FAA Charts in TIFF format
When I first started carrying an electronic flight bag, I wrote hacked together a couple of simple Java apps to (a) retrieve and compile the A/FD whenever it gets updated, and (b) check to ensure I had the latest sectional and terminal area charts for my local flying areas. I downloaded the FAA's PDFs. However, the PDFs don't include things like the ‘VFR Flyaway’ chart on the back of the LA TAC, which is actually kinda useful. The charts also include stuff that either isn't in ForeFlight, or isn't intuitively/quickly found (at least, I haven't found it), like the details for the LAX VFR Mini-Route, LAX Special Flight Rules Area, etc. (I'm also not entirely sure ForeFlight satisfies Special Flight Rules requirement that “[t]he pilot shall have a current Los Angeles Terminal Area Chart in the aircraft.”)
So... I rewrote the script to pull down the TIFF versions, which still get synched to GoodReader automatically, and then I can use GoodReader's file browser to 'Open In...' a dedicated TIFF viewer app. I tried two, Big Photo (Zynsoft, $2.99) and LargeViewer (Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd., $19.99). Of the two, I can only really recommend LargeViewer (who even use an image of an aeronautical chart as a demo screen shot in the app store), with a caveat.
Big Photo worked reliably, but it was just too slow (iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 2); panning around inside a zoomed in chart took forever to redraw, as did re-drawing the chart when zooming in (30+ seconds of unreadable fuzziness before the zoomed-in image re-rendered. Also, it seemed like errant taps on the screen would always send it panning down to the lower-left-hand corner of the document. Really not useful. The price was right, the UX definitely wasn't.
LargeViewer appears to do some sort of pre-rendered magic, and as a result is much smoother in use. Zooms and pans are instantaneous. However, this comes at a price: (1) When you first import a chart, it takes a while (up to a minute) before the chart can be viewed; and (2) on an iPad with a limited amount of free storage (under a gigabyte), the process fails. This was a factor for me on my iPad Air 2 16GB, which is pretty much stuffed to the gills. Charts don't expire that frequently, and it's a minor PITA to dump some stuff, import the new charts, and then restore the stuff that was dumped. (On my 32GB iPad mini, it's not an issue.)
I've uploaded a runnable JAR, the source code, and a user-editable file listing the charts to keep updated (comment out anything you don't want or need). This app only scrapes the FAA website when it comes across an expired chart (it keeps track internally, using an XML file, of the expiration dates for all charts), so you can run it every day at 1am or whatever, and it won't be a "bad neighbor." As I said above, it's a totally hacked together system I whipped up in a couple of hours, it's probably pretty brittle, and if the FAA tweaks their websites much it'll eventually fail. But for now, it works well and reliably, hope someone else can make use of it too!
So... I rewrote the script to pull down the TIFF versions, which still get synched to GoodReader automatically, and then I can use GoodReader's file browser to 'Open In...' a dedicated TIFF viewer app. I tried two, Big Photo (Zynsoft, $2.99) and LargeViewer (Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd., $19.99). Of the two, I can only really recommend LargeViewer (who even use an image of an aeronautical chart as a demo screen shot in the app store), with a caveat.
Big Photo worked reliably, but it was just too slow (iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 2); panning around inside a zoomed in chart took forever to redraw, as did re-drawing the chart when zooming in (30+ seconds of unreadable fuzziness before the zoomed-in image re-rendered. Also, it seemed like errant taps on the screen would always send it panning down to the lower-left-hand corner of the document. Really not useful. The price was right, the UX definitely wasn't.
LargeViewer appears to do some sort of pre-rendered magic, and as a result is much smoother in use. Zooms and pans are instantaneous. However, this comes at a price: (1) When you first import a chart, it takes a while (up to a minute) before the chart can be viewed; and (2) on an iPad with a limited amount of free storage (under a gigabyte), the process fails. This was a factor for me on my iPad Air 2 16GB, which is pretty much stuffed to the gills. Charts don't expire that frequently, and it's a minor PITA to dump some stuff, import the new charts, and then restore the stuff that was dumped. (On my 32GB iPad mini, it's not an issue.)
I've uploaded a runnable JAR, the source code, and a user-editable file listing the charts to keep updated (comment out anything you don't want or need). This app only scrapes the FAA website when it comes across an expired chart (it keeps track internally, using an XML file, of the expiration dates for all charts), so you can run it every day at 1am or whatever, and it won't be a "bad neighbor." As I said above, it's a totally hacked together system I whipped up in a couple of hours, it's probably pretty brittle, and if the FAA tweaks their websites much it'll eventually fail. But for now, it works well and reliably, hope someone else can make use of it too!
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