Garmin Pilot - Editing Aircraft Performance

[sarangan]

I am trying to figure out how to edit aircraft performance. When I go under Edit Aircraft/Performance tab, and click on "Cruise Data", it says "Edits to the performance tables are done on flyGamin. Click flyGarmin Setup to change your aircraft performance data". I say ok, and it takes me to the fly.garmin.com website. I can see my aircraft there. When I click on Edit Cruise Data, it says "This version of your performance table is now read-only. To edit this table, please use the latest Garmin Pilot release".

Basically, the tablet says I should use the website to edit performance, and the website says I should use the tablet. What???

I do have the latest Garmin Pilot release, and all databases are current and valid. This is running on Android.

 

[Chadd Thompson]

I know it's been quite some time but I was wondering if you figured out what was causing this? I am having the same issue with Garmin Pilot on android.

I contacted Garmin support and they told me they didn't know and that I would have to delete the aircraft and recreate it. Not really something I want to do unless I have to.

 

[David Megginson]

I know it's been quite some time but I was wondering if you figured out what was causing this? I am having the same issue with Garmin Pilot on android.

I contacted Garmin support and they told me they didn't know and that I would have to delete the aircraft and recreate it. Not really something I want to do unless I have to.

It was a screw-up at Garmin. They added the aircraft-performance-editing support natively to Garmin Pilot for iOS, then discontinued support on the web site, and no one thought to confirm that they'd added the support to Garmin Pilot for Android as well. As a result, for for well over a year there's just been no way to edit performance data without borrowing someone's iOS device and temporarily assigning it as one of your three allowed GP devices — Garmin Pilot (for Android) sends you to the flyGarmin website, and the flyGarmin website sends you to the app.

 

[Chadd Thompson]

Thanks for getting back with me so quickly, leave it to Garmin....

 

[David Megginson]

Thanks for getting back with me so quickly, leave it to Garmin....

I've had good support for Garmin Pilot otherwise — and I'm happy they bother to support Android at all (unlike ForeFlight, or Avidyne's IFD 100 app) — but the lack of aircarft-performance editing remains a sore point.

 

[Chadd Thompson]

Yes I agree with that, but to be honest if it weren't for the android support I would probably use foreflight instead of GP. Just not an Apple fan..

 

[Chadd Thompson]

I've had good support for Garmin Pilot otherwise — and I'm happy they bother to support Android at all (unlike ForeFlight, or Avidyne's IFD 100 app) — but the lack of aircarft-performance editing remains a sore point.

One thing I did find out while messing around with the android version is that if you create a whole new Aircraft without importing settings from one of the Aircrafts on their list it does seem to let you edit the performance data. But you start with nothing so you have to enter all the data for that aircraft so it is kind of a pain.

 

[David Megginson]

One thing I did find out while messing around with the android version is that if you create a whole new Aircraft without importing settings from one of the Aircrafts on their list it does seem to let you edit the performance data. But you start with nothing so you have to enter all the data for that aircraft so it is kind of a pain.

I didn't know that — thanks! It might be worth it.

 

[David Megginson]

Just not an Apple fan..

I do like a) not paying $150–200 extra for a built-in GPS, b) having fairly reliable Bluetooth, c) having a choice of decent web browsers, d) having access to an actual filesystem, and e) not worrying about overheating.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I do like a) not paying $150–200 extra for a built-in GPS, b) having fairly reliable Bluetooth, c) having a choice of decent web browsers, d) having access to an actual filesystem, and e) not worrying about overheating.

I like having an EFB that lets me edit aircraft performance.

Not sure what you're talking about with the Bluetooth? I've never had any Bluetooth issues with any of my Apple devices, and I've had a LOT of them over the years.

I run both Safari and Chrome on iOS, and others are available as well, so I'm not sure what your complaint is there.

iOS has a shared file system *available* now... But I actually like their sandboxing approach, which greatly heightens security. When I *want* files to be shared between apps, I can... But nothing gets shared without my knowledge.

Finally... Everything will overheat if you push it hard enough or leave it in the sun. Androids aren't magically immune from heat either...

I'm certainly not suggesting that you should switch if you like 'em, just clarifying for those who might see this thread later.

 

[David Megginson]

I run both Safari and Chrome on iOS, and others are available as well, so I'm not sure what your complaint is there.

