ForeFlight Mobile adds Documents

ForeFlight Mobile 4.4 has added a way to store and view PDF documents on the iPad. ForeFlight provides versions of popular FAA handbooks, parts of the Airport/Facility Directory previously not available in this app, and chart legends for download and manages those files just like a chart subscription. This ForeFlight video explains the documents feature in great detail.

Documents in ForeFlight Mobile from ForeFlight on Vimeo.

The document reader provides indexed documents and allows you to save bookmarks. Complex pages, like illustrations the one below from the FAA's Instrument Flying Handbook, can take a while to render (though they seem to render much faster on the new iPad) which may leave you with the impression that the page you selected is blank. Be patient and you'll see complex pages appear.

You can download and store enhanced Class B representations. Unlike SkyCharts Pro, ForeFlight still doesn't provide important Terminal Area Chart marginalia (like the VFR routings through LA Class B) shown below. Hopefully that will be coming soon.

To store your own PDF document in ForeFlight, simply need to email it as an attachment, open the email using the iPad Mail app, tap on the attachment icon, tap the icon in the right upper corner, tap on Open In ..., and select ForeFlight from the list of available apps.

For operators who want to distribute electronic copies of important company documents, like the latest version of their OpSpec, the ForeFlight documents feature should save a lot of paper, weight and heartache. ForeFlight continues to do a good job of balancing their app's feature set so that it is useful for individual pilots as well as commercial operators. ForeFlight also doesn't seem to be afraid to innovate and at this rate, the competition has a lot of catching-up to do.

New iPad Review

There's the knock at the door, you feel the package in your hands, you unwrap it ... Who doesn't like the excitement of exploring new stuff?

If you've read the reviews to date you probably know the basics: The new iPad is a bit faster than the iPad 2, it has more cache, but it also needs that cache to support the high-density "retina" display. If you choose to get the 4G model (I chose Wifi), there are reports of impressive data bandwidth - 14MB/sec or better in some urban areas. Used judiciously, this could be a very good thing. Use that bandwidth gratuitously and you'll go through your monthly data limit in no time, not to mention your battery.

The new iPad is a bit thicker and heavier than the iPad 2, but to tell the truth I couldn't really notice any difference. If you have a magnetic Smart Cover, it will work just fine with the new iPad. Rear cases for the iPad 2 are incompatible with the new iPad and third-party suppliers are only now beginning to get some offerings out there. On eBay I found an inexpensive, bare-bones transparent case for the new iPad that works with the Smart Cover for a mere $12.99, including shipping. Other third-party cases may be sexier, but they can set you back as much as $60, or more.

Early benchmarks seem to indicate the iPad 2 and the new iPad are essentially the same when it comes to processor and memory performance. I find the new iPad a bit faster when it comes to downloading chart updates and the crispness of the retina display is a noticeable improvement when viewing PDFs and Jeppesen's rendered charts. Try something like scrolling through Google Earth and you'll see a marked difference. In general, most any text that is rendered on the new iPad's retina display looks a lot better.

Storage, WiFi, 4G ...

I previously recommended the 16GB iPad as being sufficient for most pilots. Lately I've had to clean out unused apps and data from my iPad 2 because I was down to 1.8GB of free storage. For the new iPad, I chose 32GB and that seems to be adequate for my needs. Then again I have loaded three EFB apps as well as numerous presentations, spreadsheets, and PFD documents. If you want to store a lot of music or a movies for that long airline flight, you may want to give some thought to more storage or consider an external storage device.

My choice was to continue to with the WiFi model rather than go 4G, mainly for budgetary reasons. Yesterday I flew with a pilot who had just gotten the 4G version. Just before engine start, he realized he hadn't transferred his ForeFlight Checklists. No problem. He was able to sync his check list to his iPad over 4G in what seemed like about 10 seconds. As an aside, ForeFlight Checklist Pro, having been designed for the iPhone and needing to be run in 2X mode, looks fantastic on the new iPad retina display.

The downside of 4G would seem to be battery life. After a 1.5 hour flight, the battery on the new iPad 4G was down to 5% from almost being about half charged at the start of the flight. More investigation needs to be done, but it would appear that disabling 4G or using an auxiliary power source in flight is a must with the new iPad. After two solid days of flying, my new iPad WiFi battery life seems exactly the same as the iPad 2.

Another preliminary observation is that my new iPad may run a bit warmer. Right now the weather is cool in Northern California, so time will tell if the extra graphics and cache will contribute to higher operating temperatures. Right now, I haven't seen any heat-related issues.

Upgrade or Wait?

To buy or not to buy? That is the question for many pilots. If you are an original iPad owner, moving up to the new iPad is a no-brainer. If you currently own an iPad 2, I don't see a pressing reason to upgrade unless you need 4G performance, you have filled up your storage, you have need for the retina display, or you just must have the latest/greatest and you have the requisite disposable income. If you do choose to trade up from the iPad 2, you'll undoubtedly be able to sell it for a higher price now than if you wait until the next product offering.

Rumors abound about a smaller form factor (7.85") iPad being released in October 2012 to compete with the Kindle-sized readers. A smaller iPad could be a viable device for yoke mounting in an aircraft, but we all know about rumors. The reasonable assumption would seem to be that any follow-on to the new iPad (whatever it will be called) won't hit the market for at least another year. The bottom-line for me is that the new iPad WiFi is drop-in replacement for the iPad 2 and performs just a well as its predecessor.

ADS-B Catch-up

Anyone who's not been asleep the last threes years has probably heard that ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) is a key component in the FAA strategy known as NextGen. In addition to reducing airport traffic delays and preventing tooth decay in dogs, NextGen will purportedly use ADS-B to replace traditional, expensive, old-fashioned radar used by air traffic control (ATC). I'll pause here to give my readers a chance to stop laughing before I point out the obvious - ADS-B as it currently stands has more security holes than an old pair of work pants. Good old radar is and will remain critical to our national defense, helping to thwart smugglers, terrorists, and other airborne criminals who don't want to be detected. In spite of all the hyperbole, PR whohaa and design problems, ADS-B is nevertheless a cool and appealing concept.

