(aka "Psst! Hey, buddy! Wanna buy a ski rack?"). Several friends of mine have related to me their shock when trying to buy a roof-rack for their car. Usually, they choose to buy a Yakima or Thule rack, and they quickly find out that the "extras" are pretty much required things... and they cost as much as the base equipment. First, you get the basic rack attachment for your car. Now, that doesn't actually let you attach anything to it because it's just the part that's sized for your car. So, you say you want to carry a bicycle? Oh, they've got an extra part that you can buy so that you can carry bikes. Oh, and you want to be able to strap some skis to your rack? Oh, they have an extra ski attachment that you can buy so that you can carry skis. And you probably would like to lock your rack to your car so that it doesn't get stolen (by someone just being hit by the sticker-shock of this roof-rack scam)... so, yes, they also sell, for a price, locks that you can install on the rack.

Now, go look at the pricing for Jeppesen stuff. The initial price (say, the $33 for the California "trip kit") does not include the 2-inch binder that it has to go in. The binder costs another $36 for the PLASTIC one, $59 for the "regular" leather, and $92 for the "deluxe" leather. (no, that's not a typo... the cheapest binder costs more than what you put in it... and can cost almost three times as much). Also, since Jepp charts are printed on onionskin-type paper, you are going to DESTROY the chart for your home airport in no time at all. If you're super-careful, you'll probably get to use it for a couple-dozen approaches before the holes have been torn and that page is just sitting loose in the book. Well, that's not a problem because Jeppesen sells little clear protectors (at $25 for 10 of them plus some little tabbie things) that you can put your oft-used pages into for protection. Now, ignore the fact that they could have avoided the problem by just using heavier paper (yes... I realize that this would make the books thicker and heavier). What I want you to notice is that it's just another of this whole system of add-ons that you end up needing in order to be able to use the charts in day-in-day-out real-life operation. First, they sell you the ice-cream, and then they get that same amount of money out of you by selling you toppings. No thanks! I can go to mypilotstore.com and buy the NACO SW-2 and SW-3 TPP's and have all of the approaches for California for $8.30. Low-altitude en-route charts are $4 each and, because of the way California is covered, I'd have to by 5 of them to totally cover CA... so that's another $20. So, for $28.30, I've got everything I need with NACO.

NACO charts use three different colors for airports. Ones without instrument approaches are brown, ones with civilian instrument approaches are green, and ones with super-duper military approach capability are blue. Now, if you don't care about military approaches, then green and blue both mean that you can do civilian instrument approaches there, so you can just remember: "Colorful (ie, green and blue) = instrument approach. Bland and dull (like brown) = no instrument approach)". Then, along comes Jeppesen. Jeppesen wants to save some ink. Jeppesen decides that their customers don't give a rat's ass about military approaches and, hence, the airports with civilian and military instrument approaches, because they both meet civilian instrument approach requirements, can be lumped together as "instrument approach" airports. Okay, fine. But then, they chose to use blue for airports with instrument approaches and green for airports without them.

Now, let's take a step back for a moment. Like I mentioned with the NACO charts, if you're not military, then the extra precision of a military approach doesn't matter to you and so the blue airports, for all you care, could have been printed in green. Green for IAP airports, brown for those without. And THAT is the color scheme that, I feel, would have been the obvious choice if you were looking to save some ink. But, instead, they chose blue and green, respectively. So, if you're used to NACO charts where green means that there's an approach for that airport, and you're using Jepp charts for the first time... I hope you're not re-routing to that airport while in flight, burning up fuel in the time it takes to figure out that you're wasting your time.

What is it with those monsterous VOR symbols? Do they really have to be sticking those ferris wheels all over the chart? It's not so that you can find them, because all of the ones that you use have either several approach legs running into and out of them, or there's some radial coming out of them so that you know what radial to tune in. Secondly, why on earth do they need to put the little tick marks on the ferris wheel every 30 degrees? When I'm flying an approach, I'm going to fly the radials that are specified on the chart. I am not going to just invent a new approach right then and there... so I don't see why I would need any sort of compass-rose-type thing to help me figure out the bearing of a radial that wasn't put on there when it was printed. And I certainly doubt that, if I were to do so, that it would suffice to know the bearing with an error of plus/minus 10 degrees or so, which is about as good as you could do with those little compass-roses.

You could call it nit-picking, but I don't see the point in needlessly making a chart unfamiliar. For example, look at the difference between FAA VFR charts and low-altitude IFR charts. On the IFR ones, they took out the terrain coloring partly because you're not going to be using terrain for any navigation purposes (so you don't need it). But, removing it just because it isn't really needed isn't necessarily enough reason. The other reason they did it is because removing it makes the chart a lot more readable. So, there was a benefit to changing things. See? But the VOR symbols that were easy to spot on VFR charts are even easier to spot on IFR charts without the terrain coloring, so the FAA didn't change them.