Apple forbids any browser rendering engine but Safari on iOS. When you think you're using Chrome (etc.), it's really just a Chrome skin wrapped around Safari's slow, out-of-date rendering engine. That's why mobile web sites have so many issues on iOS devices.

Some web devs have postulated a conspiracy that Apple wants to ensure that web apps run badly on its devices, to drive people to proprietary apps in the iTunes store, where it gets a cut of every sale. Hanlon's razor suggests to me that it's nothing that evil, but just bureaucratic inertia and incompetence.

 

[Margaret Leber]

Apple is well-known for exercising iron-fisted control over it's walled-garden platform, and I won't buy their gear.

The near-monopoly they enjoy in aviation is unearned and toxic.

 

[David Megginson]

Apple is well-known for exercising iron-fisted control over it's walled-garden platform, and I won't buy their gear.

The near-monopoly they enjoy in aviation is unearned and toxic.

I hear you, and I'm a Linux and Android user myself, but I think Apple's dominance in aviation is a result of business choices they made:

1. They decided to target exclusively affluent customers (I know none of us thinks we're rich, but if you own a plane or a share in a plane, or even just rent sometimes, you or your extended family is almost certainly in the global 1%, which is people earning more than about $35K/year).
   
   
2. Focus on the American market first (the majority of the world's private pilots are in the US), while Android's always been more international. Canada's similar enough to the U.S. that it worked here, too.
   
   
3. Use the iPhone and iPad as a levers to steal a monopoly on entertainment-content distribution (initially, Apple was trying for a monopoly on music, video, e-book, and app sales in the iTunes store; fortunately for humanity, that didn't happen, but they still put a lot more work into building that market, again, focusing especially on affluent customers, particularly the U.S. and Canada, so app vendors can make more $$$ on the iStore platform).
   
   
4. Launch with extremely-limited choice, like Henry Ford's "any colour you want, as long as it's black" (initially there was just one size of iPhone screen, so a lot of lazy developers could cheat and hardcode for it with raster graphics, while they had to work harder and do real responsive design for Android; then there was once size of iPhone and one size of iPad screen, so they still cheated, but had to work more at it; now there are lots of iOS screen sizes and the they have to work as hard as they do for Android, but the lazier devs got hooked long ago and can't leave now).

 

[Stewartb]

Why is it such a big deal these days to dwell upon (And share, sadly) what you dislike. Get over it. You'll be much happier focusing on what you like.

I love GP on my iDevices. They become extensions of my G3X Touch (I also love Garmin stuff) and that makes my cockpit better.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Apple forbids any browser rendering engine but Safari on iOS. When you think you're using Chrome (etc.), it's really just a Chrome skin wrapped around Safari's slow, out-of-date rendering engine. That's why mobile web sites have so many issues on iOS devices.

That's not Safari. That's WebKit (which Safari also uses). But Apple hangs their hat on security and privacy, and browsers are a frequent attack vector, so I can't fault them... That's one reason why I buy their stuff.

Some web devs have postulated a conspiracy that Apple wants to ensure that web apps run badly on its devices, to drive people to proprietary apps in the iTunes store, where it gets a cut of every sale. Hanlon's razor suggests to me that it's nothing that evil, but just bureaucratic inertia and incompetence.

That would be terribly ironic, given how Apple promoted web apps back in the beginning and did not allow standalone apps.

I hear you, and I'm a Linux and Android user myself, but I think Apple's dominance in aviation is a result of business choices they made:

1. They decided to target exclusively affluent customers (I know none of us thinks we're rich, but if you own a plane or a share in a plane, or even just rent sometimes, you or your extended family is almost certainly in the global 1%, which is people earning more than about $35K/year).
   
   
2. Focus on the American market first (the majority of the world's private pilots are in the US), while Android's always been more international. Canada's similar enough to the U.S. that it worked here, too.
   
   
3. Use the iPhone and iPad as a levers to steal a monopoly on entertainment-content distribution (initially, Apple was trying for a monopoly on music, video, e-book, and app sales in the iTunes store; fortunately for humanity, that didn't happen, but they still put a lot more work into building that market, again, focusing especially on affluent customers, particularly the U.S. and Canada, so app vendors can make more $$$ on the iStore platform).
   