Before getting into the two halves of ADS-B, let me point out that only bureaucrats and propeller-head engineers could come up with a name like Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. Don't you like how it just rolls off the tongue? Moving on, there's ADS-B In and ADS-B Out.

ADS-B In is simply the passive reception of traffic data sent from appropriately equipped aircraft and weather information broadcast from local, ground-based stations. ADS-B Out is more complicated (read expensive) for aircraft owners because it involves purchasing and installing new ADS-B transceivers that can transmit and receive GPS-derived position and altitude. The cost of equipping all aircraft with ADS-B is the big hurdle that seems to get glossed over, but such equipment will be mandatory for aircraft that want to use most controlled airspace by January 1, 2020.

In the meantime, there clearly is a void in traffic avoidance technology for light aircraft. Many GA aircraft have equipment that supports the current and useful TIS (Traffic Information System). Unfortunately not all ATC radar sites support TIS and when you're in those areas your TIS equipment will tell you traffic is unavailable. In classic FAA fashion, no sooner had TIS technology become widespread than there was the announcement that TIS would be phased out at some indefinite point in the future (back in 2005, the phase-out was said to be in 2013).

TIS is very useful and has saved my bacon on many occasions. Lately, some local controllers have gotten irritated when instrument pilots practice holding at some airway fixes. One fix in particular has been used by yours truly for holding practice over a decade, but we're now told to practice holds much farther to the East where there is supposedly less traffic. The irony here is that we're often flying TIS-equipped aircraft and in the area we've been asked to avoid we get TIS alerts and visually acquire the traffic, often long before the approach controllers point them out. When we hold further East as requested, we're in an area where ATC's radar does not support TIS, we actually  experience more traffic conflicts, and we have to resolve these with just our eyes. To my mind, some procedures that are implemented in the pursuit of safety actually end up decreasing safety.

GNS 5890 USB Stick ADS-B Receiver

My firsthand experience with ADS-B was nil until the kind folks at Global Navigation Systems (makers of the GNS5870 bluetooth GPS receiver) recently allowed me to test-drive their new GNS 5890 ADS-B Receiver USB-Stick Receiver. This receiver comes with Windows software that allows you to display the position of ADS-B Out equipped aircraft on a map. The software itself is pretty simple and more a proof-of-concept than anything else. This device is small, purportedly the smallest ADS-B receiver made. And GNS has plans to release a Bluetooth ADS-B receiver with weather capability that could be very useful with the iPad, provided iPad EFB software developers introduce support for ADS-B Bluetooth devices. A combination ADS-B/GPS Bluetooth receiver would be an ideal solution. If the hardware and software align, ADS-B on the iPad could become a very useful, cost-effective, and subscription-free alternative to XM weather.

In order for ADS-B traffic capability to become a reality, all aircraft will need to have ADS-B Out capability and that will require an appropriately certified (read expensive) transceiver installed in each aircraft. In short, ADS-B traffic technology just doesn't seem to be something that can be accomplished with a portable device and installing ADS-B transceivers in all GA aircraft will be a huge, expensive, and time-consuming undertaking.

In an imperfect world where safety often seems to take a backseat to cost, ADS-B is a cool and promising technology.  In the meantime, I sure hope that the FAA's proposed phase-out of TIS will be delayed.

3DBB

It occurred to me a few months ago that the iPad has become my very own version of the 3DBB. Some explanation may be in order. When I ask people about my age if they remember a cartoon called Tennessee Tuxedo many do not. Perhaps Total Television, the production company that produced it, only had regional arrangements with CBS. Maybe it only aired in certain areas of the country. Or maybe as a kid I just watched too much TV. In any event, the Tennessee Tuxedo plots always seemed to follow a similar pattern. Tennessee (a penguin voiced by Don Adams) and his walrus pal Chumley had some sort of task to accomplish. This usually involved escaping from the zoo and tackling some technical problem that required them to learn something about science or history. When they got stumped, they'd enlist the help of their friend Phineas J. Whoopee - the man with all the answers. While educating this unlikely pair of escapees, Mr. Whoopee would invariably employ a device called the three-dimensional blackboard, or 3DBB for short.

To illustrate why the iPad is like the 3DBB, consider just a few of the apps I've run across that you can use to hone your aviation skills.

Sporty's G1000 Checkout

If you've been avoiding transitioning to the G1000, Sporty's new app could be a big help. The app consists of a series of instructional videos that introduce the G1000 components and then delves into the features in a systematic and logical way. From synthetic vision to autopilot usage, this app pretty much has you covered. There are even G1000 manuals and quizzes you can take to test how much you've retained. Pony up $80, go through this series before you get in a G1000 Cessna, and you might just save yourself a big chunk of change.

Garmin GTN Trainer

Garmin's 430/530 series of GPS receivers was hugely successful, but that success certainly was not due to a sterling user interface. What helped aircraft owners and pilots accept the Garmins was the availability of a free PC trainer they could use to master the perverse cursor-mode-big-nob-little-nob-enter dance for free. Garmin has done the smart thing and produced a simulator for their new GTN series of touchscreen GPS receivers. Though the GTN trainer isn't free, it's a good way aircraft owners to try before they buy. All that's needed is an iPad (which for pilots seems to have become de rigueur) and about $25 bucks.

With a functional representation of the new touch interface on the iPad, the GTN trainer simulates the larger-screened GTN 750. And just in case you have some sort of cognitive impairment, the app reminds you it is in demo mode and shouldn't be used for navigation.  The GTN 750 screen Home screen provides access to all the GTN features. From, left-to-right, top-to-bottom, you'll find the volume and squelch control, communications frequencies, the audio panel settings, the transponder setting, and the VOR navigation frequencies. The top part of the display is static and you'll always see this data once the unit has completed its start-up.

The middle of the screen allows you to access one of the 12 basic groups of functions, a huge improvement over the 430/530 scroll-big-knob-to-view interface where the current context was not at all obvious. With the GTN you can clearly see what functions are available and there's a clear and consistent way to get back to the home screen after selecting a function.

