Where is NAVBOX?

[Colonel Panic]

In addition, everyone with an iPad can run iOS6 whereas non-technical Android owners are quite often stuck on whatever version came with their platform.

I'm not wishing to pick a fight, but AIUI owners of the original iPad (v1) can not run iOS6.

[The Westmorland Flyer]

I was a contented user of Navbox Pro for quite a few years and was sorry to see the lack of development that opened up the opportunity for SD. I've just gone back to my old copy of Navbox and it now feels very dated and nowhere near as intuitive as SD, which is not surprising given how long ago it was written.

The integration of flight planning and flight execution that we have seen recently with SD on the iPad was an absolute game changer for me. In fact it was (and largely remains) the only reason that I own an iPad. So in my case the application directed my hardware purchasing decisions - and I have no regrets about that.

It would now be a massive task to come up with something that competes with SD and offers anything like comparable functionality without the risk of copyright or IPR infringements. It's a shame but I think that the market is too small for multiple vendors so we are probably better off, at least while SD is under active development, supporting the one vendor and hoping that he can make a commercial success out of the venture.

The SD guys were lucky that the tablet revolution came along just as they were getting going. It made the decision to migrate towards the iPad a fairly easy one and, without the baggage of an ageing development environment, they were able to exploit it in a way that Navbox probably could never have done.

[peterh337]

But Navbox doesn't do any less than SD for European VFR... so long as you are willing to plan CAS and obstacle clearance by reference to a real "printed" (printed or electronic version thereof) chart.

And if I was teaching somebody to fly that's exactly what I would suggest they do.

What isn't practical is setting up to sell 1000 copies at £100 a go as a known-person (aviation is a small world) and be wide open to people who will pester you for months about supporting their obscure combination of hardware.

Look at the barracking TIm gets on here for a minor bug in SkyDemon ...

Tim does that by choice - because the huge amount of free advertising he gets in those massive threads on flyer.co.uk is worth a massive amount of money. He's also fortunate that flyer.co.uk has allowed him to do it

I don't think the market is 1000 copies, BTW. It's about 10x that. At £100 a copy, SD would not be viable by a long way (£100k total sales value). My guess is they have a few k UK sales, and hope to collect some more k around Europe.

It would now be a massive task to come up with something that competes with SD and offers anything like comparable functionality without the risk of copyright or IPR infringements

I don't believe that for a moment. The functionality is, ahem, a GPS moving map and some other stuff. All of it has been done before. Obviously one would not do a copy of the user interface!

Navbox has the best European database which I hope they capitalise on one day, but in the meantime the product is just fine for what one needs for VFR flight planning.

[Keef]

I still use Navbox Proplan. It does a brilliant job at what it does, and it's how I plan all my trips (other than local bimbles).
It would be nice if it ran on something portable, but I'm happy plugging the Aera into the PC and uploading the route. After that, the Aera's database does the job for me.

I've never (yet) found an error in the Navbox database, and it's given me frequencies and contact details for strips that aren't available in anything else I've tried.

I no longer carry the laptop with Navbox in the aeroplane (no room in the Jodel), so if it were ported to the iPad I'd be very happy!

[peterh337]

I found an error in Navbox - an extra VOR near Athens, in 2004

That's about it, for aviation data. Not bad at all.

You can't beat a mature product which has been kicking around thousands of users flying for real around Europe for a decade.

Sure an IOS version would be good (I quite like the Ipad Mini, it doesn't weigh down the backpack anywhere near as noticeably, and I might buy it as soon as the latest IOS gets an untethered jailbreak) but what does one actually need to fly VFR? One needs to knock up the route, print it off on 1 A4 sheet, and print off a plog there, and a plog coming back (or whatever). But one can't generally print from an Ipad unless sitting at home, and if one is at home one can just use a PC.

Flying around the UK is just not a big enough piece of meat to deserve a sophisticated solution.

One can get notams and weather on any half decent phone.

[pb6797]

In addition, everyone with an iPad can run iOS6 whereas non-technical Android owners are quite often stuck on whatever version came with their platform.

I'm not wishing to pick a fight, but AIUI owners of the original iPad (v1) can not run iOS6.

Sorry, forgot about that - you are correct of course. Although an iPad 1 doesn't have the processor to run the latest version of, say, SkyDemon anyway.

I no longer carry the laptop with Navbox in the aeroplane (no room in the Jodel), so if it were ported to the iPad I'd be very happy!

You could always carry one of the mini-netbook type devices. An original eeePC would be about £50 and small enough not to be an issue. A Samsung Q1Ultra perhaps?

What isn't practical is setting up to sell 1000 copies at £100 a go as a known-person (aviation is a small world) and be wide open to people who will pester you for months about supporting their obscure combination of hardware.

Look at the barracking TIm gets on here for a minor bug in SkyDemon ...

Tim does that by choice - because the huge amount of free advertising he gets in those massive threads on flyer.co.uk is worth a massive amount of money. He's also fortunate that flyer.co.uk has allowed him to do it

Ah, but although he doesn't advertise here, you also know exactly who is behind Navbox - which rather proves my point that if you produce aviation software there really is no hiding place. You are, I feel, correct about the benefit of the threads, however, the sheer size of them points to what any aviation-software support desk would be facing - not something I'd look forward to.

