Flight Cheetah

MikeS

MikeS

Pre-takeoff checklist
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MikeS
Otherwise known as True Flight. For those who read this in the other thread, sorry for the re-post but looks like I posted it in the wrong forum to start with.

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This intuitive and interesting nav/approach software seems to have almost disappeared from the discussion, lost in the swarm of iOS/Android/Garmin solutions out there. It's been around at least ten years and is Windows-based. Not CE or Mobile Win but full-fledged Windows. It comes with a year of TERPs and chart updates and is as neat as anything I've seen - a conclusion stemming not from my personal use but from reading the website and communicating with the developer.

On the website,

http://aviationsafety.com/

I see the manual, the video tutorials, & other documentation are all out of date and way behind the curve in its support of peripherals. It's still alive but appears to be neglected. The DELL Venue 8 Pro is the platform currently promoted by TF, although the software will run on anything with a Windows OS, including 10. DELL just came out this month with a pretty fancy version of this 8" tablet. It's about $400 if configured with all the options but previous versions of the DV8 can be had on eBay for $100 or less. The developer just informed me he is evaluating the Stratux - so that's interesting. It would make great sense to bring the Stratux on board since currently the program requires an external GPS puck. Integrating the Stratux would give him GPS as well as AHARS to power the HITS and Synthetic Vision 3-D features. Those features are currently powered only with GPS.

This software has been around for at least ten years and has been improved along the way with SV, HITS, approach overlays, satellite imagery - not just airports like the iFly does, but the entire physical landscape below those clouds. You've basically got an image of Google Earth directly below you, wherever you are. I haven't seen anybody with that feature. If looking for a flat place to set it down with no airports or roads around, having this reference could make the difference between destroying the plane or landing in a field with minor damage. Running this software on a cheap tablet to supplement whatever one has as primary would be a great safety item just for this one feature, seems to me.

I'm puzzled why something that appears to have such unique features is not given more attention. I never see it mentioned in the threads on POA and even with a dedicated search can't find anything more than an occasional very casual mention. Over on Van's I see more of a discussion but still not much. The iPad and Google seem to have eaten everyones' lunch.

Anyway . . . anybody have any comments about this software? I'm ready for a new portable navigator and so far I haven't found anything not to like about this one. At $195 for the software and another hundred bucks or so for the tablet it's not a very expensive gamble. I'll be happy to report back on my experience with it once I have some time to evaluate, but meanwhile does anyone have any personal experience?

I would imagine one primary reason for the lack of visibility of this product is because of the dearth, until recently, of Windows tablets. Previously True Flight sold a couple hardware package which consisted of reduced size Winboxes, way too big for my small cockpit. Lack of a decent Windows tablet was one contributing factor in the demise of Control Vision I'm pretty sure. Now however, there are several choices out there for a Win tablet, none of them very expensive. The Dell Venue 8 Pro seems to be favored but the Lenovo 8" ThinkPad would also seem to be a good choice. However, there may be other reasons why we don't see this software mentioned very often . . . so I'm all ears if anyone has crossed paths with this interesting outlier and wishes to share.

Thanks,

Mike
 
I checked out their videos, and they definitely have some nice features and ideas.
But besides the odd platform that for me would be a non-starter, they seem to also be missing things like geo-referenced approach plates and vector graphic taxiway charts. Both of the latter I have grown used to by now, and consider crucial. I am sure there are many more pros and cons, so this is not even close to a review, only a superficial glimpse.
 
I'm pretty sure it's got those things Gliderdude . . . although I'm not understanding "vector graphic taxiway charts." It's got you on the taxiways, georeferenced. But I'm no expert either . . . just my understanding at this point.

What would be nice if someone chimes in who's used this program. Someone here surely has.
 
Well, I had looked before without finding much but went back over to Van's and this time found a whole treasure trove of reviews and comments re the Flight Cheetah. Most of the entries date back to to 2012 and earlier - when choices consisted of the 696 and lesser Garmins. Universally the True Flight users preferred the Flight Cheetah software and subscription costs over the Garmin. The only advantage the Garmin had was the bright screen (696) compared to the various hardware solutions offered by True Flight. They've tried a bunch of tablets over the years, all of them crap. If you had room in the cockpit for it, Flight Cheetah had a model 210 that had a 1000 nit screen, but the hardware was large - basically a small Winbox running XP. Today of course they are running 8.1 and 10 on the few recently arrived Win tablets available. The complaints, where they existed, had to do with not being able to see the screen - a miserable experience we still have today when it comes to using a tablet under a bubble canopy. The iPad totally sucks in the area of sunlight visibility and for that matter, so does everything else. The iPad Mini 4, the brightest of the bunch, tops out at 450 nits. There's a Nokia Lumina that puts out over 600 nits so that sounds like something that might work marginally well in direct sunlight - although not for Windows software.