The row at the bottom is used to display status messages, GPS sensitivity, and whether GPS or VOR is the selected navigation source.

The trainer lets you experiment with the GTN user interface in a meaningful way, though there are some odd ... features. Garmin designers seem to have figured out a way to further overload the big-knob-little-knob interface (yee gads!). Switch from the trainer app to another app and the trainer will start over booting up again, from scratch (d'oh!). Still this trainer could be just the ticket for contract pilots and instructors who might one day find themselves in front of one of these units. A okay deal for $25 ...

Cirrus SR Perform HD

For Cirrus SR20 and SR22 fliers, the free Cirrus SR Perform app gives you a fast way to calculate weight and balance as well as takeoff, cruise, and landing performance. For Cirrus renters and instructors, you can enter profiles for multiple aircraft. There's even information on lean-of-peak operations and the dreaded "red fin." All this for free? Yeaah baby!

PC-12 Digital Aircraft Flight Manual

If you're like most GA pilots, the Pilatus PC-12 holds a special appeal. The reason is simple. Unlike a Gulfstream, the average GA pilot could see themselves actually flying a PC-12. Okay, you'll need an extra couple million dollars lying around, but you don't have to own a PC-12 in order to try out the free app. In addition to weight and balance calculations, this app lets you calculate takeoff, climb, cruise, and landing performance. If you're a PC-12 pilot or operator, this app could save you a bunch of time. Even if you're not going to be flying a PC-12 anytime soon, a guy or gal can dream, right? And the app's price is right!

LiveATC

Whether you're a student pilot seeking to hone your radio skills or a certificated pilot wanting to stay sharp in your spare time, you've probably heard of LiveATC.  LiveATC provides streaming audio from a network of aircraft communications receivers around the world, supported primarily by volunteers provide the necessary radio equipment and technical moxie to make it all work. Not all airports are supported, but for a mere three bucks you can get an iPhone app (it also runs on the iPad) or an Android app and listen to ATC feeds. Two things to be aware of. Many folks speaking on ATC frequencies are in serious need of remedial training and are not the best examples to emulate. Use LiveATC over a 3G connection and you risk significantly raising your monthly data consumption, so find a wifi connection.

Whoopee Indeed

This is a quick survey of just a few of the apps that can make your iPad an even more useful tool. Whether you're struggling to learn the G1000, improve your radio technique, or just kill some time in the pilot lounge between flights, the iPad can be your very own 3-dimensional blackboard.

LogTen Pro, Version 6

Paper logbooks have a certain charm for both seasoned and neophyte pilots alike. Thumbing through a paper logbook is an experience that an electronic logbook has a hard time matching, but the more hours you have recorded the more difficult it is to manage and track currency and aeronautical experience. That's why I encourage pilots I train to duplicate the times recorded in their paper logbook in some sort of electronic format. Many pilots resist migrating to an electronic logbook because training flights require an instructor's signature, or because they need a place to record endorsements, or simply because they have amassed a fair amount of flight time and the thought of entering all that data is just too daunting. The latest release of LogTen Pro, a popular electronic logbook program for the Mac, iPhone, and the iPad has added features that move the electronic logbook closer to completely replacing hardcopy logbooks, including the ability to store digital signatures and endorsements.

Readin', 'Rightin', & 'Rithmetic

Most brands of paper logbooks provide precious little space for pilots and instructors to document each flight. That's why instructors either learn to write in very small letters or they end up taking multiple lines on a page to describe a single flight. Even when instructors succeed in writing in tiny letters, they still have to appropriate some blank space to record their signature, certificate number, and expiration date as required by 14 CFR 61.51.

By far the biggest disadvantage of paper logbooks is that mistakes, omissions and arithmetic errors invariably creep in. Even if you are incredibly circumspect in your math, there will be times when you'll be asked to provide statistics from you logbooks that can be time consuming to compile. For example, student pilots filling out an airman's application Form 8710 will need to provide some numbers like night cross country instruction received. Form 8710-10 (National Examiner Board-Designated Pilot Examiner Candidate Application) asks for very specific flight times, like multi-engine instrument flight instruction given. Ferreting out obscure flight times from a paper logbook can be time-consuming and error prone.

'Lectronic Solution

Several features make electronic logbook applications like LogTen Pro (LTP) appealing. You have more space to enter a description of the flight, track day and night landings, and the times for various categories will be totaled for you - a good job for a computer. Most electronic logbooks let you print out a hardcopy of your flight times, too.

LTP runs on MacOS, the iPhone, and the iPad, though you'll have to purchase separate versions of the app for each device. LTP lets you synchronize the logbooks on any and all devices that you have, just be sure you're backing up the logbook file somewhere safe. You can configure LTP so that certain hours, like PIC, are automatically populated when you enter a new flight.

You can record Hobbs and tach times as well as block-out/off/on/block-in times. Accurately record block times and LTP will automatically calculate how much of your flight was officially night time. You can also track night takeoffs and landings in a meaningful way, something that is missing from many brands of paper logbooks. Virtually all of the fields are configurable, so you can adjust LTP to be as simple or as detailed as you like.

For pilots who fly professionally, LTP can track your duty times and inform you when you've reached or are about to reach duty limits. As a flight instructor, I use this feature to track how long I've spent with each student.

Previous versions of LTP let you track things like instrument and type-specific currency, but one shortcoming was it was difficult to record multiple instrument approaches for a single flight. Version 6 lets you configure up to ten instrument approach fields for a single flight.

When an insurance company or flight club wants to know how much time you have in a specific aircraft type in the last 90 days, LTP makes it relatively easy to provide an answer. You can create your own Smart Groups that use multiple criteria to extract pretty much any flight time you might be able to imagine.

Signature Required

The coolest feature in LTP version 6 is the ability to sign a logbook entry for a specific flight. Before signing, fill in the flight details completely and correctly because once the entry is signed, it's locked. It can be unlocked to be corrected, but the instructor's signature will be removed, which makes sense. Assuming you've filled in the flight details, the signing process is relatively simple.

