If there's one thing us Pilots love it's technology. But if there is one thing us Pilots
love more than technology it's free technology! Now I'm not talking about your big paid apps your
electronic flight bag stuff like Garmin Pilot or Foreflight AvPlan, Oz Runways, these are
all free apps that you can download you can do it whilst you're watching this video that are going
to help you in several stages during your flying if you're learning to fly if you're planning a
flight once you're in flight and also apps that you can use once you've landed and you're down
on the ground I should also say I am filming this in the noisiest hanger it's really windy outside
the metal doors are just banging and banging but I'm committed now I'm here at the airport and I
want to film this video for you early in 2024 so it's the noise of an airport you're going to get
the real the real feeling of what it's like being in a [Music] hanger before you even jump in the
aircraft then and you're planning a flight the one app I use more than anything else is windy
now you're all going to be familiar with windy and I'm not going to tell tell you how to use it
um I generally use it for like a 10day forecast so like 10 days out from a flight I'll see what the
weather's looking like then about 4 days before the flight I'll have another look and see what
it's looking a bit closer to it a day out then again I have another look now Wy I don't think
you can use as an official source of aviation weather so check your like local Regulators
for for what you can use windy for or not but I use it for high level should I fly on Saturday
or should I fly on Sunday and then obviously I'm checking the official weather sources uh before
the flight itself to make sure that I'm legal but one thing I love in windy and you might not know
this you don't just have to see the weather for one specific location what you can do is if I'm
planning a flight say for example at a wayo there say I'm flying over to Adelaide you can click on
this button at the top you see across here you've got VFR IFR I click on VFR most of the time you
can put in the speed you're planning to fly let's go 150 knots in Echo Yankee Zulu and then move
the little slider across here to whichever day you've planning to fly so let's go for example
let's say on Saturday and now along the bottom I can see what the weather's going to be like across
that whole leg so you can see hit at the start here in Melbourne there's going to be some low
Cloud typical of Melbourne but then once I come out of Melbourne it's actually looking pretty
good I've also got wind barbs so I can see wind speed and direction and if you click the IFR tab
then you can get things like freezing level some other additional information which might be more
relevant to an IFR flight another one I use for planning a lot it's not so much an app but I've
got a bookmark on my iPad and I'll put the link down below to something called Auto rout you go
to briefing on their website and go to gramit and type in your root details so let's do the same one
that we just did so we'll go morab into Adelaide it's got 8,000 ft put in your departure date and
I can do a cruise speed of say 150 knots and in a similar way to windy this gives you a graphical
view of what your flight's going to be so from left to right you're starting at Morin going to
Adelaide it shows you terrain down the bottom here it shows you roughly where the Cloud's going to be
which I think think is really really useful so I could see that taking off from morbin for example
I'm probably going to be in Cloud over terrain but as I get to Adelaide it's actually going to be
quite clear skies now it will show up areas of um forecast icing in a different color there aren't
actually any on this chart at the moment I love this I use it a lot a few days out just to give me
a bit of an idea again I don't know whether this can be legally used for flight planning purposes
but just like the night before to give you a rough idea of what to expect before you check
the weather uh the morning off the flight from the correct uh approved flight sources I really
like it I really recommend it and yeah put the link down in the description below and when I'm
flying to an airport especially one that I might not be familiar with the other app that I use uh
is Google Maps I think I'm going to do a flight to a place called witchy proof soon and because
I've never landed at that airport what I do is look it up on Google Maps just to get an idea
of Runway orientation first of all but also where the taxi way turnoff are in this instance there
just there's just one at the end of the airport like I can I can see where the the wind sock is
as well you can see the wind sock here and knowing that before you actually get to the airport just
means when you're flying you know where to look for the wind sock um and no where you're going to
turn off to taxi to get out it's Google Maps you know Google Maps I just think it's really useful
it's a underused tool for [Music] Aviation once you're actually in flight then there's an app that
I use called units plus which is particularly good if ever you fly overseas and you need to convert
basically one one unit into another set up with each of the areas down the left hand side things
like you know area currency if you're flying somewhere where they may use Imperial but maybe
you're used to working in metric or vice versa for example say I've got a Runway which is 4,500
ft long um that's a lot of millimeters but I want to know say maybe how long that is in meters you
can instantly just convert it by selecting meters on the right pressure conversion is the other one
so click on pressure on the right and if you want to convert from the US who uses inches of mercury
to here in the in Australia for example we use Hector pascals useful app if you ever want to
convert anything uh whilst you're in the air and you can't do the mental arithmetic the other one
and again it's an app that you're all familiar with but you might not use it in this way but
I quite often have flight radar open up in the background I use flight radar for things like if
I'm flying into an airport let's look at Melbourne today for example if I was flying into Melbourne
