I use Aeroplanner. I have found the Basic level to be good enough.

I fly a fairly speedy light twin at turbo altitudes. The main use of
Aeroplanner is to find out how far I am going and how long it will take.
From that I decide if and where to stop along the way for fuel and passenger
comfort. I usually have AirNav going in another browser window to check
fuel prices and airport data for potential stops, plugging them into and out
of Aeroplanner until I have my final plan.

You can also plug in different altitudes to see what the forecast winds
aloft are going to do to you, if it is less than a day before planned
departure.

Aeroplanner is also nice because you can see graphically where the TFRs and
restricted areas are, and plan your avoidance strategy from the comfort of
your desk chair.

I don't bother with the TripTicks. It takes way too many of them to print
out an entire flight. Flying high and fast, it is really too much
information. Plus if you deviate from the printed out plan, your Tripticks
are essentially useless. My Garmin 530 dishes out pretty much the same info
and is adaptable to changes in plans.

But depending on what you are flying you might want to. I used to also fly
a small piston helicopter as well as my fixed wing. In the helo, we flew
low, 500 AGL, routinely. 85 knots cruise speed. Regular charts are almost
impossible to use in a helo, particularly in the summer when the doors are
off. In case you don't know, helos are unstable in flight and you cannot
take your hand off the stick for even a second. So that leaves one hand
available for unfolding and positioning a chart. This hand is supposed to
be on the other stick (collective) at all times, in case of an engine
failure. Then you have to slam the collective down within 1-2 seconds or
you die. (Getting a sense of why I got rid of the helo?) Several times I
just landed in a field to check the chart when I got surprised by something.
Then I got smart and would print out Aeroplanner tripticks for the entire
route. Mainly so I would know where the towers and overflown airports were.
At the speeds we used it did not take too long to print out the Tripticks,
then I stapled them together like a book for the knee board.


"Glenn Westfall" wrote in message
...
I am a current user of Destination Direct and it is a great program.
I also purchased some Maptech CD's for charts and the moving map
feature using a GPS is awsome. The only downside is you cannot print
out the sectionals along your route with DD. The printing feature of
the sectionals using DD is pretty lame acutally. So I am now
considering getting a subscription to Aeroplanner as they have a
triptick feature that will print out current charts along your route.
Does anyone use Aeroplanner and have and good comments about it? Is
it worth the $119/year for the subscription? Also, does anyone use a
Pocet PC utilizing the charts that can be downloaded from Aeroplanner.
I was looking at either Oziexplorer CE or Memory Map Pocket Navigator
to view the charts and get moving map functionality with my GPS.

Thanks for any comments....


Glenn