1. Tap on the signature button

2. Select instructor by name

3. Enter the instructor's certificate number

4. Enter expiration date of instructor's certificate

5. Instructor signs in the white box using their fingertip

I Certify ...

LTP lets instructors enter endorsements directly into a pilot's electronic logbook, but this feature is found in the Certificates section. This may be a matter of semantics, but I found that odd. It seems Endorsements should be a separate category, but I digress ...

Tap on the Certificates tab, then add a certificate, select Endorsement as the type, and the instructor can enter whatever text and limitations they desire. Instructors can also specify an expiration date which is very handy for student pilot solo endorsements.

The bad news is that instructors must manually enter the text for each endorsement. Sure, you can cut-and-paste from AC 61-65E, but your student must have that AC stored on his or her device.

Once you've signed an endorsement, it will be locked and you can store the "certificate" (endorsement) on www.mylogten.com by tapping Share and specifying an email address. MyLogTen will send an email to the specified address which will contain a link where you can view and print-out the endorsement. This data will be stored on their server for one week and will then be automatically deleted. Not the best arrangement, but it's workable.

Hardcopy, Too

If you want to print out a copy of your LTP logbook, a dizzying array of report and summary formats are provided. In addition to doing a backup of your electronic logbook file, it's probably wise to maintain a printed version, too.

Warts and Requests

LTP offers a lot of features for a lot of different pilots, from students to instructors to airline pilots. Their instructional videos on their various products are good, but each one begins with the hyperbolic claim that logging your flight time with LTP "... couldn't be easier." The truth is that with all these features and options, configuring LTP can be a bit daunting. LTP eases things a bit by asking you what your role is when you first install the app, but there are a lot of bells and whistles. If you have questions, customer support for LTP is pretty darn good.

The biggest drag with LTP version 6 is that the app start-up time on the iPad and the iPhone is noticeably longer than the previous version: It takes anywhere from 15 to 20 seconds for the app to initialize and that's a bummer if you woke your iPad up simply to record a block-out or off time. I'm not sure what LTP is doing during that delay, perhaps it's busy calculating currency or duty times? The developers have been releasing updates on a regular basis (at least two have updates to version 6 have already been released), so one hopes this will be addressed.

The mechanism for entering instructor certificate expiration dates could be better. All certificates expire at the end of the calendar month: One should only have to select the month and year of the expiration without scrolling through the day to find the end of the month. This is likely a limitation of the iOS programming interface, but still ...

If both pilot and instructor are using LTP, there should be a way to record the flight once and have it be distributed to the pilot's and the instructor's logbook. Since I already log flight times and descriptions on my iPad, it's tedious to have to enter the details twice. I'd like to see a way to enter the flight, sign the entry, and then transmit it (perhaps via email) so the student can import it into their logbook.

Instructors are required to keep records of any endorsements they have given for three years (five years for TSA-mandated endorsements). Flight schools and flying clubs often want copies of those endorsements. With the ability to sign-off flights and give electronic endorsements, LTP is just crying out for a better way share this info. An email facility with a data attachment that could be imported into LTP might do the trick.

Which brings us to iCloud support. The lack of iCloud integration is more a reflection of Apple's iCloud not being ready for prime time than it is a lack of will on the part of LTP developers. Assuming iCloud app support does become generally available, some of the sharing issues mentioned above may find a solution. Until then, LTP has limited ways to share flights and endorsements.

Out With the Old?

Will electronic logbooks replace paper logs? Will most NDBs be decommissioned? The answer to both of these questions would appear to be "yes, eventually." You may have resisted switching to an electronic logbook because you don't want to enter all the flights recorded in your paper logbook. That's certainly understandable and you may want to consider this service for converting your logbook to digital format. Given LTP's ability to record signatures and endorsements, it may finally be time for pilots to consider converting from a paper logbook to an all digital version.

Diversion, Conversion

Cruising along at 5,500 feet, en route to the Columbia airport, my student had good reason to believe he’d never get there. Sure enough, in preparation for his upcoming private pilot check ride, I asked him divert to another airport. He began circling over a chosen landmark, produced a VFR chart, drew a course line, estimated the heading, distance, time, and fuel required to the new airport, all the while maintaing altitude and looking for traffic. His juggling of these priorities was impressive, but he soon discovered that his chart had been folded so many times that the frequencies for the new destination airport had been rendered illegible. Flustered, he scrambled to locate his Airport/Facility Directory while I kept an eye out for traffic and mused about how many times a day pilots must now be asking their instructors “Is it okay for me to use my iPad?”

I’ve logged nearly 1200 hours since my first flight with the iPad 1 and frankly, I’ve never looked back. When I was still searching for the ideal EFB back in 2009, I explained how the FAA doesn’t require any certification or qualification for EFBs under most Part 91 operations. Just recently, the FAA’s own Safety Briefing publication had yet another article making the same observations. Given that pilots are adopting EFBs faster than you can say “decommissioned NDB,” it’s time for instructors to start making EFBs part of the training they offer as well as part of their own training. I tell student pilots I train “Go ahead and use an iPad if you want, but be prepared with a credible back-up strategy in case your iPad fails or your instructor decides to simulate a failure.”


Before you start gnashing your teeth, complaining about newfangled gadgets, and pining for the good old days of slide rules, cigarettes smoking in the cockpit, and navigating via A-N Range, consider that combining old techniques with new approaches can actually aid in teaching pilots to that elusive correlative level of knowledge. The key concept here is combining approaches, not rejecting one in favor of the other. Here’s an overview of the old school approach, followed by some mash-ups of familiar approaches with new tools and software.

Old School Planning

The first half dozen times through the cross-country flight planning process, I like student pilots to do navigation calculations manually so they’ll understand and appreciate what their EFB or flight planning software will eventually be doing for them. My favorite nav log form is available for free from Dauntless-Software. The two basic variations in nav logs involve whether the True Course (TC) is first corrected for magnetic variation or for the wind correction angle.

ATC uses and refers to magnetic directions, so I say cut to the chase and go magnetic. Winds aloft forecasts are provided with true directions, so you'll need to account for that if you choose the TC-VAR-MC-WCA-MH format.

