Hello everyone, I haven't been here in awhile, so don't know if this has been covered or not, but I want to share this. I have not found any company that is displaying real-time weather, usually XM Weather, on an iPad in flight. This is an Apple restriction. Flight Prep has an app called iChart, but it does not do any weather. ForeflightHD app is an excellent product for the iPhone, iPad, iPod and the Android phone with weather and charts. It does not do real-time weather unless you have a Wi-Fi or G3 connection. The Android and "i" versions are not the same either. It's free for 30 days if you want to check it out.
If you are using an XM Weather receiver, most likely WX-Worx, and have it piped to a laptop, via Bluetooth, Ethernet or RS232 and you would like to see it displayed on your iPad, there is an easy way. Using an app called iTap, and there are some others that do the same thing, you can connect your iPad to your laptop using the RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and wha-lah, Flight Prep is on your iPad. You can see everything that you could on your laptop, it just may be smaller. Many other apps with charts are better viewing on the iPad than using RDP, ForeflightHD is one, but this is the only way that I have found to view real-time weather on your iPad rather than using a more bulky laptop. Connected to the iPad by Wi-Fi you can put your running laptop in the back, on a shelf etc., and use the smaller iPad and then tuck it out of the way when not in use. This system has been very handy in the airplane that I fly. Once the avionics switch is on, the bluetooth XM receiver powers up, I turn on the laptop, start FlightPrep (or not) and set it to connect to the Ad Hoc network. I then put it back on a rack out of the way. When I want to check real-time weather I take up the iPad and connect to the lap-top using iTap, open Flight Prep or even start it if I had forgotten and see all of the XM products that I have through Flight Prep just as if I was using the bulky laptop. Very slick. Yes of course you can use your $3,000 Garmin 696. But can you take the 696 with you anywhere and do email or browse the net, pay your bills, etc. To some this might seem like a duct-tape solution to get to see the weather on my iPad, but once I'm done looking I can stash the iPad in a very small space. And I have the iPad for other uses. I have no connection to any of these company's, I do not remember what any of the apps cost (not much) and your mileage may vary. Kevin Jarvis Ottumwa/Naples N5601T --
