I am SO sick of the SA app

[airguy]

New user here - I purchased my subscription and downloaded the new DM this morning, it is indeed slow but since it runs in the background I really don't care about speed. It's been going about 5 hours now and has downloaded, verified, and copied all the airport diagrams and is about a quarter of the way through the charts. We'll see how it goes in the morning...

 

[swatson999]

Hmmmm...this will be interesting. All the Scanned Charts are showing "Computer: Exp. Unknown". Update Now reports "Check for new ChartData complete." WHOOPEEE!

Sigh. Looks like it's gotten confused AGAIN.

Back to deleting all the scanned files and trying again, I guess.

Two steps forward, one step back.

 

[jbeaver]

I'm running the latest version of the SA app (5.1.6.0516). When I launched the app today however, the UI was all messed up. I only see the checkmark for the "Flight Guide Airport Diagrams" and not for any other data types. Rebooting Windows doesn't fix the problem.

 

[airguy]

My download worked just fine, finished copying to the USB this morning with just one little problem, and it wasn't related to the SA app.

I had my Dynon screen maps on the USB stick also, and had selected ALL areas on the SA app for VFR and IFR Low charts (including foreign) and the combination was a few megabytes more than my 16GB capacity. It dropped the last three IFR Low charts due to lack of room (Sierra Del Sur, Tehauntepec, and Yucatan).


EDIT - NOPE!!

Spoke too soon - looking closer after all the dust settled I also have the same problem indicated above, where the computer status indicators are green for all items, but the IFR Low chart indicator for my USB is still yellow. No errors were indicated on the load, and I formatted it and started over with the same result.

 

[swatson999]

Well, to follow up, I followed the instructions at https://seattleavionics.zendesk.com/entries/49969514-How-to-delete-ChartData-from-computer-and-memory-card
to clear the computer files for the scanned charts and re-download them, except it didn't download a thing AND still shows red balls for all the Scanned Charts Computer: Exp. Unknown fields.

Swell. I'll try removing all of them from the list of scanned charts I want, then putting them in again.

This thing SUCKS @SS and I'm getting really, really sick of it.

 

[airguy]

I just went and found the download folder on my C: drive (under AppData/Roaming in my case) and deleted the entire "Seattle Avionics" folder after uninstalling the database manager and formatting the memory card. From there, a completely fresh install and download worked fine.

 

[swatson999]

OK, so deleting the folder, then restarting the app and re-selecting the areas I want seems to have worked.

 

[stevepo]

Steve W -- have you contacted Seattle Avionics tech support?  Please email us at: support@seattleavionics.com and I'm sure we can get this resolved extremely quickly.  Our recent experience with the current version of the DM is that virtually every issue we've seen (which have been nearly 0 since the most recent DM version was released) was due to a bad SD card.  Regardless, the good folks in Support can certainly help you.

Steve Podradchik
Seattle Avionics

 

[swatson999]

Steve W -- have you contacted Seattle Avionics tech support?  Please email us at: support@seattleavionics.com and I'm sure we can get this resolved extremely quickly.  Our recent experience with the current version of the DM is that virtually every issue we've seen (which have been nearly 0 since the most recent DM version was released) was due to a bad SD card.  Regardless, the good folks in Support can certainly help you.

Steve Podradchik
Seattle Avionics

Thanks...it seems to be fixed now after completely deleting the scanned files, restarting the app and reselecting all the areas I wanted.

 

[krw5927]

I've had my last frustration using Seattle Avionics charts.  Once again the application failed to load plates/diagrams and VFR sectionals to my 3 month old Sandisk USB 3.0 stick (while flight guide and IFR lows loaded just fine).

My subscription expires on 11/19, and I will NOT be renewing.  I'd rather purchase a second Ipad to keep as a hot spare in the cockpit than use this pitiful service one more time.

The sad part is that the SA leadership has been on this board and has been made well aware of the problems, and still they can't make something that just works.  Well, SA, everyone else seems to be able to do it.  Goodbye.

 

[Garrett]

The last few downloads have worked good for me except that I had to wait until the 12th to get the VFR chart update. To me it is starting to look like the issue may be resolved.

 

[airguy]

I had the same results yesterday that KRW5927 did above - everything auto-updated to my USB except the VFR sectionals.

This is certainly a problem that SA is aware of, and has so far responded inadequately.

 

[stevepo]

We had a problem with the Sectionals for about 4 hours a few days ago. It was resolved and we aren't seeing any download issues since and no other problem reports from customers. Please just click Update Now and it should work fine.

We take download problems VERY SERIOUSLY so if you still have a problem, it's vastly more efficient to email Support@seattleavionics.com and have our support techs work with you rather than post here as the techs will see your email and respond rapidly (generally within an hour).

Steve

 

[Garrett]

Steve, is it normal that I should have to wait for the effective date for VFR sectionals to get the latest/newest charts. Should'nt I be able to get the charts a few days before?

 

[stevepo]

Hi,

Seattle Avionics provides data to about 100,000 pilots running more than 20 different apps and devices so ensuring reliable ChartData is a huge priority for Seattle Avionics and we take it VERY seriously.  If anyone has ANY problem with an update, please email us at Support@SeattleAvionics.com for rapid attention from a support engineer.

ChartData is normally available the Monday or Tuesday  before a new cycle (which is always on Thursday) starts.  And that was the case this cycle, too.

That said, the Sectionals may have appeared to have been enabled later than that this cycle due to a human error (not a software bug).  The IFR approach plates, airport diagrams, and Flight Guide diagrams were not affected by the error.

In particular, an old configuration file was uploaded the server cluster.  As I said above, the error was discovered in a few hours and corrected.  However, because our data is distributed over about a dozen different servers all around the US (world, actually), in some cases the "replication" from one server to the next took up to 24 hours.  Thus, some users may have had the problem for about 24 hours.  We have revised the replication time in the system we use so this cannot happen again.

If anyone had trouble downloading the Sectionals on time, we'd be happy to give you 3 free months of ChartData for problem.  Please email support@seattleavionics.com if the issue affected you.

Sincerely,
Steve Podradchik
CEO

 

[Garrett]

Thanks for the explaination Mr. Steve P. Very Much Appreciated. G.W.

 

[William_Ince]

Thanks Steve.
Keep improving things.

 

[swatson999]

ChartData is normally available the Monday or Tuesday  before a new cycle (which is always on Thursday) starts.  And that was the case this cycle, too.

Doesn't seem to be the case this cycle.  My application is showing everything current, with expiration date of 12/9 (tomorrow), but no new data to download?

ETA: Well, it finally did download the new data, but it never ran in the background despite being set to do so in the options. I had to tell it to update the data before it would. Sigh.

 

[Carolina]

Just another data point. I have been using SA for about two years now and like them. After the first time load issue and understanding the error messages in SkyView, it has worked great for me. I do use quality low-profile thumb drives. I have two screens, so I try to plan ahead to start the process at night. The new >r13 has made it much faster. My only wish is that the data was available sooner, so you could download before a long cross country flight.

 

[swatson999]

So maybe I don't understand something. If the charts are supposed to be available several days prior, is there something special that needs to be done to get them to download before the actual effective date? My desktop just this morning started downloading new chart data (and it has the Enable Background Data Loads option set). Do we have to manually start an update if we want to get the charts a few days ahead of time?