Virtually all nav logs end up with a Compass Heading (CH), to which I say “Who cares?” If you always set your aircraft's heading indicator using the compass correction card, calculating a CH is simply gilding the lily. If your aircraft doesn't have a heading indicator, then by all means compute the CH until such time as you manage to catch up with the later half of 20th century aviation technology.

I teach students to complete a paper nav log in this general sequence.

1. Calculate climb performance and ground speed
2. Determine the location of the Top-of-Climb (TOC)
3. Calculate cruise performance and ground speed
4. Determine the location of the Time-of-Descent (TOD).
5. Divide the course between the TOC and TOD into legs of equal length.

Aircraft consume more fuel and have a slower ground speed during the climb to altitude, so calculating where you'll reach the top-of-climb (TOC) is important. And if you want to avoid arriving high and hot, the time-of-descent is something you’ll want to plan for. Want to use an electronic E6B instead of a slide rule to do these calculations? Fine by me.

With TOC and TOD marked on your chart, try dividing the remaining course into legs of equal length. Sometimes this works, sometimes there aren’t good landmarks. If defining equal leg distances does work, you only need to calculate time, fuel, and distance for one leg to have the numbers for the other legs. Choosing landmarks on a paper chart is the ultimate in flexibility: You can choose whatever you want. With an EFB or internet-based planner, waypoints selection is as simple.

High-Tech Planning

The sad fact is we're well into the second millennium and there aren’t many computerized flight planners that account for the time- or fuel-to-climb. A few internet-based planners that do (to varying degrees) include DUAT (not to be confused with DUATS), AOPA’s Flight Planner, and FlightAware.

Once you’ve entered a profile for your aircraft, the DUAT flight planner will provide the location TOC and TOD in latitude/longitude format. Not terribly handy, but it also provides a magnetic course and distance which does turn out to be useful. More on that later.

The browser-based flight planners from AOPA and FlightAware both account for fuel consumed in the climb and descent, but they don’t tell you where TOC and TOD are located. Bummer about that.

FlightAware’s planner adds some value by including the estimated fuel costs for various altitudes, winds aloft forecast, and routes. In this example you can see that you’d only save a few bucks by climbing to 11,000 feet versus 9,000 feet. To access FlightAware’s flight planning features, you’ll need to set up an account. Don’t worry, it’s a free and simple process. Be advised that FlightAware’s planner doesn’t work completely on the iPad browsers I’ve tried.

So what about specifying waypoints that aren’t pre-defined objects like airports, VORs or airway intersections? Most planners allow you to enter your own waypoints as Lat/Long coordinates or as a VOR-radial-distance. That’s not terribly user-friendly, but it works.
You can add custom checkpoints in ForeFlight’s map view by tapping on the map view. A dialog will appear allowing you to add the location as a user-defined coordinate. If you tap on your course line, it’s easy to inadvertently change the course slightly and you won’t know the leg distance until you’ve tapped, but there you go.

If you know the lat/long for a waypoint, you can enter that into a ForeFlight route. Below, the lat/long that DUAT calculated for TOC has been entered as a TOC waypoint.

If you know the distance and radial from a VOR, you can enter a waypoint in ForeFlight using theta/rho format: VOR_id/radial/distance. This approach also works with airport identifiers. Below, I’ve taken the TOC and TOD data from the DUAT flight planner output and entered them as waypoints in the format KOAK/133/16 and KSBA/315/29.

Nav Log in Action

Using a paper nav log in flight starts with recording your departure time. For short trips, just record the two-digit minutes after the hour. Then to calculate estimated time of arrival (ETA) for the next checkpoint, add the time your off time to the estimated time en route (ETE) for the first checkpoint. When you reach the checkpoint, record the actual time of arrival (ATA), add that to the next ETE and you have the ETA for the next checkpoint. If your ETA calculations consistently differ from the ATA, consider doing an winds aloft and TAS calculation.

ForeFlight kinda-sorta follows the paper nav log tradition, but the assumption is that ForeFlight will use GPS information to calculate your estimated time en route for each leg in real-time based on your current ground speed. I find ForeFlight’s nav log display a bit cumbersome and difficult to read in flight, but that could be due to my 50-something eyesight. If you want a historical record, why not combine a paper nav log with your EFB?

Electronic Diversion

Planning an in-flight diversion with an app like ForeFlight is the height of simplicity.

1. Tap and hold on the airport to which you wish to divert
2. A dialog will appear showing the known waypoints in the area
3. Tap on the orange D-> button for the selection you 

EFBs can provide real-time calculation of the desired track, ETE, and fuel consumed, but you can do the same sort of thing with many panel mounted GPS. Electronic diversions are so easy and with no plotter, pencil and calculator to juggle, it's no wonder some pilots feel they are cheating. Hand-calculated diversions can be just as dangerous as fixating on pretty colors on a moving map. Having a quick way to calculate a diversion in real life gives you more time to look outside for traffic and manage whatever emergency or urgent situation you're facing. That seems like a good thing, not the work of the devil.

Combine and Conquer

Whether it be in paper format, electronic format, or a combination of the two, preparing and using a nav log in flight can be a curiously satisfying experience. Teaching student pilots the old ways is still a valuable part of the aviation education equation, but introducing and integrating new tools doesn't need to detract from the experience. High tech solutions can enhance accuracy and safety. As with anything in aviation, understanding the limitations of technology is a more productive approach that rejecting new techniques out-of-hand. To my mind, if a pilot can learn the basics and then combine old school and way cool, that strikes at the heart of the vaunted correlative level of knowledge.

Pocket Protector Optional

A calculus professor once told me the only tools a real mathematician needs are a pen, a piece of paper the size of a postage stamp, and his or her brain. That may be the case if one is sitting at a desk, quietly contemplating the theoretical. Controlling an aircraft that is hurtling through the air at two miles per minute or more while simultaneously listening and talking on the radio? That endeavor has the unfortunate side effect of dropping everyone's IQ by several points, which is why pilots have adopted a few tools to help them deal with the flying world's challenging mix of theoretical and practical. One such tool is the E6B calculator.

