Just wondering when the "Trip Pack" or a Airport Pack might becoming to a eflybook near me?

Steve,

We are still in the testing stages of the "Airport Facility" portion of the data. We are hoping to have it approved and released within the next 2 cycles, though that's not an official answer more of a "best-guess" at this point.

We will release more information on that as it becomes available.

As for the trip folder, we are still developing the "interface" for generating the necessary documents and layout for the pack itself, so we are still a ways out on that one.

A temporary suggestion for how to do this now... Between the windows version of our software and other sources on the internet you can procure the necessary documents you need in digital format. That being said, once you have collected the documents, you can then get some kind of PDF convertor program (I use Adobe Acrobat Professional, but there are MANY others available that are far less expensive) to convert all of the documents/plates/etc. into a single PDF document. You can then load the resulting PDF document onto the eFlyBook and simply view those charts by accessing the PDF, and switch pages/charts by using the page-flipper on the left. This is obviously not a permanent solution but rather a temporary alternative for now.

PDF Creator Programs for Windows:

• http://www.neevia.com/products/dplt/ ($19)
• http://www.docudesk.com/deskPDF_Standard_Edition.shtml (19.95)
• http://www.pdf995.com/download.html ($9.95)
• http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/acrobatstd.html ($299.00)

PDF Re-direct is a free PDF printer. It has a really nice feature of being able to merge multiple PDFs into one. So, you can use it to print non-PDF documents into a PDF for display (and scribbling) in the eFlyBook. But, you can also take a bunch of PDFs that you have downloaded (like AFDs or charts or ...) and merge them anyway you like.

PDF versions of charts and the AFD are both available on the FAA website. The AFD organization is a bit odd. It is basically a list of airports with a reference to a PDF page. The catch is that each AFD page contains multiple airports. Download a bunch of charts or a bunch of AFD pages is a bit tedious unless you have some scripting capability. Using something like PDF re-direct, you can also find the airports in AOPA's directory and print knee board-style to PDF.

Keep in mind that one of the reasons that it is worth paying myairplane.com for their service is that they are decomposing the information and severely compacting it. Their approach charts, for example, take up a small fraction of the space of the equivalent PDFs. That and, of course, the user interface to navigate around.

Downloading and or printing plain PDFs on the eFlyBook is fine for select airports. Not so fine for large chunks of coverage.

Another great site for pdf approaches and airport diagrams is www.flightaware.com
Go to the "Resources" section. The nice thing about FlightAware is that you get all the approaches for that airport in one multi-page PDF...
It's a really neat site too.