Bad Elf

I've been using the IPad + Foreflight as my EFB and have found it has really come in handy for IFR.  I bought my IPad the day it came out, and was bummed out when I found that a month later they came out with the 3G version that included a built in GPS.  I debated upgrading to the 3G to get the GPS, but I really didn't need 3G capability since my Sprint phone works as a WiFi hotspot and seemed hard to justify buying a whole other IPad just to add the GPS.  Needless to say, I was excited when I read about two newly approved GPS devices for the IPad on the Foreflight blog:  http://blog.foreflight.com/2010/11/09/external-ipad-gps-receivers-for-foreflight-hd/


I bought the Bad Elf unit from Amazon ($99) and had a chance to test it out in flight. It worked well but I was disappointed to see it never showed more than 10M accuracy.  It's supposed to be a WAAS GPS so I was hoping for 5 meters, but whatever... it's very accurate when comparing to the Garmin.  The Bad Elf locked on quickly and works well, I flew for 4.5 hours with the IPad on at full brightness and I have 34% battery left, so it doesn't drain much more battery either. The Bad Elf snaps into IPad pin connector, so I rotated the pad so it stuck out the top and then it didn't really get in the way, but you want to be careful not to bang it or I suppose you could bust the pins. Here is a quick video I shot with my phone. My conclusion is that if you have a WIFI only IPad this is a good solution for adding GPS to Foreflight. If you have the 3G I don't think you're going to get much more out of it if your GPS is already reliable, although future versions of Foreflight might make a difference.