For older, traditionalist pilots, the E6B is synonymous with "slide rule" and the mere mention of electronic E6B calculators and smartphone apps will get them on their soapbox in a heartbeat, praising the slide rule and preaching against the dangers of new-fangled electronic contraptions. Young upstart pilots, having likely never used a slide rule, may find this attachment a bit odd. Frankly I do too. But even as electronic E6Bs are becoming widespread, there is still a place for the old fashioned E6B slide rule.

Tried and True

The advantages of the E6B slide rule are many: It requires no batteries, it does a variety of calculations, and it is relatively lightweight. The "front" side of the E6B can accomplish a dizzying array of calculations and conversions: Ground speed, distance, time, fuel consumption, endurance, knots to nautical mile - provided the user has been properly initiated. The back side of the E6B, sometimes called the "wind side," is used to calculate wind correction angles and determine winds aloft.

The disadvantage of any slide rule is that in order to use it, the user must provide most of the problem-solving context. In a high-workload environment, user-supplied context is less than ideal. If you don't understand how to arrange the slide rule scales to solve your problem, you won't get very far. Even after you have a grasp on the slide rule basics, you must still use common sense to ensure that your answer is not off by an order of magnitude.

Some might argue that having to provide this sort of context and judgement is the very thing that ensures an understanding level of knowledge about the calculations be performed. That rings hollow to me because in flight what is most desirable is speed and accuracy. It's possible to go through the motions of slide rule calculations, mimicking what you've seen, arrive at an answer (correct or incorrect), and still not understand how you got there. Yet for kinesthetic and tactile learners, the E6B is an ideal tool, probably more so than an electronic calculator. Instructors who are unsure of their student's learning strengths can always have them take one of the many learning style inventory tests available on-line.

In spite of its apparent simplicity, the slide rule E6B is by no means foolproof. Tiny screws hold the main section together. With age, these screws can come loose and if that happens in flight, you'll have an interesting project on your hands. The wind side has a transparent plastic disk that is meant to be marked with a pencil, but that plastic can become cloudy, brittle, and riddled with marks. APR Industries has developed an innovative E6B design that uses a rotating windspeed cursor arm on the wind side so that you don't have to make any pencil marks. Who says you can't teach old dogs new tricks?

If you are up for a challenge, grab the E6B of your choice and try tackling one of the Safety and Flight Evaluation Conference (SAFECON) Practice Exams. 

Flashy and New

There seems to be a endless supply of E6B apps out there for smart phones like the iPhone and the Android. At last count there were over 30 E6B apps at the iTunes store, some included as a feature inside an app. Perhaps creating E6B apps is a rite of passage, like writing your first "Hello world" program.

My favorite iPhone/iPad E6B app continues to be PFMA since it has a very simple, shallow menu structure. You provide the information you know and PFMA provides the missing information. No need to first locate the type of problem you're trying to solve in a complex and multi-layered menu structure. There are a few conversions that PFMA doesn't do and some obscure calculations that are missing, but it's easy to use in flight and a very good deal at $5.99.

For those of you wondering, that other calculator is an ancient HP-16C Computer Scientist that still works flawlessly. What can I say? I love RNP calculators and you never know when you might need to calculate the 2's compliment of a binary number.

Regardless which E6B app you choose, remember you won't be allowed to take your smartphone or other multi-purpose electronic device into an FAA knowledge test session.  Hmm ... Maybe there's life in that old E6B after all. Or purchase one of the dedicated E6B electronic calculators like the ones sold by Sporty's. I still have one of the Sporty's models, though the LCD display has long since given up the ghost.

Required Knowledge?

Like sailors before them, aeronautical navigators aboard airliners of yore used a sextant to plot their position. Thinking about this got me wanting to learn something about celestial navigation, even though it has been supplanted by satellite-based navigation. So in my spare time, I'll be working on building my own (very simple) sextant. When completed, I plan to try plotting my position in a few locations on the ground and compare the results to a handheld GPS or Google Maps on my iPhone. This project is for my own amusement and just because I find it interesting doesn't mean I'll soon be requiring my students to build their own sextants.

Ron wrote a cogent rejoinder to my post about digital versus paper charts, pointing out that most any pilot can blindly follow a magenta line into oblivion if they have lost (or perhaps never learned) basic flight planning and navigation skills. Many instructors might see that lack of skill and interpret it to mean that the pilot needs more training, but a deeper question seems to emerge: "What knowledge should the FAA (and, by extension, DPEs and CFIs) require pilots to demonstrate in the first place?" I believe the answer lies in thoughtfully combining the use of hand calculations, slide rule and electronic E6Bs, paper and digital charts, and paper navigation logs with computerized flight planning.

Tradition versus Progress

There's a undeniable pride student pilots feel once they have mastered basic calculations with an E6B. That's understandable because acquiring slide rule prowess is like learning a magic trick. Your friends are bound to be impressed, especially if the E6B you use is contained on the face of a flashy pilot watch. Pushing buttons on a calculator? Anyone can do that! For my part, I'll continue to teach my students how to use paper charts and a slide rule E6B, but I also won't discourage them from embracing new technology. I never tire of hearing students marvel "So pilots really used to fly this way?"

Is Cross-Country Flight Planning Passé?

The widespread availability of sophisticated GPS receivers, digitized aviation charts, and internet-based weather information is changing the way student pilots are learning cross-country flight planning. The introduction of new technology and techniques always raises questions: Should student pilots be taught to use paper charts, plotter, pencil, and a slide rule E6B or encouraged to switch entirely to electronic charts, calculators, GPS and computer-based weather briefings? Don’t throw out that plotter and slide rule just yet because the best approach to learning the complicated process of cross-country flight planning involves combining old school with waay cool. Here’s the first installment of a multi-part series on the revolution in VFR cross-country flight planning, written with student pilots and their instructors in mind.

Drawing the Line

One of the first steps in cross-country flight planning is to get a rough idea about the general direction and the distance involved. With a current paper chart, just plop your plotter down and draw a course line between your departure and destination airports with a pencil. Sounds easy enough until you need to plan a route that begins on one side of the chart and continues on the other side, which actually provides a good scenario for comparing paper and digital charts.

