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Thanks for your input.
While I understand your logic, there's gotta be a more intuitive way for iFly to work with you, so that you don't have to do all that pre-flight preparation. From a philosophical viewpoint, you're not really using it as a "History" button. You're using it as a "Future" button. (Pre-loading things.)
In fact, I would say that iFly is not streamlined enough if you feel you need to preload all that stuff before a flight.
While I realize the need to be prepared, the most I ever did was to have the Approach plate in the clipboard for my departure airport (if Low IFR) so I could return in an emergency. (And too, because the plate had freqs for strange airports.) And I would have the destination airport marked with a tab in the book so I could quickly find the approach in use for it as I got close.
Walter had mentioned how the Flight plan page allows you to pin IAP's to waypoints. But since I don't have an IFR subscription, I haven't had a chance to try that.
If it doesn't do it already, the Info Box for your airport should offer to call up IAPs, STARs, etc. within two clicks, which would be the same as two clicks in History. Or they could make it so that you tap the FINAL Instrument, and call up IAP's from there. (Or made it so that when a waypoint that's an IAF or part of a STAR is tapped, you get offered a selection of approaches.)
Perhaps a page of thumbnails of the IAPs that mimicked the paper paradigm, so that you could quickly pick ILS 21L from the batch?
Naturally it's up to you how you use the History button. For me and my small brain, I can't keep up. And too, what happens in flight if I either forgot to preload some critical page and/or I have to divert and my critical page isn't preloaded? By not preloading, and calling up things as I need 'em, I'll have muscle memorized the procedure to call up what I need in flight - on the fly.
Well, until there's a better way, if you all think the History button should stay, then fine. Perhaps later on, iFly will allow customizing the Main buttons, such that some buttons can be de-energized for those of us who never use them.
My main reason for broaching the subject was that iFly is starting to get so full of features, that it might be wise to re-evaluate which are really needed and/or which have been superceded. For if we don't, by the time v20 rolls around, there will be features grandfathered in that might not be that useful, but that the legacy users have come to rely on (and not moved on to the "new" way) that bloat the app negatively.
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Joined: 1/1/0001
Posts: 0
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OldPilot wrote:
There is no reason to eliminate the History button. There is sufficient room to add other things, if needed, without deleting useful functionality.
My point is, don't throw away good, useful functionality that people use, for whatever reason they use it, because other people don't use it and think it is clutter. IFly users are all sorts of pilots flying all sorts of equipment, on all sorts of missions. As such, the app may include some things that some of us never use, but are extremely useful to others.
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In my post, I said I do some pre-flight prep, and some in-flight stuff. Call the button whatever you want: I use the History button as a way to get to a collection of information that I want ready access to.
You wrote: "If it doesn't do it already, the Info Box for your airport should offer to call up IAPs, STARs, etc. within two clicks..."
Yes, that's how the Airport Info box works, but your statement pre-supposes the airport is visible on the map so that I can just press it to open that Info box. If it's not--which it usually isn't unless I'm very close--then there's the scroll-scroll-scroll, or zoom-zoom-zoom "button clicks" to bring it into view first. Spend that effort once, and that Airport Info is now in the History list, so you don't have to do it again--"History -> Airport Info", and bam!, I'm there in two button clicks without all the scrolling or zooming. (If it *is* visible, then sure, I'll press the airport instead of the History button. I use History when it's helpful, not when it's dumb.)
So ok, now I'm at Airport Info, and as you (and your muscles, apparently) know, I can now drill down into all the charts. But that's extra button clicks every time I want to look at a different chart. Why do that repeatedly if I want to look at a chart more than once, when each chart I look at gets saved in the History list? If I want to go back to something I've already spent several button clicks to find once, "History -> Desired Chart" and bam!, I'm back there in two button clicks.
You said: "What happens in flight if I either forgot to preload some critical page and/or I have to divert and my critical page isn't preloaded? By not preloading, and calling up things as I need 'em, I'll have muscle memorized the procedure to call up what I need in flight - on the fly."
Um, but that's how charts end up in the History list anyway--whether you do it pre-flight or in the air, it's the same. I still have to know how to do that. I just happen to know that I only need to do it once per chart. After that, that particular chart is only two button-presses away if I want to see it again.
Your muscles may be smarter than my muscles, but my brain is pretty happy with the history button, and so far your suggestions haven't been an improvement to how I use that feature.
(BTW: I disagree that you are describing "muscle memory". Try navigating through touchscreen menus with your eyes closed and see how well your muscles really remember how to do that.)
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Thanks again for your insights.
I don't think it's worth debating the term "muscle memory." Pick whatever term you want. Conditioned Reflex? But I think you know what I mean. For example, my Nook HD+ doesn't have auto brightness and so Murphy insists that the brightness is too low when I wake up the tablet in the cockpit. Still, I can pull down the shade where the brightness Quick Setting tile is, tap on it sight unseen, and I can drag the brightness slider to full bright, again sight unseen. So my fingers do know where to go to get the info and/or cause the action I want on my tablet. (Same as I automatically know where the fuel pump switch is in the cockpit without looking. The ol' cardboard simulator test.) I like that kind of consistency. So for me, the History button doesn't fit my style. (Doesn't everything move down the stack every time you call up something new to view?) But I understand that it works well for you and others here.
FWIW, my "ergonomic" test of a good EFB would be flying in hard IFR, single pilot, without AP, in a Lancair IV, say in the LA basin. You're at FL 210. As you nose over into Approach airspace, you're doing 4 miles a minute. (So you get a freq change about once a minute.) Your destination that you prepared everything so carefully for goes zero/zero as you cross thru 5000'. You decide to fly the approach to an airport 10 mi inland.
I'm not saying that I know how to design the perfect EFB, but if the EFB makes it a breeze to handle that high stress impromptu scenario,without thinking, I would say that it was Ergonomic. Any EFB would probably be okay when everything goes as planned, given enough time to preflight it and set it up in advance. In my mind, the test of a good EFB is whether you can make it do what you need it to do when everything goes wrong in flight and the stress factor is highest.
Agree or disagree with my metric of a "good" EFB?
As for your point about not being able to call up airports that can't be seen on the chart zoom at the time: Well I'm back to thinking that's a problem that needs to be addressed in iFly. Just brainstorming aloud, I wonder if a "Prepare for Approach" Instrument page might be a possible solution? I might have to rethink the "number of keystrokes" metric for determining a good EFB for approaches. iFly can't read our minds, so I don't see how we can get away from having to scroll thru a list of IAP's in flight. (Your History trick excepted.) When I used paper, I had to sift thru plates, so no big deal. Still brainstorming, I wonder if some sort of artificial intelligence would be a solution, where iFly looks at your Final Destination, then looks to see if you're heading for an IAF for any of the published approaches, and offers that to you first? ('Course, you'd probably tell it to go direct to the IAF or a lead-in waypoint, so iFly would have that info.) For those with onboard weather, iFly could probably figure out the approach from the surface wind in the METAR and offer the lowest plate for that runway(s) first.
[My pet feature is voice recognition: "iFly, pull up the KFUL RNAV (GPS) RWY 24 approach plate."]
In any event, I'll try to think about the History button more during my next flight and see I can make it work for me. I'm always willing to learn. (If ever I think I know it all, it will be past time to hang it up.)
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Joined: 1/1/0001
Posts: 0
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To quickly view your destination airport click Flight Plan then Destination.
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