iFly GPS Forum

Back in 2014 I started the thread "Emal current iFly location from iPad or android....maybe even automatic?" which oddly may also appear under the correct spelling of " Email current iFly location from iPad or android....maybe even automatic?"

Although the old thread got much useful imput I'm restarting this a a new thread, as the other's gone stale, might be under two(?) slightly different subject lines, but mostly because I want to regenerate interest/motivation for it by iFly development.

In short:

Any iPad that has iFly capability (has a GPS receiver) also has, and usually runs a cellular data subscription with Internet (and thus email) connectivity.

The iPad and Android have cellular reception running and iFly in fact uses that, when available in flight, to update weather, etc.

Although it's true that we don't always have cellular reception in flight.we often do.

So there's a possibility for a very useful convenience and safety feature:

Let's give Ifly in iPad and Android the ability to email all the relevant flight info to one or more email addresses of the user's choice.

That info includes at least:  Position, Ground speed, Altitude. Heading, AGL.     It could even include ETA's to waypoints and destinations.

As many of you, i file informal flight plans with spouse or other persons I'm flying to visit. That could be very convenient or reassuring to them.

More important, in a questionable or delayed situation or a true aircraft down incident, this could be lifesaving information. Yes, it's true the send-email ability is not always available during the full flight, but in an accident or questionable situation would it not be useful even to know that, say, what the position, groundspeed, altitude, AGL, and headings were 29 and 39 minutes ago?

In my imagination this ideally would be a user configurable option. Can set it to send to one or more email addresses. Can set it to send, say, every ten minutes "or if more than 10 minutes as soon a Intenet connectivity comes back on" or only one user command to SEND location.

Still think it would be a great value added and safety feature and at first guess not too hard to implement.

Walter, what do you think?

Anyone else?

Alex

Alex

I agree that there are alternatives that a Google search, or a search of the app stores can easily provide. 

Regarding Flight Aware, I believe, at least for non-paying users, that the data is not real-time.  I could be wrong on that, but I remember trying it out once in the air (I know, I was using cellular data in the air), while someone else was flying my plane, to see if someone could track a flight in real time for just this purpose.  It couldn't find my flight while I was actually flying it.

I haven't seen that kind of reliability. Recently, on a 13 hour round trip, using flight following and ads-b out, I saw the track of my flight on FA. Only 3 minutes of the final approach appeared while arriving at my home airport. 

I would like to use it for tracking, however in the past year (since installing ads-b out), only 2 flights have appeared. The other one was 6 minutes of a flight. And yes, I have "Position only flights" selected.