aaronw wrote:
Anyone tried out the new AOPA flight planner? It looks pretty
interesting - you can import weather graphics from DUAT(S) and overlay
them on the 'sectional' that it draws the routes on. It also plots
all the TFRs and such.

Still playing with it, but it looks like it has a lot of
possibilities. It's a free download from
http://www.aopa.org/flight_planner/intro.html - free to use if you're
a member.

Looks like they did a nice job on the user interface, except they left some
parts out, like the part where you enter your own route. I'd like to be able to
enter the route I want in text mode, you know, typing in the name or identifier
of each waypoint. It appears the only routing options are (1) direct (2) the
airway route that the tool calculates for you. If you want some other route, you
have to use the graphical interface to "rubber band" drag the route to the
waypoints you want. You have to re-scale the map in order to resolve the exact
location of the waypoint, etc etc etc. Much faster to just type it in.

I like the overlay of the NEXRAD data on my route.

Unfortunately it's Windoze-only. Too bad. Why didn't they just make it
web/browser based so it would be operating system independent. I'm not going to
fire up my Windoze machine just to do a flight plan.

It's very chatty with the servers, seems to access the servers with every mouse
click or keystroke (just as a web-based version would be).

It crashed within 5 minutes. I sent the information to AOPA.

It produced "Uuuuuuuuu" for the names of some waypoints in the nav log. I sent
the information to AOPA.

I don't like the weather briefing output format. I've been spoiled by
http://www.enflight.com

If you have trouble with the userid and password, remember the userid is your
AOPA number, complete with leading zeros, and the password is your last name,
with the first letter capitalized. Not particularly intuitive.

AOPA seems to have a knack for distributing buggy software. The quality seems to
be similar to the old AOPA Airport Directory software. Maybe they tried to rush
it out to coincide with their expo.

Dave
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