Keep Soaring - Lake Keepit Soaring Club

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The maps are geo-referenced which means you get a proper moving map display… even though the icon used as your plane looks more like a Cessna 182 than a Ventus. This works using internally stored maps and the device’s own GPS. Weather radar is available at the press of a button on most map screens and this is about the only feature for which you need internet access. Ozrunways allows you to add user waypoints and it’s a simple two-tap process. Tap once on a map to pop a dialog and tap once on the create user waypoint button on the dialog and you’re done. This is great for long task planning since if you have turned on the options to see waypoint names or other points of interest such as Aerodromes, ALAs, VFR and IFR waypoints etc. your WAC chart view will get very cluttered. User waypoints show on the map as a red cross and are easier to identify than the Airservices waypoints. If you tap somewhere on a map or on a waypoint, Ozrunways pops a window showing the closest waypoints… In the screen shot on the previous page, you can see White Cliffs as well as a user waypoint for White cliffs which is not named… it doesn’t really need to be, because a tap on the White Cliffs entry brings up the details on the waypoint including an button via which you can open White Cliffs complete ERSA entry. The app contains the entire ERSA database of aerodromes and landing areas and is a lot faster and easier to navigate than the on-line or paper versions. You can print ERSA pages directly from Ozrunways and while it is more convenient that the on-line version, there’s a technology lag between ERSA and 2011… Many, many ERSA entries like White Cliffs are on two pages, one and a half of which are blank. The blank pages have printed, right in the centre, “This page intentionally left blank”. So if you make a mistake with your printing… an easy thing to do when printing from a mobile device, then you will get to enjoy a lot of sheets of paper unintentionally printed with this annoying and superfluous message. No doubt about it, the iPad is too large for a glider cockpit and the iPhone is too small. The alternative Android knock-offs won’t run Ozrunways, but what else are you going to do? It’s better than struggling with a copy of ERSA in the cockpit. There are lots of simple cases around which will protect both the iPad and the inside of your cockpit… if you can find a place to stuff it. Viewing maps on the iPhone is less than ideal but you can usefully view ERSA entries and waypoint information. For most navigation purposes, the iPad is perfect (except for single seat gliders!) Compared with buying all the Airservices publications, the cost of the subscription to Ozrunways is reasonable. I am not sure if the content gets deleted if you don’t renew a subscription and in any case, you are probably not allowed to use the app for air navigation… the splash screen points this out. The FAA have authorised a US charter airline to use the iPad as an in-flight tool as long as it is strapped to a pilot’s leg and viewable during critical flight phases but we know that thousands of other commercial pilots have been using iPads and iPhones for years. It’s amusing to think, as you’re told to turn off your electronic devices on commercial airlines before takeoff and landing, that the pilots in the cockpit are still using them to run apps like Ozrunways. Keep Soaring September - October 2011 Page 12
Soaring By Design Although the internet can be a deeply shallow experience, there’s some amazing stuff out there if you are lucky enough to blunder across it. Often, before some long international flight, I have a look at the iTunes U section of the iTunes store to see if there’s anything worth downloading. One of us downloads anything about speaking French in the hope she can make up for the last 12 months of indolence in a 21 hour flight. It’s all free. The iTunes U is a difficult place to describe because there’s so much there from so many different providers from Oxford and Cambridge to the Beijing open university. The content is in all sorts of formats including talking book, ebook and video. Subjects range from codebreaking to game theory and ancient greek… and yes, gliding. “The 8 video tracks on this album describe some of the highly mathematical concepts used by pilots, such as glide angle, the ‘best speed to fly’, and the intricacies of competition flying. The principles of gliding are described with the help of 3D graphics and archive film. This material makes up part of the course MST209, Mathematical methods and models. ‘ While it is mainly intended for people who don’t glide, there’s enough there for people who do glide and certainly, it’s an interesting introduction for people who want to learn how to glide… better than most of Basic Gliding Knowledge especially for the iPod generation! It’s well worth a look, especially if you are going to be spam-in-a-can in some 747 for another precious day of your life. From somewhere else, I got hold of a talk by Paul MacCready in the TED Talks series. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a non-profit organisation devoted to “ideas worth spreading”and they’ve got more than 900 (free) videos by the world’s most inspired thinkers from all sorts of different fields. The video I downloaded on Paul MacCready is more about the man and his ideas rather than being on specifics like the Kremer prize winning human powered flights or the solar challenger. It covers subjects as varied as sustainable power sources to gliders which fly on the up-currents from the human body. Through his aerodynamic research, MacCready became a confirmed evironmentalist and in the video he spends a lot of time talking about environmental topics such as overpopulation and sustainability. I’ve read books about Paul MacCready and was a little suprised to find that on video at least, he comes over as warm, open and intelligent rather than the obsessed eccentric person from the books. Other videos in the series cover everything from MacCready’s solar powered aircraft to the Kremer prize. Keep Soaring September - October 2011 Page 13
Page 1 and 2: Keep Soaring Why not the iPad issue
Page 3 and 4: Presidents Message What a great sta
Page 5 and 6: I know a lot of you think that I do
Page 7 and 8: In my last report I finished by far
Page 9 and 10: Keep Soaring September - October 20
Page 11: iGlide therefore I am This being th
Page 15 and 16: In the end, only the two big wings
Page 17 and 18: went almost all the way back to Man
Page 19 and 20: good airmanship you should not atte
Page 21 and 22: accident and less survivable than t
Page 23 and 24: The proposed course is: Distances i
Page 25 and 26: Interestingly, one can experience s
Page 27 and 28: The glider trailer will also be ass
Page 29 and 30: The Flying Doctor Finds Happiness A
Page 31 and 32: of a chain from the GFA MOSP down t
Page 33 and 34: Letters to the Editor Dear Sir, You
Page 35 and 36: The type of aircraft that were arou

Keep Soaring - Lake Keepit Soaring Club

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