airdale
Pattern Altitude
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2007
- Messages
- 1,840
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airdale
I invested two or three hours playing with this app on my Nexus 7 yesterday. On the surface, it has a lot of promise. It will run stand-alone, but when a data connection is available it takes advantage of the large fltplan.com web site. For example, flight plans created on the site are downloaded to the app and available. As far as I can tell, though, there is no way to create a flight plan in the app and have it appear on the web site.
The app has an attractive and functional interface; fifteen large tiles, one for activating each major function. I won’t cover all fifteen but will hit some highlights:
“Maps” is a very basic implementation of what you would expect from any flight planner. Sectional, low altitude, and other basemap options, with overlay options. This module is buggy and unstable. Yesterday the app did not deal well with a failed download of some sectionals. The result was crashes and failure to render the sectionals basemap. The fix is for the user to figure out on his own that there is a download problem and to manually delete the incomplete file.
“NavLogs and WX” allows you get the typical fltplan.com verbose and cluttered reports for any of your stored flight plans. As far as I can tell, though, you can only get them if you have an open data connection or if you have manually downloaded them ahead of time.
“Approach Charts” gets you what you expect. Any plate if you have a data connection and any previously-downloaded plate if you do not. There is no integration with the flight plans, however, so you must key in the airport ID to see the list of available plates. This is an obvious place for better integration – why not provide a pick list of the airports shown in my stored flight plans?
“A/FD” is similar to “Approach Charts.” Basic. Again, no integration, so you have to type in an airport ID even if you have listed the airport on a flight plan.
“File/Brief” appears to be simply an interface to the web site via your browser, with no stand-alone capability. Hence, whatever you get will not be available in the air.
“Documents” is limited to accessing or downloading a tiny number of items – the Chart User’s Guide, AF/D Legend, and a few others. Too bad, actually, because it could easily have been a library application for any PDF that the user wanted to load.
“FltDeck Guide” is a rudimentary airport directory, again with no flight plan integration. It also provides simple phone directories for airlines, hotels, and rental car companies. “Simple” as in: Open the list and scroll down until you find what you want.
“Weight & Balance” was a huge disappointment for me. I have been looking for a good W&B app and this one’s interface is attractive. Unfortunately there is a major design flaw: You can only do W&B for airplanes that they have coded in their database and there is no mechanism for editing envelopes, fuel capacity, etc. to correct errors. Hence, you also cannot adapt an existing profile to make one that they do not offer
“Location WX” and “Route WX” are about what you’d expect. Again, not integrated with the flight plan list. Very minimal color coding, too. I have been spoiled for years by weathermeister.com. Almost any other weather presentation is inadequate when compared to that one.
“Tools” includes crosswind calculation, fuel weight to volume conversion, and F<->C temperature conversion. The crosswind calculator is another lost opportunity, not integrating with the flight plans and not initializing with current METAR information for the selected airport. Personally I don’t have much of a need for a crosswind calculator, but it seems like if you’re going to do one it should be a good one. This one is just a computerized version of the little plastic gadgets that Sporty’s sells.
Tech support is a good news/bad news story. The good news is that they were there on Saturday (presumably Sunday too) and responded to questions within an hour or two. The bad news is that they are lazy and go to great lengths to avoid answering simple direct questions. That’s why I said “responded to” rather than “answered.” The (two) responses consisted of canned messages pointing the user to their documentation and FAQ, which did not contain the answer. I’m sure this maximizes the time they have available to play video games, but it is not good customer service.
So … the concept is great, and the potential is there, but the implementation is just above primitive. I’ll check back in six months.
The app has an attractive and functional interface; fifteen large tiles, one for activating each major function. I won’t cover all fifteen but will hit some highlights:
“Maps” is a very basic implementation of what you would expect from any flight planner. Sectional, low altitude, and other basemap options, with overlay options. This module is buggy and unstable. Yesterday the app did not deal well with a failed download of some sectionals. The result was crashes and failure to render the sectionals basemap. The fix is for the user to figure out on his own that there is a download problem and to manually delete the incomplete file.
“NavLogs and WX” allows you get the typical fltplan.com verbose and cluttered reports for any of your stored flight plans. As far as I can tell, though, you can only get them if you have an open data connection or if you have manually downloaded them ahead of time.
“Approach Charts” gets you what you expect. Any plate if you have a data connection and any previously-downloaded plate if you do not. There is no integration with the flight plans, however, so you must key in the airport ID to see the list of available plates. This is an obvious place for better integration – why not provide a pick list of the airports shown in my stored flight plans?
“A/FD” is similar to “Approach Charts.” Basic. Again, no integration, so you have to type in an airport ID even if you have listed the airport on a flight plan.
“File/Brief” appears to be simply an interface to the web site via your browser, with no stand-alone capability. Hence, whatever you get will not be available in the air.
“Documents” is limited to accessing or downloading a tiny number of items – the Chart User’s Guide, AF/D Legend, and a few others. Too bad, actually, because it could easily have been a library application for any PDF that the user wanted to load.
“FltDeck Guide” is a rudimentary airport directory, again with no flight plan integration. It also provides simple phone directories for airlines, hotels, and rental car companies. “Simple” as in: Open the list and scroll down until you find what you want.
“Weight & Balance” was a huge disappointment for me. I have been looking for a good W&B app and this one’s interface is attractive. Unfortunately there is a major design flaw: You can only do W&B for airplanes that they have coded in their database and there is no mechanism for editing envelopes, fuel capacity, etc. to correct errors. Hence, you also cannot adapt an existing profile to make one that they do not offer
“Location WX” and “Route WX” are about what you’d expect. Again, not integrated with the flight plan list. Very minimal color coding, too. I have been spoiled for years by weathermeister.com. Almost any other weather presentation is inadequate when compared to that one.
“Tools” includes crosswind calculation, fuel weight to volume conversion, and F<->C temperature conversion. The crosswind calculator is another lost opportunity, not integrating with the flight plans and not initializing with current METAR information for the selected airport. Personally I don’t have much of a need for a crosswind calculator, but it seems like if you’re going to do one it should be a good one. This one is just a computerized version of the little plastic gadgets that Sporty’s sells.
Tech support is a good news/bad news story. The good news is that they were there on Saturday (presumably Sunday too) and responded to questions within an hour or two. The bad news is that they are lazy and go to great lengths to avoid answering simple direct questions. That’s why I said “responded to” rather than “answered.” The (two) responses consisted of canned messages pointing the user to their documentation and FAQ, which did not contain the answer. I’m sure this maximizes the time they have available to play video games, but it is not good customer service.
So … the concept is great, and the potential is there, but the implementation is just above primitive. I’ll check back in six months.
