Review of VFR PC Flight Planning Software

For my own personal use I own Jeppesen's FliteStar 9.0 VFR. It works
well and pretty much does everything you'd want a flight planner to do.
FliteStar has great maps that look very much like the FAA's common
sectional charts. Adding a waypoint to a route is as simple as dragging
a line onto the waypoint. But using FliteStar is relatively complex. I
can't, for example, figure out how to edit the planned altitude
property of a route. Doesn't mean that FliteStar can't -- but I
couldn't figure out how. I also want FliteStar to suggest an altitude
to optimize for tail winds. The look and feel of FliteStar is
otherwise well done. The layout of tabs and buttons puts everything in
reach, though the icons on the buttons look a little amateurish and are
difficult to remember. FliteStar was a little expensive and the updates
are flat-out too expensive.

So I'm going to look at other flight planners and I hope that there are
already reviews out there on the web. Some other planner's a RMS
Technology's FliteSoft, Seattle Avionics Voyager, and the downloadable
free flight planner DUAT for Windows.

Don't much about any of these flight planners. Judging from their
screen shots and tutorial, the Voyager product looks very professional,
simple, and even pretty to look at. The DUAT flight planner looks a
little rough. They have downloads for Windows 95 through Windows NT (I
guess we're to assume that XP ok, but it's suspicious that they don't
mention XP by name).

Any other review would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Joe wrote:

I use aeroplanner.com. You have to actually be connected to the web,
but you get charts and such for that.

It's a lot nicer than the offerings from either DTC or CSC.

Download and try AirPlan. It allows you to use it in trial mode for 30
days.
http://www.razorsedgesoft.com/airplan.zip

The website is at http://www.razorsedgesoft.com/airplan/index.htm

Joe,

try PocketFMS - both for the PC and the PocketPC. It's free at
www.pocketfms.com

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)