Getting an i pad for the cockpit... and interested in NEXRAD imaging without montly fees.
Reading about the Stratus in FLYING this month, and it says all the data is provided gratis from FAA as an incentive to equip.
Can anyone verify this?
Is it also ambigous in the article about whether you will see ADS-B out equipped planes as traffic relative to you. I am surrounded by ADS-B planes here at Prescott as the whole Riddle fleet has had the UAT equip. on board for years.
I also wonder if the NEXRAD delivery has the same timing and delay issues recently reported to those who do pay for monthly weather.
Any thoughts from the group are appreciated. Cheers... and put that scrip bottle down Rob. right now.

Definitely do not see traffic in foreflight with the stratus - yet. Stratus supports it - foreflight has not enabled it. I specifically asked them about it - but it will come as we get closer to the ads-b mandate. I have no direct experience with the stratus - but have been seriously considering purchasing it. But you need to be careful about the coverage.

Lots of good info on the foreflight and appareo web sites:

http://www.foreflight.com/ipad/whatsnew/

http://www.appareo.com/primarymenu/prod ... erage-map/

http://blog.foreflight.com/2012/04/01/p ... n-stratus/

While I have not yet flown with the Stratus (I've come very close to buying one), pilots that I have talked with who have flown with it will not fly without it! Feedback has been very good, with weather and TFRs, both of which are very handy this summer here in NC. It also is a WAAS GPS receiver.
Hope this helps some.
Todd

I've been using an iPad 3 with ForeFlight for about 4 months and I've been doing research on the Stratus. I also have a Garmin 396 with XM Satellite Weather. I fly a lot in the mountains of Western North Carolina and I recently spent a week flying mountains and canyons in McCall ID. Without the Stratus Foreflight relies a lot on cellular data coverage, which is spotty-to-nonexistent in most mountainous areas. You can't get position data or weather without cellular coverage. Stratus sounds like a good way to get weather data without a subscription but it's still ground-based. Radio waves don't penetrate the earth and a ground based system is always going to have coverage problems in the mountains. In my opinion you need satellite weather in the mountains to get the necessary coverage. Since Stratus' primary benefit is weather on the iPad without a subscription, I don't think it's a cost effective addition if I have to maintain my XM Satellite Weather subscription on the Garmin 396 to get coverage.

Apart from free weather, the iPad and Foreflight are a great way to shrink the size and weight of your flight bag at a much lower chart subscription cost. The amount of information that you get in a small package is incredible. An ideal solution would be to offer a separate model Stratus with an integrated satellite weather receiver for those who want to pay a little more for satellite coverage.

It would be nice to have TIS-B traffic displayed on the iPad, but it's not essential. Once I replace my current transponder with an ADS-B Out unit it will be possible to get TIS-B traffic, but I don't really think it will replace see-and-avoid. I think it could lull you into a false sense of security that you're seeing all nearby traffic. I've flown in an aircraft with a Mode S transponder and traffic displayed on a GNS 530. We had an airplane right next to us with his transponder operating that didn't show up on the traffic display. I realize that Mode S isn't the same as TIS-B, but no technology is foolproof.