AP gurus,
As mentioned in a post on the General Discussions forum, I got a chance to fly through a lot of weather this weekend on the way from Houston to Lubbock and back, and the iFly was a great help in navigating it.
I didn't tell the whole story on the public forum, though. Not everything was peachy-keen about the experience, and I have five recommendations from the experience, enumerated and explained below.
When I began my return leg from Lubbock to Houston, I noticed that in the Weather mode, the iFly was reporting "no live ADSB signal" or somesuch. It wasn't clear to me from the message if the iFly was connected to the SkyRadar, and the SkyRadar just wasn't picking up an ADSB broadcast, or if the connection between the iFly and the SkyRadar was broken. (I had Wx on the way up to Lubbock, but LBB was VFR by the time I arrived so I was not paying attention to Wx on the iFly and so I wasn't sure if ADSB was being broadcast in that region.)
So: Recommendation 1: Can you please make it more clear to the user, when ADSB weather data is unavailable, whether it's unavailable because there's no receiver connected to the iFly or because there's a receiver connected but there's no data coming in from it?
Because it wasn't clear, I decided to troubleshoot. I went to Menu>About>Connected Devices. It showed the SkyRadar in the top portion of the "Connected Devices" window, but I wasn't familiar with this display and wasn't sure if that was live or stale data. So I clicked on "WiFi Device" to see what it would tell me, and the window that pops up is called "Inhibit Options", and there's a list of possible ADSB receiver models (Skyradar, Clarity, Stratus, LEVIL, and None). "Skyradar" was currently selected.
What in the world is "Inhibit Options" supposed to mean? I don't want my Skyradar to be inhibited, I want it to be available! Should I select "None" on this display to enable my Skyradar?? (I tried that, and it turns out, no, that's not what you want.)
So, Recommendation 2: Change the name of this menu to be something more intuitive to the user. Perhaps "Choose ADSB receiver to connect to", or something simpler with the same meaning. But please, something other than "Inhibit Options"! :)
Also, Recommendation 3: Include some sort of warm-fuzzy screen that confirms a good wi-fi connection from the Skyradar. There used to be a display when I had the Skyradar connected via USB that would show when the last valid data packet was received, how many data packets had been received, etc. You could clear and reselect that screen a couple of seconds apart and see those numbers change, and have confidence that the Skyradar was talking to the iFly correctly, but I don't see a similar screen to prove data's coming across the wifi link.
After being flummoxed by that Inhibit Options menu, and still unclear whether my iFly was actually connected to the Skyradar and receiving information, I quit out of the Navigation app and went into the Setup menus to check my wifi to the Skyradar. When I got to the WiFi Network Setup screen, next to the "WiFi Status" label it said, "Connected to skyradar0001". Except, I didn't believe it, because I couldn't see the skyradar from my phone's wifi scan. So I pulled the power from the Skyradar, and waited. Nothing changed on the iFly screen. So I quit out of that screen back to the main menu, then picked Setup>WiFi again. And it still said, "Connected to skyradar0001". So I power-cycled the iFly.
And even though the power had been removed from the Skyradar, after the reboot the iFly still said it was connected to the skyradar0001! So now I didn't believe this screen, either! Additionally, it kept popping up my home network in the list of WiFi Networks...but I was 3000' over Abeline, and I'm pretty sure even the best N router doesn't have a range of 350 miles. So I really am not believing anything this screen is telling me at this point.
(BTW, as I sit here in my living room, this WiFi Network Setup screen is still telling me that it is connected to skyradar0001, and that skyradar0001 (Pre) has 4 bars of signal strength! Liar!!!)
I don't know what "Pre" is supposed to mean, but I do know how to read signal bars, and with my plane 15 miles away and powered down, again, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting a skyradar signal. So why does this screen say I'm connected, and show that network in the list with 4 bars of signal strength?
Recommendation 4: Make the WiFi Network Setup screen stop lying to the user!! Don't say it's connected to a network when it's not. And don't say it can hear a network with 4 bars of signal strength when it can't. (And if "Pre" is supposed to be meaningful, then make it say something meaningful, (like "unavail") instead of something cryptic.)
The combination of missing, misleading, and downright bald-face lying information described above made my in-flight attemps to diagnose my problem of missing ADSB data a maddening experience! Plus, it was incredibly distracting, adding workload to an already stressful single-pilot IFR operation. The only reason I persisted through the aggravation was because of the extremely high value of the weather radar information...I knew I was going to need those radar pictures to be able to choose my best path through the weather on the way home. Without it, I might have needed to stop short and wait for the storms to pass before continuing, and they didn't look to be passing very quickly, so that was a highly undesirable option.
Eventually, I deleted all the stored networks, repowered the Skyradar, reestablished a wifi connection, figured out that I needed to unintuitively select "Skyradar" on the "Inhibit Options" screen, and eventually got my ADSB data back. It took me so long to perform this troubleshooting, I still don't know if anything I did was necessary to recover the data, or if I had simply flown far enough that by the time I got the system working again, I had flown into an area that had an active ADSB broadcast! Maybe I could have just left it all alone and it would have come back...something I would have done if, at the very beginning, my iFly had simply _told_ me that was the situation!
So anyway, now that I had radar back, I was closely monitoring the progress of two key cells around the Houston area, trying to decide if I should try to shoot the gap between them.
While I was trying to decide, suddenly the image shifted, and the two cells were BEHIND ME! Woohoo!! Problem solved--iFly says I've got clear skies ahead to my destination!
Except, no, I could look out the windshield and see the rain still in front of me. And yup, sure enough, a couple minutes later, the cells got re-drawn in front of me again. Rats!!
I was still about 20 min away from the rain at this point. Over those 20 min, I saw the cells get drawn behind me another two times, then jump out in front again a few minutes later.
Now, I don't know if this was an ADSB error, and the iFly was dutifully reporting what ADSB was broadcasting, or if this was an iFly error, where the weather image got painted incorrectly on the map every once in a while.
Either way, such an error greatly reduces the value of the real-time weather in the cockpit. If it's an ADSB problem, it needs to be documented and communicated back to the FAA. If it's an iFly problem, it needs to get fixed in the iFly.
So, Recommendation 5: Determine whether occasional "jumps" in Wx radar image location on the map are ADSB or iFly errors, and take appropriate steps to report / resolve.
Okay, that's enough for one note.... Sorry if this comes across as ranting. While it was truly a frustrating experience, one thing that made it bearable was knowing that when I got back, I'd be able to share my experience with you guys, and know that you'd be interested in hearing that experience so that you could factor improvements into your workplan.
Thanks for providing this path for user feedback so that an already-great product continues to get better by leaps and bounds every time there's a new software release!