FAA VFR charts include instructions for extending a course line from one side of a chart to the other using a pencil and a spare sheet of paper, but it's a Catch 22: You determine the magnetic course by drawing a line between the two points, but you can’t draw the course line because the points are on opposite sides of the chart.

One solution is to purchase a World Aeronautical Chart (WAC), which covers a larger geographic area at a scale of 1 to 1,000,000 as opposed to the sectional chart scale of 1 to 500,000. Good luck finding a WAC anywhere but on-line. One could purchase two versions of the same sectional and piece them together, being careful to account for the 2 minutes of longitudinal overlap on each side. You could cut the Gordian Knot by using Victor airways or choosing a landmark that appears within the overlap on each side of the chart. Or you could use your current chart and an expired chart that you just happened to have saved, just don’t mix them up!

Or simply combine paper with plastic: Use a handheld GPS or any of a variety of web sites to determine the magnetic course between the two airports, then use your pencil and plotter to replicate that course. Which approach is best? That's really up to the pilot. The goal in teaching student pilots is not to preserve hallowed aviation traditions for their own sake. Whether a student is using paper or plastic or a combination of the two, the goal is for them to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it. Using a combinational approach with old and new products may actually end up teaching the student to a correlative level of knowledge.

Digitized charts provide a big, mostly seamless chart and you'd think that would make plotting a course line on a digitized chart easier, but plotting a digital course line can be less flexible and more abstract than doing it by hand with pencil and paper. EFB apps like Skycharts Pro and ForeFlight Mobile as well as online planners like FltPlan or FlightAware will draw a course line representation, but your choice of waypoints may be limited to the VFR reporting points, intersections, navigation aids, and airports contained in the application’s navigation database. Some products allow you to define your own waypoints using lat/long, but that's not terribly convenient.

VFR Sectional and Course line using FltPlan.com

Doing the Coursework

With the course drawn on a paper chart, you use your plotter to measure the true course, locate the nearest isogonic line and apply the magnetic variation shown (subtract Easterly variations, add Westerly variations) to determine the magnetic course. If your destination or departure airport has a VOR on the field, get the magnetic course from the compass rose surrounding that VOR. Either way, with a bit of care and attention will provide the magnetic course on a paper chart within ±1˚, though simple arithmetic errors can result if you’re in a rush.

Old school pilots and instructors rightly claim that never drawing a course line on a paper chart can rob student pilots of an important learning experience about Magnetic declination. Yet with the right input data, computers tend to do a faster and more accurate job with arithmetic and geometry than humans: Waypoints entered, the digital course line drawn, determining the magnetic course is a foregone conclusion. A good approach for student pilots is to plan first on paper, then check your results using a digital source.

Go the Distance

Plotters offer a variety of scales and if you mistakenly measure using the wrong scale ... you won’t be the first pilot to do so. So look carefully, choose the correct scale for your chart and line up the correct marks.

Getting the distance on a digitized chart is a forgone conclusion, but errors are still possible. You can enter the wrong waypoint or misspell the waypoint. One tipoff is a digital course line that makes a sudden, severe turn off the edge of the map you're viewing.

If the digital product you are using provides recently assigned ATC routes, remember that these are instrument flight rules (IFR) clearances and these routes may involve altitude requirements that are beyond capability of the average GA aircraft. If you will be flying IFR, remember that there may not be any recently assigned ATC routes for the departure and destination airport that you have chosen.

Some EFB apps are better than others at drawing a course line that is visible, yet doesn't obscure important information.

FFM course line obscures airway radial

SCP course line is more ... subtle

Overcoming Obstacles

With a preliminary course line drawn, consider the appropriate altitudes one could fly. You'd think that pilots would know and apply the hemispheric rule, but it's surprising how many pilots (intentionally or unintentionally) fly WAFDOF (wrong altitude for direction of flight).  Whether you remember "Odd birds fly East" or simply refer to the diagram etched into many kneeboards, do other pilots a favor: Fly the correct altitude for your magnetic course.

Minimum elevation figures are shown on VFR charts and these provide the lowest altitude that will clear the highest charted obstacle within a specific quadrangle by 300 to 400 feet. Depending on how close your route is to that highest obstruction, flying at or just above that altitude may be the safe thing to do or it may be hopelessly foolhardy. I don't know of any app that will make the assessment of a safe altitude for you: You're going to have to use your little gray cells.

Whether you are using paper or digital charts, a nifty course line that goes to your destination won't necessarily keep you clear of special use airspace. One cool feature in SkyCharts Pro is the ability to get information on special use airspace by tapping. Locate the red circle next to an MOA, prohibited, or restricted area and tap twice to get the effective times, altitudes and the frequency of the controlling agency.

ForeFlight offers a similar feature, but it requires more taps to get the same information. ForeFlight does offer a quick way to create or change course lines by tapping and dragging.

Acquire, Combine, Conquer

Paper chart adherents often claim that paper is foolproof because paper charts don’t require batteries, they can be folded and handled, and are less intimidating to pilots who may be less computer savvy. True, but paper charts have some serious disadvantages: They can be torn, damaged, lost, or hopelessly riddled with marks from previous flight planning efforts. Last, but not least, all paper charts eventually expire and become obsolete.

Even before the FAA changed the structure for chart retailers, it was often difficult to get a paper chart unless you planned ahead. With a reduced number of chart retailers, your odds of acquiring a current paper chart at the last minute from a local retailer is tantamount to winning the lottery. A chart subscription is obviously the best bet, but that’s not much help if you’re away from home on a longer trip, need an oddball chart, or you lost your chart a week before it was set to expire.

The chart retailers who remain have to deal with unsold, expired paper charts. Charts have to be printed and physically shipped which adds to the cost and carbon-loading. Old school pilots are familiar with the various paper chart subscription services available through Aeronav or a variety of on-line retailers, but they may not be up-to-speed on the various options for digital charts.

