Austin Meyer, designer and owner of X-Plane, writes “….. X-Planner is a flight-planner that runs no your iPhone or iPodTouch. Here is how it works: You enter the performance parameters of your airplane one time (takes maybe 15 minutes?) Then, after that, you just enter the departure and destination for wherever you are flying, and the winds aloft…..”.
“….. X-Planner will then show you your weight and center of gravity with the take-off fuel on board and weight and gravity at zero-fuel as a red line across the weight and balance envelope, so you can see if you will be within weight and balance for the entire flight! Finally, seeing if you are within weight and balance is easy and even kind of fun!
Then, X-Planner will show you the time enroute and fuel burn for each altitude, so you can see how much fuel to put on board and how long the flight will be, and also know WHAT ALTITUDE IS THE MOST EFFICIENT
ALTITUDE TO FLY!!!
I am only charging $9.99 for this, so it will pay for itself in fuel savings in the first flight if it saves you even 2 gallons, which I am sure it will.
So, any pilot with an iPhone or iPod touch should get this for sure.. it makes doing the weight and balance FUN, and shows you the BEST altitude to fly, and tells you exactly how much fuel to ask for before flight.
Pilots that do much flying and do NOT have an iPhone might consider an iPodTouch for this application… it costs $229 at apple.com, which is NOT exactly cheap, but depending on how much flying you do, you could
easily save $229 of fuel over time by knowing what altitude and power settings to use on each flight, based on he exact parameters of your airplane and the current winds (which you enter for each flight)……”.
