"Jay Honeck" wrote in message news:gVqAf.722239$_o.395653@attbi_s71...
We've tried using it in our plane, but discarded the notion simply because
the lap-top was too big to put anywhere. It ended up on the co-pilots
lap,
which is NOT a very handy place.

When I'm flying alone (which is most of the time), I use Delorme Street
Atlas hooked to a non-aviation 12-channel GPS... Works great... Although I
have newer version of Street Atlas, I prefer an older version (v6, I
believe) because it has a cleaner interface... It seems to have all the
airports in it, even the smaller private strips... If I'm really wanting to
fly an accurate path, I'll use it to draw a line on the map and then zoom in
quite a bit so that the path is actually acting like a CDI... I have Street
Atlas log my path to a file and I then input that into the logbook program
that I wrote...

If Grace is flying with me, she usually like having the laptop in her lap
since it acts as a lap warmer... She's a bit cold natured, I guess...

Our Compaq's screen was not sunlight-readable, either.

That's a problem with my laptop also... If I have it on external (AC) power,
the display is brighter, but it's still difficult to read in bright
sunlight... At night, it needs dimming, but that's not possible so I just
close the cover and only open it every few minutes...

I've had bad luck over the years running a DC-AC inverter in my aircraft --
it tends to run the battery down... So, if I'm going to be on a flight
longer than the battery time on my laptop, I'll bring a small deep cycle
battery with me and just run it off of that instead...