   
4. Launch with extremely-limited choice, like Henry Ford's "any colour you want, as long as it's black" (initially there was just one size of iPhone screen, so a lot of lazy developers could cheat and hardcode for it with raster graphics, while they had to work harder and do real responsive design for Android; then there was once size of iPhone and one size of iPad screen, so they still cheated, but had to work more at it; now there are lots of iOS screen sizes and the they have to work as hard as they do for Android, but the lazier devs got hooked long ago and can't leave now).

I think it's much simpler than that. It wasn't Apple that made Apple dominant in aviation, it was ForeFlight. ForeFlight was initially a preflight-only tool, and began with a web app before the App Store was even a thing. Then they wrote a standalone app that was in the app store for the iPhone the day it launched, and as a result they had a fully functioning iPad app literally the day the iPad shipped.

I can tell you, i was looking for a similar solution for YEARS before that, but all that was available was too-small, way-too-slow black and white e-ink tablets (think original Kindle reader). When the iPad came out, it was a no-brainer to buy one and get ForeFlight on it. My first iPad paid for itself within the first year (with what it replaced in aviation and otherwise).

At Oshkosh that first summer, just about 3 months after the iPad was released, ForeFlight had their first booth at Airventure.

It was crazy. They got slammed. I think every person who was at the show came by, and it was only a standard-sized single booth. I took a picture of their booth from down the aisle at one point and it looked like ants on cake.

When you're that far ahead of everyone else, it gives you a competitive advantage for a long time. GP has mostly caught up in number of features, and even managed to come out with a few ahead of ForeFlight, but there have been dozens of competing products that just got left behind.

 

[David Megginson]

That's not Safari. That's WebKit (which Safari also uses). But Apple hangs their hat on security and privacy, and browsers are a frequent attack vector, so I can't fault them... That's one reason why I buy their stuff.



That would be terribly ironic, given how Apple promoted web apps back in the beginning and did not allow standalone apps.



I think it's much simpler than that. It wasn't Apple that made Apple dominant in aviation, it was ForeFlight. ForeFlight was initially a preflight-only tool, and began with a web app before the App Store was even a thing. Then they wrote a standalone app that was in the app store for the iPhone the day it launched, and as a result they had a fully functioning iPad app literally the day the iPad shipped.

I can tell you, i was looking for a similar solution for YEARS before that, but all that was available was too-small, way-too-slow black and white e-ink tablets (think original Kindle reader). When the iPad came out, it was a no-brainer to buy one and get ForeFlight on it. My first iPad paid for itself within the first year (with what it replaced in aviation and otherwise).

At Oshkosh that first summer, just about 3 months after the iPad was released, ForeFlight had their first booth at Airventure.

It was crazy. They got slammed. I think every person who was at the show came by, and it was only a standard-sized single booth. I took a picture of their booth from down the aisle at one point and it looked like ants on cake.

When you're that far ahead of everyone else, it gives you a competitive advantage for a long time. GP has mostly caught up in number of features, and even managed to come out with a few ahead of ForeFlight, but there have been dozens of competing products that just got left behind.

No disagreement, but from the chicken-vs-egg department, Apple's business choices I mentioned earlier (targeting only affluent consumers, focusing mainly on the U.S. market first, leveraging the iTunes store as a pseudo-monopoly, and initially having just one display size) were probably what made the iOS platform more attractive to the ForeFlight developers in the first place. iPhone owners are more wealthy, more American, and more willing to fork out money for apps than Android users are, and that was a perfect ecosystem for ForeFlight to launch in. After that, it was just a matter of symbiosis between the platform and the app, like you rightly point out.

 

[John Myers]

Manufacturers drop Android gear almost immediately after a new model comes out. Apple supports their stuff essentially forever in technology terms. Go on eBay and look at selling prices for a three year old iPad and a three year old Android tablet. Same with phones. Android gear is almost disposable in comparison.

The QA on an android tablet is also hit and miss. Samsung does a good job, usually, others may not. Apple’s processors tend to outperform Android devices (Qualcomm, etc.).

I don’t get all of the Apple bashing. I own many devices of each platform, and I just never use the Android stuff unless I’m testing something. Some of the Android gear is great, it’s just not the best for most things.

if you want a $250 phone, you can compare a 3 year old iPhone to a new budget Android phone (the used market does that for us). Apple doesn’t target wealthy people they just don’t sell stuff at the bottom of the market. It’s a strategy that has obviously worked well for them and the consumers who made them the most valuable company, ever.

