iPad 2 Full Review

Today I flew my iPad down to Clermont County, Ohio (I69) and visited Sporty's Pilot Shop. They not only have free lunch every Saturday, but you get to meet cool people. This was a fun flight because I got to navigate Class Bravo Airspace and travel quite far.

I got the Wifi Only iPad for a couple of reason. 1) I don't need 3G internet 2) 90% of the places I go have free wifi access. The negative of the wifi only iPad is that it doesn't have a built in GPS. However I've heard from pilot's that the built in GPS on the iPad is not a real GPS. It's an A-GPS which means assisted. It uses the cellular towers to triangulate and help get a fix faster. I guess because of that the GPS is only pretty accurate during straight and level flight. All of this is to say is why I wanted to get an external bluetooth gps module any, thus got the wifi only to save money.

I simple connect my bluetooth gps to my iPad and throw the GPS receiver either in the window or leave it on the passenger seat. I compared the readings on the app to my Garmin 196 and it was virtually identical.

For the modern pilot, I think an iPad is almost a must have accessory. It makes the cockpit much more clean, paper free, and allows the pilot to focus on other things instead like watching out for traffic. I now wonder how did I fly before I had this thing! Also pilots love redundancy. I have my Garmin 196, my iPad, VOR's, and my backup paper charts. With all these options....if I get lost, it's my own fault :)

Happy Flying!!