Nothing to do with Santa’s Elf!
Aviation world is a world constrained daily by the prohibiting raising costs – of well…almost everything.
Last ten years were a blast for the modern aviator able now to bring the power of smartphones and tablets inside cockpits.
With this revolution in precision aviation, came a demand for higher resolution devices.
ForeFlight is an aviation app that runs on IOS – meaning only Apple products.
One common Apple product sought by aviators a few years back was the mini Ipad – for its relatively non invasive size, good display and (at that time) – good processing power. But the mini Ipad does not have a built-in GPS receiver and therefore an external GPS is needed. And that’s how we got tangled with Bad Elf.
When building drones, we used to purchase high resolution GPS receivers with about..$7 a piece. We paid way over $100 for the Bad Elf with the lightning connector.(List price $129.00) It almost worked – well at least for a while. From the start we knew we had a fragile product, therefore the little gps was installed in a protected area in the cockpit. An extension special (expensive) cord was used to avoid frequent plug/unplug operations of the unit.
We got mixed results. Some days the position would get acquired in 30 to 60 seconds, some days longer.
But for the casual flights and training flights it worked for a while.
On some longer flights, the GPS signal would get lost and needed re-insertion or other creative ways to get it back online.
The best average resolution we ever got was 10 to 15 meters! Per comparison the ordinary car GPS gets about 5 meter resolution and your smartphone probably gets about 1 meter resolution with the built in GPS!
Then it started to get really Bad. The Bad Elf would just simply lose signal without re-acquiring it.
Extremely frustrating if it happens at crucial moments and any pilot knows how that feels.
It gets frustrating every time a distraction arises in the cockpit, even more when it’s your GPS!
Eventually, the Bad Elf turned completely Bad. No GPS signal. Unit was never since detected by the tablet. He’s dead Jim!
Dead! We tried troubleshooting it ourselves, updated IOS to 9.1 and the Bad Elf app. Nada.
Then, we raised support, went through a plethora of emails, explained, send information. We were told, right at the beginning that the unit will be replaced – stay assured. Few emails later – well, sorry can’t replace it, but we will give you a sympathy discount to purchase another one! Whaat?!. Warranty on these units in one year – and they mean it like that! Our unit was 17 months when died.
What puzzles us is how come this GPS died, simply by sitting in one place?! There must be a quality problem or a compatibility problem with latest IOS – which company denies.
Not only this product is flimsy and proved unreliable to us, but at $129.99 price list – gets expensive too!!
Anyway, long story short, the lesson we learnt is: to stay away from Bad Elf products – at least until they get their bearings right!
Android based moving maps like Avare work great with any decent tablet. Highly recommended.
No need for subscription, no need for external GPS. If you really would like an external GPS, try DUAL or Garmin.
There are many options out there – make sure you choose the right one from the beginning and learn from our mistakes.
Takes some effort into bringing somebody to the point where they feel the need to write an article about a product.
We feel sorry that our aviation enterprises like Bad Elf are not build around the customer but around its monetizing priorities and hide behind short warranties.
Bad Elf support was not bad at the beginning but proved misleading in our case.
It feels like a product like this should simply work forever – and when it doesn’t the company should be on (customer) Pilot’s side.
Hope this helps into your decision to connect your devices to a good external GPS.
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