Aviation Apps you NEED in 2024
If there's one thing us Pilots love it's
technology. But if there is one thing us Pilots love more than technology it's free technology!
Now I'm not talking about your big paid apps your electronic flight bag stuff like Garmin Pilot
or Foreflight AvPlan, Oz Runways, these are all free apps that you can download you can do it
whilst you're watching this video that are going to help you in several stages during your flying
if you're learning to fly if you're planning a flight once you're in flight and also apps that
you can use once you've landed and you're down on the ground I should also say I am filming this
in the noisiest hanger it's really windy outside the metal doors are just banging and banging but
I'm committed now I'm here at the airport and I want to film this video for you early in 2024 so
it's the noise of an airport you're going to get the real the real feeling of what it's like being
in a [Music] hanger before you even jump in the aircraft then and you're planning a flight the
one app I use more than anything else is windy now you're all going to be familiar with windy
and I'm not going to tell tell you how to use it um I generally use it for like a 10day forecast so
like 10 days out from a flight I'll see what the weather's looking like then about 4 days before
the flight I'll have another look and see what it's looking a bit closer to it a day out then
again I have another look now Wy I don't think you can use as an official source of aviation
weather so check your like local Regulators for for what you can use windy for or not but I
use it for high level should I fly on Saturday or should I fly on Sunday and then obviously I'm
checking the official weather sources uh before the flight itself to make sure that I'm legal but
one thing I love in windy and you might not know this you don't just have to see the weather for
one specific location what you can do is if I'm planning a flight say for example at a wayo there
say I'm flying over to Adelaide you can click on this button at the top you see across here you've
got VFR IFR I click on VFR most of the time you can put in the speed you're planning to fly let's
go 150 knots in Echo Yankee Zulu and then move the little slider across here to whichever day
you've planning to fly so let's go for example let's say on Saturday and now along the bottom I
can see what the weather's going to be like across that whole leg so you can see hit at the start
here in Melbourne there's going to be some low Cloud typical of Melbourne but then once I come
out of Melbourne it's actually looking pretty good I've also got wind barbs so I can see wind
speed and direction and if you click the IFR tab then you can get things like freezing level some
other additional information which might be more relevant to an IFR flight another one I use for
planning a lot it's not so much an app but I've got a bookmark on my iPad and I'll put the link
down below to something called Auto rout you go to briefing on their website and go to gramit and
type in your root details so let's do the same one that we just did so we'll go morab into Adelaide
it's got 8,000 ft put in your departure date and I can do a cruise speed of say 150 knots and in
a similar way to windy this gives you a graphical view of what your flight's going to be so from
left to right you're starting at Morin going to Adelaide it shows you terrain down the bottom here
it shows you roughly where the Cloud's going to be which I think think is really really useful so I
could see that taking off from morbin for example I'm probably going to be in Cloud over terrain
but as I get to Adelaide it's actually going to be quite clear skies now it will show up areas of um
forecast icing in a different color there aren't actually any on this chart at the moment I love
this I use it a lot a few days out just to give me a bit of an idea again I don't know whether this
can be legally used for flight planning purposes but just like the night before to give you a
rough idea of what to expect before you check the weather uh the morning off the flight from
the correct uh approved flight sources I really like it I really recommend it and yeah put the
link down in the description below and when I'm flying to an airport especially one that I might
not be familiar with the other app that I use uh is Google Maps I think I'm going to do a flight
to a place called witchy proof soon and because I've never landed at that airport what I do is
look it up on Google Maps just to get an idea of Runway orientation first of all but also where
the taxi way turnoff are in this instance there just there's just one at the end of the airport
like I can I can see where the the wind sock is as well you can see the wind sock here and knowing
that before you actually get to the airport just means when you're flying you know where to look
for the wind sock um and no where you're going to turn off to taxi to get out it's Google Maps you
know Google Maps I just think it's really useful it's a underused tool for [Music] Aviation once
you're actually in flight then there's an app that I use called units plus which is particularly good
if ever you fly overseas and you need to convert basically one one unit into another set up with
each of the areas down the left hand side things like you know area currency if you're flying
somewhere where they may use Imperial but maybe you're used to working in metric or vice versa
for example say I've got a Runway which is 4,500 ft long um that's a lot of millimeters but I want
to know say maybe how long that is in meters you can instantly just convert it by selecting meters
on the right pressure conversion is the other one so click on pressure on the right and if you want
to convert from the US who uses inches of mercury to here in the in Australia for example we use
Hector pascals useful app if you ever want to convert anything uh whilst you're in the air and
you can't do the mental arithmetic the other one and again it's an app that you're all familiar
with but you might not use it in this way but I quite often have flight radar open up in the
background I use flight radar for things like if I'm flying into an airport let's look at Melbourne