 

[John Myers]

Launch with extremely-limited choice, like Henry Ford's "any colour you want, as long as it's black" (initially there was just one size of iPhone screen, so a lot of lazy developers could cheat and hardcode for it with raster graphics, while they had to work harder and do real responsive design for Android; then there was once size of iPhone and one size of iPad screen, so they still cheated, but had to work more at it; now there are lots of iOS screen sizes and the they have to work as hard as they do for Android, but the lazier devs got hooked long ago and can't leave now).

There was originally only one Android size also, that quickly turned into hundreds. Early Android layout was a disaster, and is still more time consuming to do than on iOS. Because there are so many devices and screen sizes, it’s a practical impossibility to guarantee an application will run well on every Android device. Apple tends to only do things they can do well, Android device manufacturers and developers are free to do what the want for the most part, and that includes some junk along with the good products.

Google borrowed many of the concepts NeXT created and that were built upon for Xcode, and the platform is better for it. It’s still easier and faster to build a UI on iOS, in general. If you compare the initial apps available on iOS versus Android in the 2010ish timeframe I think you’d flip who the lazy UI developers were.

 

[MBDiagMan]

It was a screw-up at Garmin. They added the aircraft-performance-editing support natively to Garmin Pilot for iOS, then discontinued support on the web site, and no one thought to confirm that they'd added the support to Garmin Pilot for Android as well. As a result, for for well over a year there's just been no way to edit performance data without borrowing someone's iOS device and temporarily assigning it as one of your three allowed GP devices — Garmin Pilot (for Android) sends you to the flyGarmin website, and the flyGarmin website sends you to the app.

The people at Garmin screwed up?. Say it ain’t so!

 

[David Megginson]

The people at Garmin screwed up?. Say it ain’t so!

ForeFlight - "F*** Android users!"

Avidyne - "Yeah! What they said!"

Garmin - "Oh right, we keep forgetting we support Android. We'll fix that for you … eventually."

None is ideal, but at least Garmin occasionally makes an effort (as does their subsidiary, FltPlan.com). We still have a right to ask more, though — at least faster bug fixes, even if we still lag on new features.

 

[MBDiagMan]

Just as Garmin is the de facto standard in the navigator market, Apple is that in the pocket gadget market. If you insist on not using the established standard there are always drawbacks to such an approach. I don’t like feeling like I’m being held at gunpoint by a tech vendor either, but that’s the way of the world.

 

[David Megginson]

Just as Garmin is the de facto standard in the navigator market, Apple is that in the pocket gadget market. If you insist on not using the established standard there are always drawbacks to such an approach. I don’t like feeling like I’m being held at gunpoint by a tech vendor either, but that’s the way of the world.

Understood, but as a customer, I still appreciate that Garmin makes the effort to support Android (however lukewarm that support may be).

 

[MBDiagMan]

I am retired from a career in the automation industry. I saw the technologies and manufacturers come and I saw them go. I saw standards and protocols developed, some that caught on and others equally useful that just died a slow death. I saw very interesting human nature that went along with it.

It is a crying shame, but it is a fact that the best technology doesn’t always win. It is also a fact that life is much easier in the technology world when you adapt the more widely used standard or convention. There are exceptions to that. If your particular needs require something that is only available with the other than mainstream convention, then that can draw you away from the crowd. Bucking the system because you don’t like the monopoly or politics of a particular manufacturer or standard may very well cause you to deal with problems or rob you of features and functionality that could have been making your life much better.

The common emerging standards in the pad and EFB world are Garmin Pilot/Foreflight and Apple/Android. Having watched technologies emerge over a fifty year period as an important part of my career my take is that although Foreflight had a head start, Garmins massive market share in the avionics hardware world may pull them across the finish line as the winner, but I think that at this point it appears that Foreflight will be the software winner. In the Apple/android race, maybe the Android is the superior product I don’t know, but it won’t matter. What will ultimately determine the winner of that race will be application availability and quality for the platform.