I don't think the market is 1000 copies, BTW. It's about 10x that. At £100 a copy, SD would not be viable by a long way (£100k total sales value). My guess is they have a few k UK sales, and hope to collect some more k around Europe.

I don't know, I think you are right about the viability but there is a "labour of love" aspect. The market slices several times before you get a sale.

1) VFR only
2) Prepared to spend money. [Big one!]
3) Need a planning solution - not just doing burger runs
4) Aware that they don't have to use pencil and protractor after passing their test.
5) Want a software solution, not a hardware one
6) ... possible sale

I don't think a businessman would look at the overall size of the private pilot market (did we ever get an exact figure? 50,000 pilots? ), apply the above factors and consider that it was a golden opportunity to make lots of money ...

[peterh337]

Ah, but although he doesn't advertise here, you also know exactly who is behind Navbox - which rather proves my point that if you produce aviation software there really is no hiding place. You are, I feel, correct about the benefit of the threads, however, the sheer size of them points to what any aviation-software support desk would be facing - not something I'd look forward to.

The chronology of SD v. Navbox v. the existence of pilot forums is however such that this didn't happen with Navbox because when it was being developed there weren't any (meaningful) UK-centric forums.

And, as a general default position, a forum would not allow itself to be used as an open product debugging+advertising arena for a particular commercial product. I don't know this 1st hand but I am sure that a decision was made by the owner(s) of flyer.co.uk to permit SD to do that, which in turn facilitated the huge "SD" threads here. Tim Dawson exists on Pprune too but no such threads appeared on there, yet I don't believe that Proon is any less (or more?) representative of the UK light GA community than Flyer. Flyer is currently getting most postings than Proon but that doesn't mean that more people that fly read it.

Let's face it - there are plenty of other products in aviation which have bugs, need fixing, could do with more features, etc, but one doesn't see threads about them. They either don't get started, or the mods squash them.

How about if Peter Mundy started a thread on Navbox and what new features people would like?

How about if the owners of PocketFMS started a thread on PocketFMS and what new features people would like?

Interesting mod decisions!

None of these are huge businesses (at least not the aviation software side of them). Mostly the products were written by 1 person, with 1 more person involved on a day to day basis.

The main market for SD will be the UK, for the same cultural reasons that control penetration of European markets for a UK manufacturer of anything that is non-trivial. The French and especially the Germans are very reluctant to touch a foreign product that might conceivably need support of any kind, and those are by far the biggest GA markets outside the UK. To make good progress in them you need local language marketing and support, and of course very good localisation of the product itself which is probably the easy bit.

There are about 20k pilots in the UK with valid medicals and I reckon the market is about 10-20% of that.

[Lefty]

Peter - that is probably the most vindictive, miserable and mean minded post I've seen on here for a very long time.

What are you trying to prove?

There have been numerous products discussed and promoted on these forums - including (in the early days) Navbox and NOTAMPLOT. You weren't complaining then?

Tim came along with a unique product that a large number of us wanted - and yes he - (and we the forum members) used this forum as a vehicle to communicate what we wanted in a product. No-one else has complained. Get a life.

[peterh337]

I have one; thanks.

Not complaining about anything!

[G-BLEW]

He's also fortunate that flyer.co.uk has allowed him to do it

Not sure what he has done exactly, all of the comments have come from users.

Ian

[Rod1]

Good to see a mention of PocketFMS. I switched from Navbox to PocketFMS. It does come up on the forums occasionally and has never been squashed by the mods. I am told that PocketFMS is much more popular than SD outside the UK and it works for me. The European mapping on PocketFMS is very very good.

Rod1

[SteveN]

I recall PocketFMS invented the forum assisted thing during their development, certainly in pilot circles anyway. Their problem was getting the database built and they used volunteer pilots responsible for their local areas to do that. Navbox don't have that problem of course.

[stevelup]

Let's face it - there are plenty of other products in aviation which have bugs, need fixing, could do with more features, etc, but one doesn't see threads about them. They either don't get started, or the mods squash them.

Do you really believe what you are writing? You honestly think that moderators squash threads about products other than SD?

How about if Peter Mundy started a thread on Navbox and what new features people would like?

Given that it appears to have had no significant development for quite some time, I think the first thing that would happen would be many people having heart attacks... That aside, clearly absolutely nothing out of the ordinary would happen. If there is something to discuss, people will discuss it. To suggest it would be somehow moderated out of existence is unfair.

How about if the owners of PocketFMS started a thread on PocketFMS and what new features people would like?

I'm sure it would be greeted with open arms.

I honestly don't understand how you have somehow equated the fact that other developers don't bother posting here with some kind of prohibition or bias. They just don't bother!

The simple facts probably are, in the case of Navbox, that there's nothing to discuss, whereas PocketFMS already have a busy forum of their own and a large base of beta testers.

[Tim Dawson]

I don't recall ever starting a thread on SkyDemon after my first thread, back in 2009, asking feedback on the software I'd written as a hobby. Perhaps I'm wrong. The massive threads here are massive because SkyDemon is a very popular product.

[Rob P]

Amen to that Tim

There is no conspiracy

However porting to Android would be a really, really, nice thing.

Rob P