AOPA Summit 2012

I made the trek down to Palm Springs this year for the annual AOPA summit. The goals this year were to look at possible upgrades for the 182 and research the ADS-B and AHRS devices that link with an iPad. Day one of the conference began with the keynote and a panel discussion about some of the international flying adventures the editors of AOPA magazine had made. Though interesting, I think the time could have been better spent talking about the future of GA and the various initiatives that AOPA has for helping that cause. After the keynote I attended a couple of sessions on using the iPad and one on mountain flying.

On day two, the keynote was much more on target with a panel discussion between the editors of Flying Magazine and AOPA Magazine on happenings in GA. Later, Harrison Ford joined the panel for discussion and to describe his role in being a spokesman for general aviation. Most of this day was spent roaming the showroom floor and getting free stuff and interrogating sales types. Though I did attend an interesting session on some real-life stories of controllers who had helped pilots out of various predicaments.

During my adventure on the show floor, I found some items of interest that I'll describe briefly:

• Lockheed Martin is soon going to go live with their version of online weather briefing (https://lmfsweb.afss.com/Website/). This looks like a  great service and will allow filing and briefing (like duats), but it will be accessible by a briefer over the phone. Unlike filed plans on duats, if you call WX-BRIEF, the briefer will be able to access your flight plan. The new service will also allow the capability to close flight plans via web and the briefing package provides more of the same graphics that the briefer sees when talking to you on the phone. 
• LogTen Pro (http://coradine.com/) - Until now I had been using an Access database to track flight time, but after seeing the LogTen package for iPad, iPhone, and Mac, I was hooked. Not only can I sync between the three devices, the customization of reports and visible fields is endless. Importing my existing data is also fairly straight forward in that the Mac version allows importing from a CSV and then will map the fields from the CSV to the LogTen database fields that you select. There will be some required tweaking my original data, but it should be minor. For those who don't want to deal with importing on their own, Coradine offers to import your data for free. 
• Rosen Visors (http://www.rosenvisor.com/) - these guys have been around for a long time and a pair of these versatile vision enhancers has long been on our wish list for the 182. So, finally in a week or two when the package arrives from Oregon, I'll be able to report on how well they work in the 182.
• AOPA FlyQ - AOPA has ventured into the iPad market with a soon to be released app that judging from the demo that I attended, is a cross between ForeFlight and Wing-X. They've partnered with Seattle Avionics and will support geo-referencing and synthetic vision using a portable AHRS device (see below). The app will be free, but you'll need an annual subscription for charts. I can't wait for the app to hit the iTunes store so that I can give it a try.
• ADS-B and AHRS for the iPad - There were several vendors present offering an ADS-B and AHRS solution. There wasn't a magic bullet device that worked with all iPad aviation apps so you have to pair the hardware and app. As an example, The Sporty's Stratus is only supported by ForeFlight and ForeFlight doesn't display ADS-B traffic. On the other hand, Garmin has an ADS-B/GPS solution, but it is only compatible with Garmin Pilot. For synthetic vision/attitude, Wing-X seems like the way to go here, until the AOPA Fly-Q app is available.The AHRS device that I was most impressed with was the unit from Levil Technologies which works with Wing-X and Fly-Q. The unit can also be hooked up to ships power and mounted out of site in the cockpit.

Day three was spent visiting a few booths that needed a second look and to make sure that I hadn't missed any. Also spent some time outside browsing the static airplane displays.