With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

All the excitement

2011 February 18 08:00

I just picked up a new aviation-enabling tool/toy. It came on Wednesday. I've put it through its simulation paces, but I haven't had a chance to take it in a real airplane yet. It's a "Skypad" from Seattle Avionics. It's an aviation planning and chart-displaying software package sold on a tablet PC.

I'll write more about it in the near future. I just wanted to get some pictures up on the web today. I intend to take it flying tomorrow.



Just for reference, this is my flight simulator game flight yoke and throttle setup. The throttles are small toy versions and aren't at all similar to the real thing in the airplane, but I think the yoke is similarly sized to a real one. The red strap holds the yoke assembly down to the table; the clamps are on the very edge and they don't have very good leverage.



Here's the tablet mounted to the yoke.



Here's the software in use. The Voyager software displays aeronautical charts with you in the center (it uses a GPS to keep track of your position). In the upper half of the software I have a sectional chart displayed and in the lower half I have an instrument en-route chart. The fact that it can display two charts at once (or one chart and one instrument approach) is what sold me on the Voyager software as opposed to the others I tried.



This shows how the tablet yoke mount platform attaches to the yoke itself.