and I didn't have access to Attis maybe I'm a long way out but I want to know which Runway people are
landing on I quite often open up flight radar and I can see who have we got we've got this little
quanus link coming in on Runway one6 so instantly I know the direction they're Landing before I
actually get close to the airport so I can just plan ahead a little bit more but I do use it
for a bit of situational awareness like I I look for example if I was flying to the southeast of
Australia and again I know that not every aircraft shows up on flight radar and you shouldn't rely on
it but if I was going to Mara for example then I can see well look we've we've got at least one
aircraft who performed pering some air work down there at marul I've got another one who's just
departed from there recently it's good have to have in the background it just gives me a little
heads up sometimes on on what I might expect when I'm flying into an [Music] airport remember when
I did that video on getting my FAA license and I was talking about doing the FAA instrument written
exam I had to go over things like V positioning and where are you in relation to this VR if your
if your display is showing you this that stuff I'm okay with but I forget it quite quickly if I'm
not staying up to date with it so I use this app called nav trainer it basically gives you you're
this aircraft in the middle and on the right hand side you've got uh a few different avionic
instruments basically that you'd have in your cockpit now I'm just going to use the one at the
top ignore the other two but you can have multiple ones so you can reference two nav at the same time
but this Compass row here represents this HSI and if this is your aircraft here and what you can do
is you can kind of fly your aircraft around and see where you are in relation to that navade and
by twisting the compass you can actually change your direction so which way you're heading so you
can practice those classic exam questions like if this is your HSI which uh Direction which
orientation from the navade is your aircraft currently so you can move the aircraft around
check the HSI and you can see well I'm just down to the southwest of that move the aircraft across
to the top watch the flag change from to uh see the HSI needle move across the other side and you
can see that you're now Northeast of the navade now I don't use vs in Echo Yankees I'll be honest
I use GPS a lot more but they're used quite widely in the US so if I ever fly there this is a good
tool for me to keep up to speed and practice with but I also just like using this on the on the C
it's a bit nerdy but on the couch in the evenings at home I'll basically use this to practice just
so if I ever do have to shoot say my GPS goes and I need to shoot a VR approach that you know
my brain still understands well how they work cuz they can be confusing sometimes and this is
a brilliant tool for it you're probably familiar with live ATC but again when you're learning to
fly people often ask me well you got any tips for learning to fly just listen to Air Traffic Control
communication as often as you can live ATC is probably the most popular you can basically
just click on your country uh choose Australia scroll down to Melbourne and I can see what's
happening in the airspace here not only good for student Pilots I actually again very nerdy but I
Bluetooth my phone with live ATC quite often in my car when I'm driving to the airport just to
get an indication of what's well what's going on out there what are other Pilots doing are people
deviating for weather um are there any incidents at any airports that I should know about and just
yeah just get a bit of an idea of the state of play before you get to an airport not just
a good tool for student Pilots but also for well everyone's everyone's a student pilot I suppose
at the end of the day for all Pilots I thoroughly recommend live ATC not [Music] sponsored [Music]
once I've landed somewhere and app I quite like using just to give me an idea of um things to
do when I'm on the ground I quite like walking I sometimes take my folding bike in the plane with
me as well and all Trails is a really good one which gives you basically uh GPS coordinates and
pinpoints for war walks and running tracks and cycle paths that other people have walked on or
run on or cycled on people give updates as to the conditions as well so quite often if there's been
some heavy rain um I check all Trails before I go somewhere if I'm planning to go for a walk
when I land and I can just see the conditions of that path as well I really like it it's a
good app to give you some ideas for planning goes without saying but I have YouTube on my iPad as
well which I use when I'm on the ground if I've landed somewhere after a flight actually to be
serious for a second if you've had the the stress of a flight and there's a lot of work to a flight
even though it's not stressful per se if I've got my favorite like YouTuber that I want to watch
online I just pull up a couple of videos watch them have some downtime decompress a little bit
before getting back in the aircraft again so I've got YouTube on here as Pilots as well I do think
that we should be challenging our minds where whenever we can keeping them engaged and active so
wle is obviously one of my favorite games on the iPad but there is this other app which I want you
to download it's called airport codes and if you like Wordle even if you don't and you still like
Aviation if you like Wordle and Aviation this is absolutely for you but it's basically Wordle for
airport codes all right so what is the four-digit Iko airport code for barain so let's go d b a h
all right so just like word or B is correct okay this this is going to embarrass me now uh I don't
know what the first letter is damn it oh I B JK so it ends in I so barain wbg I nearly l v
c i God damn it come on B UI what could it be V BB I ah something BBI what's about o must be
o just 10 guesses beat that if I've missed a free app that you use for
Aviation on your iPad or iPhone put it in the comments below so everybody
can benefit from it uh otherwise thank you always for watching Big love to you all bye