Digitized charts, whether viewed on-line or on an iPad, tablet, laptop or desktop computer can be acquired at a lower cost (some are available on-line for free), they are easy to update, and they can cover large geographic areas without folding, flipping, or ripping. There’s no physical shipping required and no paper to recycle. The disadvantages of electronic charts basically boil down to all the possible failures to which electronic devices are heir to, including screen readability in bright light, software/hardware failures, and drained batteries. There are also some problems with how digitized charts are stitched together, but that really just reflects the limitations with how the FAA generates the charts. Hopefully that process will continue to be modernized and soon we'll see seamless VFR and IFR charts become a reality.

FAA VFR charts can be downloaded to your computer as raster files for free, and a simple, free, and platform-independent solution for viewing them is Google Earth. Follow the instructions in this WikiHowTo  and overlay sectionals and terminal area charts in Google Earth. While this approach has limitations, it does offer pilots the ability to view charts for large geographic areas at little or no cost. You can even do some rudimentary flight planning activities, like determining the course and distance between airports.

Several products are available for the iPad that allow you to access VFR charts, including ForeFlight and Skycharts. The cost of these products varies from $20 per year to $80 per year or more. Like all cockpit resource management issues, one size does not fit all. Both of these apps allow you to create flight plans that will draw course lines on the digital charts and give you magnetic courses, but old school paper chart planning provides more flexibility and, dare I say it, precision.

If you are a Mac user, MacGPS Pro provides another option for importing FAA raster charts. MacGPS Pro lets you define user waypoints, integrate with an external GPS receiver, and measure distances and courses. Similar solutions probably exist for the Windows world, but not being a Windows user, well ...

Paper and Plastic

After a student pilot has been through the flight planning process a half dozen times using paper charts, it's not clear that any more learning is likely to take place by restricting them to old school planning. While I do believe that a students' primary experience should involve pencil, plotter, and paper chart, that doesn't mean they should be discouraged from branching out to the high-tech solutions once they understand flight planning basics. Looking at the strengths and weaknesses of paper and digitized charts it’s easy to conclude that the best approach is to understand and use both. Having a paper back-up strategy in flight is the prudent advice offered by the FAA’s AC on Electronic Flight Bags.

Some pilots may still resist using digitized charts for the understandable reason that they simply prefer holding a chart in their hands. Nothing wrong with that, but charting and flight planning is changing. Time waits for no one, not even old school pilots, so don't be afraid to explore and experiment.

In future installments, I'll discuss how technology is changing calculators, navigation log preparation, and in-flight diversions.

A Few New Apps

I do my best to keep up with all the new stuff that keeps coming out and I owe debt of gratitude to the folks who send me pointers and suggestions. Here's a round-up of a few new iPad/iPhone apps.

AirWx

For those times when you want to get a quick view of the area weather before getting an official weather briefing, AirWx is a very handy app. For a low $10 purchase price you can look up an airport and add it to a list of favorites that can offer a quick snapshot of the weather. There is no recurring subscription costs. As the developer says on his web site - "buy once, use forever."

Favorite Airports Wx

In addition to surface weather and terminal area forecasts for a particular airport, AirWx also offers winds aloft, NOTAMs, PIREPs, terminal procedures, and (for an extra charge) aircraft arrival and departure information. You can save terminal procedures to your iPad for use when network access is not available, but this requires manually opening and saving each chart you want to cache.

Terminal Procedures List

Under the Maps & Charts tabs you'll find VFR sectionals, NEXRAD radar, and a variety of weather charts. There currently isn't any way to cache VFR sectionals for use when you have no network access.

The last tab provides access to a variety of E6B calculations.

CFITools Preflight Wx

If you're looking for an integrated app for getting your pre-flight planning ducks in a row, it's hard to imagine a more comprehensive app than CFITools. The acronym NWKRAFT is sometimes used by pilots to remember the requirements of 14 CFR 91.103 "Preflight Action" - Notams, Weather, Known delays, Runway lengths, Alternate airports, Fuel requirements, and Takeoff/landing performance. CFITools helps you with several of these requirements - weather, runway lengths, and takeoff/landing performance for selected types of aircraft. All for a $30 investment.

Using the Current WX tab, enter a departure airport and you'll see a graphic representation of the winds and the airport's runways along with the headwind and crosswind component for those runways. You'll also see a historical plotting of the winds, visibility, ceiling, altimeter and dew point. If you're a student pilot, this is a quick way to see if the crosswind component is within the limits of your solo endorsement.

You can also create a weight and balance specification using one of the existing templates or you can create your own. If you want a record of your calculations or want to send the results to your instructor, just tap on Email.

Next comes takeoff and landing performance. Select one of the 16 available types, select the departure or destination airport, tap on Get Wx, then enter the aircraft's weight and you'll see takeoff and landing performance for the specified conditions. You get performance info for clearing a 50 foot obstacle. There isn't a way to add performance data for your own aircraft, so hopefully the type you fly is one of the supported types. For the one multi-engine aircraft supported (the Cessna 310), it would be nice to also see accelerate/stop distance, single-engine climb rate, and single-engine service ceiling. Easy for me to say, but much harder for an app developer to code!

Radio Navigation Trainer

Whether you're a student pilot still trying to master VOR and NDB navigation or a pilot who has been spending too much time flying glass panels, the RadioNav Sim could be just the ticket. This $2 app lets you display two navaid of your choice - RBI, RMI, VOR or HSI. You can drag the aircraft shown on the display and drag the OBS on both displays.

Help lines let you see the selected radial or bearing. You can turn these on or off. You can also choose to hide the aircraft if you want to test your orientation skills.

And if you want to test your VOR abilities, just tap on the Quiz Me button.

All That's Fit to Print

For iPad users who don't happen to have one of the HP printers supported by iOS 4.3.1, there's an inexpensive MacOS application that will let you print from your iPad to the printer(s) you have using your Mac. You can download Printopia for free, try it out, and if you like it, purchase it for just $10. You'll need a desktop or laptop machine running Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 and iOS 4.2 on your iPhone/iPod/iPad, and a printer, but this is still more affordable than buying a dedicated printer for your iPad.

Playing Favorites

Got a favorite aviation app? Shoot me an email or post a comment.