Back-Course labeling. Let me point out something at this point. I've been reading about all of the ways someone can screw up during IFR, and frankly, my biggest worry is not that I'm going to forget to turn on pitot heat or overspeed the aircraft while chasing a lowering airspeed after my pitot freezes up... or that I'll not notice ice accumulating on the wings. No... my biggest worry is that I'm going to shoot a back-course approach and forget that it's a back-course approach until I've irreversably botched the approach by trying to fly to the needle instead of flying away from it. Something like this is so easy to overlook, and so potentially disasterous, that I doubt I would willingly shoot a back-course approach without at least another human (I don't even care if they're a pilot) to bark "Back Course!" into the intercom every 30 seconds.

So, suffice it to say that I appreciate explicit labeling of back-course (like NACO does when they print "BACK COURSE" in nice big letters on the approach chart AND also print the front-course localizer off the other end of the runway so that, together, the front-course and back-course look like a long bow-tie) and I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when Jeppesen decides to skip all of those cues and, insted, just make the shaded half of the localizer feather a little darker. Oh, yeah... that visual cue will be impossible to overlook when my workload is high in real IMC. Ugh!

Because Jepp charts are kept in a ringed binder, Jepp can, and does, just update the things that changed. So, instead of sending you a whole binder-full of charts, they just send you a dozen or so new pages to put into your binder. Now... I have several problems with this alone.

The first one is price (again). Remember that, for $28.40, I can get all of CA in NACO charts. They expire about every two months, so 6 updates in a year comes to $170.40. However, for that, you get a brand-new set of everything every two months. And, if I don't need to fly in that sliver of the state on the eastern side of the sierras, I don't need 2 of those 5 enroute charts and so the price goes down to $122.40. Jeppesen, on the other hand, charges $144 for a CA trip kit and a year of updates. Subtract out the $33 for the kit and the updates are costing you $111.

Now, I really wish I had a picture to show you of a year's worth of updates from Jeppesen stacked up next to a year's worth of updates of NACO's. In a year, Jeppesen is sending you a stack of paper totalling maybe a quarter of an inch high... versus about 6 inches or so if you use NACO charts. Now, you might say "So... Jeppesen isn't wasting as much paper". Okay. But what I want you to notice is that Jeppesen's profit margin on the updates is... well, it's almost all profit. Keep in mind that, for just $198 per year, you could buy the entire trip-kit every two months (and I encourage you to do so in order to encourage Jeppesen to stop this nonsense). In other words, Jeppesen is charging you abou 25% less money and sending you about 95% less paper. That's a nice gig if you can get it. Maybe, for another 10% less, they'll just not send you anything at all. Then, they can shut down their printing facility and just cash the checks from the beach in Bermuda.

Another thing that sucks about just sending you changes is that you never get a completely fresh set of charts. Go look at the POH for most rental planes. Notice how the pre-flight section is barely still attached to the book, if it's even still there? Want your charts to look like that? Many pages in my Jepp charts haven't been updated in years. If I spill some coffee on one, I can either just tough it out and wait for something about that approach to change and for Jepp to send me a replacment, or I can go buy the entire stack of charts again. Take a moment to watch one of your CFI's who uses Jepp and one who uses NACO's. The Jepp guy carefully opens his binder and extracts the approach chart for the coming flight, making sure to not crinkle it or frighten it (cue Saturday Night Live soundbite: "Please do not taunt Happy Fun Ball"). They handle it with the care you'd see a historian handle a 150-year-old document. Now, watch the NACO guy. He'll grab the darned thing (it might not even be *his*), glance at the date on the front to make sure that it's current, and he's out the door.

And getting a full set of new charts (like you do with NACO) helps you guard again not just accidental blemishes, but intentional ones as well. I remember when I first started flying and I tried to keep my VFR charts all perfect... erasing any pencil marks and re-folding it all nice. Nowadays, I'll write all over the damn thing in pen if I need to.... circle important stuff with a Sharpie... the thing's going into the trash in a few weeks anyway. It's not like it's a library book.

Also, there's no guessing about the currency of NACO charts. There's one expiration date on the front. If the expiration date is in the future, then everything in that book is valid (unless a NOTAM has invalidated it). Now, suppose you haven't checked your mailbox in the past few days. Is there an update there that you haven't picked up? Maybe you are borrowing your friend's Jepp binder; does he/she keep their binder up-to-date? Maybe you share a plane with some other pilots and there's one binder that stays in the aircraft. When was it last updated? Instead, I can waltz into my FBO and, for about $10, I've got the freshest en-route and approach charts for where I'm going without having to worry.