Archive for year: 2014

Today marks a pretty significant milestone in my life. Today, 25 years ago I had my first flying lesson. December 28, 1989 I took to the air with the very patient Darren Knoll in VH-HLD, a Piper Warrior II. That first lesson saw me achieve a Restricted Pilots License  in February 1990, PPL in October 1990, CPL in 1993 and a ME-IFR rating in 1994.

At that time a career in Aviation was my goal. An eye condition saw me give that away in the early 90’s and I continued a career in IT (which was paying for the flying). In 2010 two things happened. One was the birth of my son in late 2009 which saw any remaining funds for aviation dry up completely and the announcement of the iPad. I started work on a flight planning thing for the iPad back in April 2010. After I showed a few people the prototype in late 2010 they encouraged me to continue. In August 2011 we released the first version of AvPlan with the thought that a few hundred people would become subscribers and use it. We past that number in the first months and its grown into a product with 1000’s of customers in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. So I now have that career in Aviation.

Back in 1990 I rode my bike to the airport – I didn’t even get a drivers license until 1993. I couldn’t afford a car as everything I earned at the time was spent on aeroplanes. Since that eventful day I have around 1000 hours in my logbook, flying an array of different GA types. Most of my hours (more than half) are in Beechcraft A36 Bonanza’s. In the late 2000’s I also owned an aircraft, VH-TOI, a 1986 Socata Tobago, which was a learning experience for sure.

In 2005 I flew my now wife to NZ and back in VH-PMP which was an awesome experience and one I am very eager to repeat. Flying around the south island of New Zealand is simply stunning. More recently I hired an SR-22 from Denver Colorado and flew it to Las Vegas, over the Grand Canyon to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. That trip also rates highly on the memorable scale.

I’ve had other memorable experiences in that time as well. One morning I attempted and failed to take the top off a tower in not-so-good visibility (you will see some things shortly in AvPlan EFB which will help make you more aware of obstacles such as these), experiences with un-forecast weather, magneto failure and pre-ignition event in the SR-22 in Jackson Hole. Our Tobago ended up on its nose in a paddock near Tamworth one afternoon after a dual magneto failure. Ash, the other owner and a mate of his was in the aircraft. I was passing overhead at the time in a Qantas 737 heading from Melbourne to Brisbane at the time.

These days I’m lucky enough to fly around in a SR22 G3 which is a very comfortable and capable aircraft for sure. The things I love about the Cirrus is its speed, the sophistication of the avionics and the parachute (I have taught my 7 year old what to do if something happens to me – pull this handle and pull the mixture control). I do miss the space and load carrying capability of the Bonanza at times.

What will the next 25 years hold? The aviation landscape will be different, thats for sure.

Today we released AvPlan EFB 4.2 in the Apple App Store. This release improves support for iOS 8 and adds some really cool new functionality

AvPlan EFB 4.2 adds more weather overlays, which all work globally.

• Lightning
• IR Satellite
• Global Satellite derived rain radar

These new weather overlays are all available on the En Route page by tapping the radar icon at the top right. The lightning overlay shows lightning strikes in the past 15 minutes. The IR satellite and Global rain radar are all animated loops. You will notice when you open these, or any existing weather animations, they now open at the last image. Tap the play icon to show the animated loop.

For those with the ‘GEO’ option, you will notice a new icon on the ‘Stored Plans’ page. This allows you to import a filed flight plan (either scheduled in the future, or one which has already been flown) for any aircraft or call sign. Importing a flight plan for a flight which has been flown will import the actual departure time and radar derived ground track.

AvPlan EFB will now automatically populate your flight plan with grid lowest safe altitudes for any route planned off an IFR airway. These altitudes will appear as (6400) for example, and will find the highest applicable grid lowest safe altitude within 12nm of your great circle track. You may edit these to enter your own calculated lowest safe altitudes.

We have added a pop-up notification when you change from one area frequency to another. This works in a similar way to the existing airspace and runway notifications.

The existing METAR icons on the map are now much larger to make them easier to see. These are colour coded show you the current weather conditions at a glance – green is VFR, blue is VFR (but not as good), yellow is IFR and red is low IFR.

Lastly we have added a bunch of small improvements and bug fixes. These improvements include;

• Per-aircraft callsigns can be specified in the aircraft configuration
• Per-aircraft settings for VFR and IFR fixed and variable fuel reserves can be specified
• The app now assumes your variable fuel reserve is not burned
• Tap on a forecast line to clear the line from the map
• Per-leg user specified TAS may be specified when plan is in edit mode

AvPlan EFB 4.0.2 is now available in the Apple App Store. In this release we have added the ability for flight plans to sync automatically – they will automatically import on your other devices and be ready for use. We are finding that more and more people are carrying multiple iPad’s for use in flight (which even CASA recommend you do), and this is yet another way we are making using multiple devices simpler to use. Read more →