new AOPA flight planner?

Otherwise, it's nice
If we can't get it to do what it is designed to do..... how nice can it be?.
I, too, had difficulty overlaying the weather. Finally stumbled onto it
"somehow". Would also be nice to be able to enter the altitudes for individual
legs of a multileg route (VFR). The altitude does not come up at all (Nav Log)
for a single leg route.
Haven't found out yet if the winds can be fed into the Nav Log from the wx
data.
Maybe I am a slow learner. So far, for the price, I will stick to Cirrus.

Vince

If you generate a flight log, you'll see that the TAS and GS don't match. In other
words, it's calculating the wind effects.

Dave Reinhart


VRB300 wrote:

Otherwise, it's nice
If we can't get it to do what it is designed to do..... how nice can it be?.
I, too, had difficulty overlaying the weather. Finally stumbled onto it
"somehow". Would also be nice to be able to enter the altitudes for individual
legs of a multileg route (VFR). The altitude does not come up at all (Nav Log)
for a single leg route.
Haven't found out yet if the winds can be fed into the Nav Log from the wx
data.
Maybe I am a slow learner. So far, for the price, I will stick to Cirrus.

Vince

it's calculating the wind effects.

I hadn't noticed that aspect but was looking at the MC vs MH... nothing shows
up there. Am i expecting too much?

Vince

Well, which way is the wind coming from? If it's pretty much a tail or headwind
the difference between MC & MH won't be much.

Try this, too. Make sure you click on the weather button and get the brief back
from DUATS before doing the flight log.

Dave Reinhart


VRB300 wrote:

it's calculating the wind effects.

I hadn't noticed that aspect but was looking at the MC vs MH... nothing shows
up there. Am i expecting too much?

Vince

before doing the flight log.

Thanks for the "tip" on head/tail winds.
Not sure what you mean by "doing" the flight log. Assume you mean Nav Log
which is done automatically. When I queried AOPA they replied that the Nav Log
automatically calcs the winds for MH once the wx is downloaded. If there is a
sequence to follow, I am not aware of it. I keep trying, though.

Vince

I keep trying, though

Eureka! I uninstalled the original Flt Planner and re-installed from another
site, and........... the Nav Log calculates the MH as advertized!!! Now, if
we can only get the altitudes to appear for each leg.


Vince

the Nav Log calculates the MH as advertized!!
Forget it! This morning it will not work. Maybe my PC is spooked. Will call
AOPA for their input. More later.

Vince

On AOPA's site it says their current DUATS based flight planner is available
through 12/31/03. So is their new one going to permanently replace it? The
only reason that matters to me is that I have saved flight plans through
AOPAs site that are NOT carried over to DUATS site, even though the user
name and password are the same.

I was going to migrate these flight plans to the new flight planner, but it
has a limit of 5! What's up with that?

I like it overall, especially the Navigation Log. I've had none of the bugs
people have mentioned on here, it worked the first time and stored all my
data. I still will use Anywhere Maps flight planner as it sends to my PDA
which is what I use in flight. But AWM doesnt have a DUATS connection, yet,
nor will it figure out a victor airway route for you, which is what I used
AOPA's for, and will continue to. That's right, two flight planning
programs, one to figure the route, get the weather, and file - one to type
in that route and transfer to the PDA. Or just type directly into PDA.

Chris

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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