A Geek Goes Flying

Quite possibly the best $11 I've spent in aviation:  High Road Front Seat Car Organizer Caddy . As part of my "get in and go" initiative, I wanted some cockpit organization, and none of the planes I fly have any usable pockets up front. This is thin enough to fit between most front seats without getting in the way of anything (can’t be used with a Johnson bar, sadly, for manual gear Mooneys or Piper PA28s), my iPhone fits perfectly in that back side pocket, a stylus and pen clip effortlessly into the pen loops, and a flashlight, my wallet, whatever else I want to keep easily at hand (vs. awkwardly in a pocket or floating around the cabin) is all right there, at my fingertips. I wanted something like Sporty's Covered Cockpit Organizer , but it was too big, and I didn't want anything suction-cupped to the window...

So, YOLTbird has a FreeFlight RANGR FDL-978-XVR ADS-B transceiver, that does a great job providing GPS (10m accuracy), FIS-B (weather), and TIS-B (traffic) to my iPad. (The Stratux would also provide 1090 traffic, but the cons outweigh the pros.) But no AHRS. I kinda want to see if I can learn enough Go to pull off the following: Get the Stratux software stack to consume the GPS information pumped out by the FreeFlight system (in lieu of using the GPYes chip I have in the Stratux, which is occasionally problematic); and Feed AHRS data to ForeFlight, now that ForeFlight has started accepting such data from non-Appareo/Garmin sources. This will let me bury a Stratux somewhere in the cockpit (and keep it on hand as an emergency backup), without our having to have antennae strewn all over the place or a device suction-cupped to the window, and get AHRS into the synthetic vision module in ForeFlight, using hardware I already own. (A FlightStream 210 would do the same, over Bluet

Now that I have access to a hangar and a plane with a nice interior, I’m contemplating how to organize things. I’m leaving the now communal iPad in the X-Naut case; with cell phone personal hotspot functionality, we can update ForeFlight, etc., from the cockpit during pre-flight. I’m toying with the idea of leaving a set of sunglasses in the plane. I started using the ForeFlight scratchpad feature‡ instead of a kneeboard and notepad. I’m looking for where to stash a pen in flight; my first ForeFlight scratchpad experiment was done wearing a stylish (!)  Pilot's Sleeve Pocket Polo Shirt , but without all those pen pockets, I'm not sure it would have been as convenient. But I don't want to clutter the cockpit or stick things to random surfaces. With electric landing gear, there’s a small space between the front seats where I could put a small organizer or something. I’d like to have a couple of pens, my iPhone, and a flashlight (at a minimum) easily accessible. Developing. Th

There's a lot to be said for the network effect . Case in point, GoPro. Early movers in the "action camera" space, they became ubiquitous. There's thousands of options for basically every accessory imaginable. Different mounts, including the specialized MyPilotPro Swivel GoPro Airplane Moun t. Different battery pack options (like the Wasabi Power Extended Battery for GoPro HERO3, HERO3+ (with Backdoors) I use with the camera I hang off the MyPilotPro mount). Etc., etc., etc. Then there's the Panasonic HX-A1: This coulda been a contender. I picked one up to clip to things relatively unobtrusively. The original idea was to be able to do POV shots using the head mount: But the one I ordered never shipped, and then eventually the order was canceled and refunded. The built in battery life is pretty anemic; there was an extended battery, but it's no longer available . Orphaned tech. My old GoPro Hero 3+ cameras (Black and Silver) will run for a long while

Having had my iPad mini overheat a couple of times in flight, and after reading positive reviews on /r/flying , I ordered the X-Naut Active Cooling Mount iPad Mini . Because I couldn't readily find this information, I'll put it here: I used the  RAM Mounts 2 7/16" Flat Surface Mount RAM-B-202U  ball mount base to attach to the back of the X-Naut (the mini version has a three hole mount). Note that base doesn't come with screws (I took the base off my iPad Air cradle, which I haven't used in years). Other mounts may work just fine, but, I can confirm that this item specifically mounts right up to the X-Naut with no modification required. PIREP on the X-Naut ASAP. (Toying with the idea of replacing the yoke clock with something like this , to easily patch power into the iPad and X-Naut.) Update (2018.07.16) : The promised PIREP. I’ve been flying behind the X-Naut for a few quite warm months now, including a couple of > 100°F days (including one departure fro