Managed to get in a quick flight myself yesterday. More to ensure the airplane doesn't get neglected and shake off the rust of my flying abilities. Only about a half hour, but still felt great to do it. It was still pretty cold at 20 degrees F so I did a pre-heat on the engine before starting. Still took a little bit of effort to get her warmed up and running smoothly. Once warmed up she ran great.
I've been running Foreflight on the Ipad now for a couple years and love it. I haven't bought a paper sectional since then. I was always extremely difficult to use a paper map in a KR anyway. Just try and flip it over while flying, next thing I know I'm doing unusual attitude recovery training. I see they have added new EFIS functions lately and believe the IPAD is now a great poor man's Attitude indicator. Would not want to actually fly IFR, but as a tool - great stuff. I hadn't heard they had worked out how to use one for engine monitoring - that would be excellent. Rob Schmitt N1852Z 620 hours -----Original Message----- From: Mark Langford via KRnet <krnet at list.krnet.org> To: KRnet <krnet at list.krnet.org> Sent: Thu, Jan 1, 2015 10:04 pm Subject: KR> First flight of the year Well, since Mark Jones didn't pipe up with "first flight of the year" news, I guess I should take up his slack. I flew 1.8 hours today, doing 10 landings at three airports. N891JF has been down a few weeks, as I had to send my iEFIS and iBox back to MGL for some maintenance. I still haven't swapped out the brakes, because I figure the cold temps will be kind enough to the o-rings to keep the brakes intact for a few more weeks, at least. I'll have them swapped out in time for Sun N Fun though, for sure. My experience with the iEFIS has convinced me that the way to go is an iPad running your choice of aviation software. At least if it goes down, you can get another iPad for reasonable money, and have it overnight if you need it! And if you don't like one app, just buy a different one next year. I've been expecting somebody to come up with a bluetooth engine interface for the iPad, and there's at least one at http://sportair.aero/news/wireless-in-flight-engine-data-now-available-for-icub/ , probably more if I spend a few minutes looking, and certainly more in the future. I was skeptical of the brightness of the iPad, but now that I've inherited my daughter's (she's happy with her laptop at college), it's plenty bright enough for an open cockpit KR, and fits just about perfectly in the panel height available. Even two iPads on the panel, one for navigation and one for engine monitoring, would make a lot of sense in my mind. You could use ForeFlight or the iFLY app for nav, and an engine monitoring for the other, and if one went down you could do both on one iPad. Poor man's glass panel, in my mind, and would be what I'd do if I could do it all over again. Maybe I'll have that chance with my next one. The iPad is ubiquitous, and stuff like ADS-B is "plug and play" with it. No longer do you have to wait for a particular software vendor to add compatibility...just about everybody wants to be compatible with the iPad first. And I also have to confess that there's nothing wrong with steam gauges for basic flight instruments. At least they only fail one at a time, and I do think they are easier to read and digest the info quickly. That'll open a large can of worms, I'm sure. I did install cabin heat in N891JF this week, and it's a wonderful thing... -- Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com http://www.n56ml.com _______________________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at http://tugantek.com/archmailv2-kr/search. To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to KRnet-leave at list.krnet.org please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change options
