discussion, CASA informed
me that a fee of $158 would have to be paid to
obtain the information. I objected and argued
that the reputational damage alone made the re-
lease of the information very much in the public
interest. CASA informed me it would stand by its
fee, as the release of the information was not in
the public interest. I must live in a different world
to these people. CASA did refer me to the chart
compiled by the ATSB, which appears to contra-
dict the assertions in the proposed limitation.NEXT MONTH Powering telephones and
tablets in flightH MEBUILDER
Taking my tablets
Dave Edmunds
Figure 2: Annual rates of engine failures
or malfunction occurrences for the whole
RA-Aus aeroplane fleet, and Jabiru and
Rotax-engine RA-Aus registered aircraft