myE6B iPhone application

Inverted said:
I didn't use that on my commercial ride. I used my iPhone I'm not even kidding. When I asked what I could use for calculations he said any available source. I whipped out mye6b on the iPhone and got to it.
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Ive had some students do things like that.....The DPE we use likes to think he is "hip with the times" at least thats what he says, haha.
 
mshunter said:
Wow. I still regularly use my Jep E6B, and I don't let my students use one im my presence. I understand the whole technology makes things eaiser argument, but what happens when the battries die, or the software crashes. Use those programs, by all means. But whip out that trusty old E6B everyonce in a while to stay profecient at it. You'll thank yourself later when the electronic dodad goes on the fritz.
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You know everyone says oh what about when the batteries die what about when the computers are down. Honestly I have never had that happen. And there are too many other resourses for me to care about an e6b. It has nothing to do with looking cool or trying to be hip but it looks really funny when somebody whips out an old e6b to calculate fuel for a 17 million dollar aircraft.

I will teach my students to use an e6b, but teaching them multiple spiraea of information is much mote valuable. Not to mention e6b's are too time consuming when I can punch a few numbers in to find every calculation in an instant. I always see it as calculator versus abacus. We don't use an abacus to do math calculations anymore it's time technology caught up to aviation flight planning.
 
I think there are those who struggle with the E6B and will always dismiss it, and those who have figured it out and love its simplicity.
 
I don't know who couldn't understand an e6b it tells you exactly how to use it. It's pretty easy once you get students to play with it and understand it.
 
I figured we'd have one zealot come in here and proclaim how we must all use the E6B or fear losing our skills.

:banghead:

Anyway - as an instructor, use the whiz wheel kids. . .at least until you show me you know how, then do whatever you wish - but your numerics better make sense.

As a pilot, I'mma use whatever the hell I feel like using and if it's an e6B application on my iPhone then so be it. Lord knows I wasn't required to carry one around in my 121 flight kit, and I'm free to determine course corrections, fuel calculations, and the other fun things the e6b can figure out through this new found medium called a smartphone.

Too bad I've sold the three e6b's I had sitting in my office closet about two years ago.
 
I can tell you that in my corporate flying, aerobatic flying, fun flying and cross country flying I have never found the need to Use an e6b. No matter where I am at or what plane I am flying I have always has numerous resources in which to get my info from. And sometimes these are airports without a soul on field.

Older pilots and CFI's regard it as an art, they can have it. I want my information exact and instantly.

Not to take away from this thread too much but with programs like wingX for the iPhone I can request a DUATS wx brief, and it computes me all my calculated e6b info based on the aircraft I'm flying. Why would I use anythng else lol?
 
ZapBrannigan said:
That's funny, I just emailed fltplan.com today and asked when an improved iPhone or blackberry site would be available. The login and menu are formatted well for iPhone -- but the actual flight-plan entry page isn't formatted at all. I found it pretty lousy.
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There's actually a fltplan app for the iPhone, although it's really not any better than the website... in fact, it may be just a skin for their website. Haven't used it for a while, don't remember. I ended up taking it back off because it caused backups to run REAL slow whenever I synced.
 
Not trying to turn this into a hate on e6b thread, but really, i just dont see the usefulness of it. I couldnt imagine having a complete electrical failure and whipping out an e6b to figure out a course deviation, even without a gps.

Also, i remember a couple of years ago fltplan.com went down for a couple of days, and i think i just about blew my bowels over the course of that time, but I still didnt resort to taking out an enroute chart and an e6b to figure out where i was going. As it turns out no body at flight service is double checking my entries.
 
It's got some nice functions. Knots to mph, grabbing density altitude etc etc. But when I can put wind direction, velocity and temp into a program and it calculates everything at once for me it's hard to pick up a regular e6b lol
 
Inverted said:
You know everyone says oh what about when the batteries die what about when the computers are down. Honestly I have never had that happen. And there are too many other resourses for me to care about an e6b. It has nothing to do with looking cool or trying to be hip but it looks really funny when somebody whips out an old e6b to calculate fuel for a 17 million dollar aircraft.

I will teach my students to use an e6b, but teaching them multiple spiraea of information is much mote valuable. Not to mention e6b's are too time consuming when I can punch a few numbers in to find every calculation in an instant. I always see it as calculator versus abacus. We don't use an abacus to do math calculations anymore it's time technology caught up to aviation flight planning.
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Maybe I should have gone more in depth. But I do let them use whatever tool they have in the airplane. But before we go and fly the E6b is used for flight planning. My reasoning is that on my private ride, I reached for the GPS on my diversion, and the examiner turned it off. "I want to see you use the olde reliable E6b" was what came out of her mouth.
 
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