today for example if I was flying into Melbourne and I didn't have access to Attis maybe I'm a long
way out but I want to know which Runway people are landing on I quite often open up flight radar and
I can see who have we got we've got this little quanus link coming in on Runway one6 so instantly
I know the direction they're Landing before I actually get close to the airport so I can just
plan ahead a little bit more but I do use it for a bit of situational awareness like I I look
for example if I was flying to the southeast of Australia and again I know that not every aircraft
shows up on flight radar and you shouldn't rely on it but if I was going to Mara for example then
I can see well look we've we've got at least one aircraft who performed pering some air work down
there at marul I've got another one who's just departed from there recently it's good have to
have in the background it just gives me a little heads up sometimes on on what I might expect when
I'm flying into an [Music] airport remember when I did that video on getting my FAA license and I
was talking about doing the FAA instrument written exam I had to go over things like V positioning
and where are you in relation to this VR if your if your display is showing you this that stuff
I'm okay with but I forget it quite quickly if I'm not staying up to date with it so I use this app
called nav trainer it basically gives you you're this aircraft in the middle and on the right
hand side you've got uh a few different avionic instruments basically that you'd have in your
cockpit now I'm just going to use the one at the top ignore the other two but you can have multiple
ones so you can reference two nav at the same time but this Compass row here represents this HSI and
if this is your aircraft here and what you can do is you can kind of fly your aircraft around and
see where you are in relation to that navade and by twisting the compass you can actually change
your direction so which way you're heading so you can practice those classic exam questions like
if this is your HSI which uh Direction which orientation from the navade is your aircraft
currently so you can move the aircraft around check the HSI and you can see well I'm just down
to the southwest of that move the aircraft across to the top watch the flag change from to uh see
the HSI needle move across the other side and you can see that you're now Northeast of the navade
now I don't use vs in Echo Yankees I'll be honest I use GPS a lot more but they're used quite widely
in the US so if I ever fly there this is a good tool for me to keep up to speed and practice with
but I also just like using this on the on the C it's a bit nerdy but on the couch in the evenings
at home I'll basically use this to practice just so if I ever do have to shoot say my GPS goes
and I need to shoot a VR approach that you know my brain still understands well how they work
cuz they can be confusing sometimes and this is a brilliant tool for it you're probably familiar
with live ATC but again when you're learning to fly people often ask me well you got any tips for
learning to fly just listen to Air Traffic Control communication as often as you can live ATC is
probably the most popular you can basically just click on your country uh choose Australia
scroll down to Melbourne and I can see what's happening in the airspace here not only good for
student Pilots I actually again very nerdy but I Bluetooth my phone with live ATC quite often in
my car when I'm driving to the airport just to get an indication of what's well what's going on
out there what are other Pilots doing are people deviating for weather um are there any incidents
at any airports that I should know about and just yeah just get a bit of an idea of the state
of play before you get to an airport not just a good tool for student Pilots but also for well
everyone's everyone's a student pilot I suppose at the end of the day for all Pilots I thoroughly
recommend live ATC not [Music] sponsored [Music] once I've landed somewhere and app I quite like
using just to give me an idea of um things to do when I'm on the ground I quite like walking I
sometimes take my folding bike in the plane with me as well and all Trails is a really good one
which gives you basically uh GPS coordinates and pinpoints for war walks and running tracks and
cycle paths that other people have walked on or run on or cycled on people give updates as to the
conditions as well so quite often if there's been some heavy rain um I check all Trails before I
go somewhere if I'm planning to go for a walk when I land and I can just see the conditions
of that path as well I really like it it's a good app to give you some ideas for planning goes
without saying but I have YouTube on my iPad as well which I use when I'm on the ground if I've
landed somewhere after a flight actually to be serious for a second if you've had the the stress
of a flight and there's a lot of work to a flight even though it's not stressful per se if I've got
my favorite like YouTuber that I want to watch online I just pull up a couple of videos watch
them have some downtime decompress a little bit before getting back in the aircraft again so I've
got YouTube on here as Pilots as well I do think that we should be challenging our minds where
whenever we can keeping them engaged and active so wle is obviously one of my favorite games on the
iPad but there is this other app which I want you to download it's called airport codes and if you
like Wordle even if you don't and you still like Aviation if you like Wordle and Aviation this is
absolutely for you but it's basically Wordle for airport codes all right so what is the four-digit
Iko airport code for barain so let's go d b a h all right so just like word or B is correct okay
this this is going to embarrass me now uh I don't know what the first letter is damn it oh I B
JK so it ends in I so barain wbg I nearly l v c i God damn it come on B UI what could it be
V BB I ah something BBI what's about o must be o just 10 guesses beat that if I've
missed a free app that you use for Aviation on your iPad or iPhone put
it in the comments below so everybody can benefit from it uh otherwise thank you
always for watching Big love to you all bye