A very important aspect of this whole race is that there is a lot going on in the background that we are not aware of. In the days when Windows was emerging, there were things going on that no one knew about and most people still don’t know about. While independent software vendors were hustling to develop their applications to operate on the Windows platform, Microsoft was developing their own such applications using what were called “undocumented features.” These were various hooks within the operating system that facilitated quick and easy development of applications for the environment and only Microsoft knew how to use them. So Microsoft was quickly developing things like Excel, while the already established spreadsheet providers were driving themselves into the ground trying to make a competitive product. They were playing against a stacked deck. A deck stacked by Gates himself. You can bet that there are things like this happening in the background as I write this.

The technology world is a compromise.

 

[David Megginson]

It is a crying shame, but it is a fact that the best technology doesn’t always win.

No disagreement there, and I don't think anyone in this thread is naive enough to argue that Android should win because it's a better tech (or even that Android should win, period).

In the days when Windows was emerging, there were things going on that no one knew about and most people still don’t know about. While independent software vendors were hustling to develop their applications to operate on the Windows platform, Microsoft was developing their own such applications using what were called “undocumented features.” These were various hooks within the operating system that facilitated quick and easy development of applications for the environment and only Microsoft knew how to use them. So Microsoft was quickly developing things like Excel, while the already established spreadsheet providers were driving themselves into the ground trying to make a competitive product. They were playing against a stacked deck. A deck stacked by Gates himself.

And then suddenly it all collapsed under them, so fast that they didn't know what was happening and are still in shock. That's the other side of this — by the time there's a clear winner anywhere in the tech space, the events that will bring about their downfall are already underway. Usually it's a change in the tech ecosystem or market and another company's better able to capitalise on, because they don't have a lot of existing products to protect.

Microsoft lost its dominance on the consumer side because of three trends, all of which it was aware of and tried to fight, but failed:

1. The shift to cloud-based productivity applications (Google ate Microsoft's lunch on that one).
   
2. The shift to mobile (Linux via Android, not Windows, is now by far the most-used consumer operating system in the world).
3. The shift to streaming entertainment (which Apple, Netflix, and Amazon dominate).

At exactly the moment Microsoft was at its peak and seemed unstoppable, all of these were already well underway.

We've seen similar patterns elsewhere:

• The shift to rnav gave Garmin the opportunity to dethrone Bendix-King as the avionics leader.
• The shift to personal computing gave Microsoft its original opportunity to dethrone IBM as the computing leader, before it was dethroned in turn.

None of these means the former leader disappears. Bendix-King is still making avionics, and even bought up the TruTrak. IBM remade itself in the 1990s as an open-source-driven company, just like Microsoft is embracing open source now (even to the point of buying GitHub). So there's no reason to assume that ForeFlight and iOS will continue to rule the portable EFB space, or that Garmin will continue to rule the panel, but if it changes, it will be triggered by something external that opens up an opportunity. Inexpensive Internet in the cockpit is one possibility; a rapid retirement of much of the fleet (and its replacement with new light-sport/etc planes) because of the unavailability of 100LL is another; but really, who knows?

 

[flyingcheesehead]

No disagreement, but from the chicken-vs-egg department, Apple's business choices I mentioned earlier (targeting only affluent consumers, focusing mainly on the U.S. market first, leveraging the iTunes store as a pseudo-monopoly, and initially having just one display size) were probably what made the iOS platform more attractive to the ForeFlight developers in the first place. iPhone owners are more wealthy, more American, and more willing to fork out money for apps than Android users are, and that was a perfect ecosystem for ForeFlight to launch in. After that, it was just a matter of symbiosis between the platform and the app, like you rightly point out.

No, it's that ForeFlight was started before Android even existed (in terms of public knowledge, anyway, I'm sure it was under development at Google). They didn't "choose" iOS, it was literally the only modern (as we know it today) smartphone in existence at the time, and ForeFlight was a web app developed by a couple of aviation-enthusiast software developers as a side project. By the time the first Android device shipped in 2008, ForeFlight was already ported over to the iPhone SDK and in the App Store. Android was simply never really an option - By the time Android tablets came around, ForeFlight was on version 3.0 but still a small enough company that porting it over would have taken too many resources to continue development of new features on the iOS side.

If there was, at some point, a compelling case to switch to Android, they could have dropped iOS and switched to Android, but that would probably **** off most of their customers, and in reality, there's a pretty compelling case to choose iOS over Android, not the other way around. Since they were already there and leading the market, it didn't make any sense to support Android at all.