With a sunshade, the DELL Venue 8 Pro at 377 nits might work for me, barely. With a cost of a hundred bucks more or less, it's no big loss if it doesn't. Eventually somebody's going to come out with an 8 inch Windows tablet that can be seen in direct sunlight, so I can live with a sunshade mounted around the DV8P in the meantime. I've ordered the software so I guess I'll order one of these tablets and start playing.

There was not one negative comment about the software in the various threads on Van's that I finally found. In performance and value everybody preferred it to Garmin and to everything else they'd compared it to. FF and WingX weren't out back then, except perhaps in very preliminary form, but TF does things FF and WingX don't do. It does the thiings they DO do, but FF and WingX haven't gotten brave enough to introduce HITS and overlay approaches so far, not to mention some of the other things TF offers that these popular apps don't. So now I'm even more puzzled why it's not more visible on everyones' radar screens. The obvious conclusion is that it's because it's neither in the Android nor the iOS camp and because there haven't been - and still really isn't - a strikingly better small tablet for it to run on. iOS and Android are where the attention of the herd has been drawn. I've never been much of a herd animal so something like this somewhat out of the ordinary True Flight software intrigues me.

So . . . I'm glad I ordered it. I'll get it connected to a dual-band Stratux and a TruTrak autopilot along the way and have a really neat FMS with weather and traffic, all for well under a thousand dollars. Don't see why not. I'll report back down the road how well it works out, or not.

For ADS-B Out I still don't have a plan but I'm guessing one will show up fairly soon. After all, everybody has got the same problem. With so many clever minds working on an inexpensive ADS-B Out solution I'm confident something will show up well before January 1st, 2020.

If not . . . if all my frugal plans don't work out . . . I'll just bite the bullet and get a Lancair Evolution with dual Aspen Evolution 2500 MFD/PFD's with SV and just stop fiddling around.
 
MikeS said:
I'm pretty sure it's got those things Gliderdude . . . although I'm not understanding "vector graphic taxiway charts." It's got you on the taxiways, georeferenced. But I'm no expert either . . . just my understanding at this point.

What would be nice if someone chimes in who's used this program. Someone here surely has.
Click to expand...

I looked pretty carefully, and at least the version that's documented in the videos does not have those things, but feel free to point me to what I have missed.
I use my Garmin Pilot a lot, and had more primitive solutions before, so am pretty much attuned to these features, and addicted to their functionality by now. I think someone who is used to vector graphic taxiing, as available in the SafeTaxi feature of Garmin Pilot, will not willfully give that up.
Similarly for geo-referenced approach plates -- you just have to fly a single pilot low approach to minimums in IMC both with and without to appreciate the difference.
To explain the "safe taxi" point a bit better, when you taxi at a large new-to-you airport, situational awareness is a must. Without vector graphics, e.g. if all you have are geo-referenced taxi charts (which they do -- not for approaches but for taxi, afaict), you need to read things sideways or upside-down if you like to taxi track up (as I do). And seeing labels upside-down or sideways can lead to confusion or distraction, or at the very least reduced ability to keep your eyes outside, which is where they should be 95% of the time.
 
Those videos are all out of date. The product manual and website have become sadly neglected. What's needed in this discussion is input from somebody who currently uses this EFB.
 
I've been using these guys since 2009.

I have it running on three different devices.
 
Thanks for mentioning that. There's some guys over on BT who are pretty enthusiastic about it too. I'll be getting my tablet back from Rob shortly and am looking forward to getting this system up and running.
 
Never heard of it. Always interested in new to me toys but not sure on this one. A neglected website and documentation aren't things that give me a warm fuzzy.
 
They were around before FF, but didn't market very well. I like it because I can run it on unit IN THE PANEL. No suction mounts, nothing on the yoke, no looking into my lap. Slides right into my panel, and doe everything foreflight did, but with people like this:

922.gif


permeating the pilot community, it never stood a chance.
 
> ". . . and does everything foreflight did"

Plus a little more ;)
 
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That it does, but don't tell the PoAers pictured above that sort of heresy!
 
That company that claimed they created the magenta line was around like ten years before any of this tablet stuff, and had features the tablet stuff is only just starting to have like a profile view.

They even had cloud base heights depicted throughout the entire profile, and if the metars had two layers, they showed that also -- over that location in the plan view. Obstacles all this stuff slowly trickling into Foreflight and WingX, they did it years before either of them.

Never been the type of Apple (or Foreflight) fan boy that ever claimed they were perfect. They haven't even caught up to all of the features that were in that software.

So seeing there is another player that was in that timeframe but still a few years behind the Company that Shall Not Be Named that sued everyone in the industry... Isn't a surprise.

Problem back then, was your best bet for hardware was a tiny expensive laptop and I couldn't afford the $5000 Fujitsu everyone else was using -- so I settled for a very small Panasonic Toughbook that had almost unusable levels of backlight in daytime.

Barely worked. Ran some XP "Tablet" version. Still have it. Use it to program old radio gear that still needs DOS to program properly.

They had XM integration to get weather later on too. $500 receiver if I remember right, plus subscription.

Bunch of other nifty flight planning modes. Like since they knew you were running it on a laptop anyway, there were screens that had their UI set up as a desktop flight planner. Then you just went into "flight mode" and the UI reverted to touch style buttons big enough to hit with fingers.
 
I saw it running (in EdFred's ComancheSpeedWagen), it looks slick.

Almost bought it a few years back, but then received an iPad as a gift. Like it fine, but have thus far manage to avoid smoking my ham over it.;)
 
Roger Stenbock, Roger Stenbock, Roger Stenbock.

I'm not a 'fraidy cat.
 
Here's an informed overview by a Flight Cheetah user, posted on the American Bonanza Society website. In the post he references the "210" model hardware. I don't know if that's still available but the Flight Cheetah software currently runs fine on small Windows 8.1 and Win 10 tablets - decent ones of which have finally started showing up. Windows tablets still have a ways to go with sunlight readability (as does everyone else except the iFly 740) but if you can live with 400 nits check out the DELL Venue 8 Model 5855 released just last month, January 2016. It's an updated version of this tablet that originally came out in October 2013. I believe Flight Cheetah can be configured to run on any currently Microsoft supported OS.

> "I currently have the Flight Cheetah 210. I also have the Garmin 696. The screen on the 210 is truly the best in the market for sunlight readability. The 696 does come close though.

I have updated my Flight Cheetah 210 with the HITS (Highway in the Sky with Synthetic Vision) which is really cool to just fly through the boxes when shooting approaches. I have also updated to the satellite imagery which is really nice on those dark nights to know what is below you.

The biggest difference between the two units is the upgradability of the FL 210. Every upgrade that comes out from here on out is only a software upgrade and no need to buy any more hardware or a new unit. You pay a small fee and get the new feature instead of buying a whole new device and spending thousands extra in the long run. That is what I did when I upgraded to the HITS, the Satellite imagery, and even the solid state hard drive. All small fees and yet I still have the same hardware.

Another huge difference in the units is the price of all the subscription services. You could easily spend a thousand dollars a year on all of the different services that Garmin has to offer. This is where these companies really make their money off of us in the long run and of course when you have to go out and buy new units every couple of years on top of that. It really makes me mad with the Garmin units, the approach plates disappear off the unit after they have been outdated for ten weeks. This is not so with the 210. In a pinch I would take any old chart in an emergency or at least let that be the pilots responsibility to make that decision. The FL 210 yearly fees are only $199 for all map Software Updates, Database & Approach Charts and $99 for High & Low Enroute Charts, VFR Sectional Charts and Terminal Charts.That sounds like a deal to me! When you fly an approach it even lists the segment on the map with the min altitude and all the information without even switching over to the plate view. If you are flying the boxes on the HITS and the Synthetic Vision then that is all you really need and it has been accurate for me all the way to the ground just like shooting an LPV approach. Nice!

The weather on the 210 I believe is a little better on the display than on the 696. At least it is for the animation mode when you want to see the weather tracking across the screen.

Yes it is a Windows 2000 based software that powers the FL 210 but it is dedicated to running the True Flight software only. No Face Booking or Twittering going on in the background there and nothing for it to conflict with. All the benefits of software upgradability without all the hassles.

As Jayson indicated, flying at night with Goggle Earth gives you a clear image of the earth around you is very comforting if you have to put the airplane on the ground. The only issue is if farmer has built a barn in that open field since the Goggle image was taken."
 
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