Latest Ver. 9 of ForeFlight has this interesting feature that shows you using a turquoise colored outline on the map the limits to where you can glide if your engine suddenly decides to take a rest. You input your plane, wind, DA, etc., ahead of time of course.

It will be interesting to see the various profiles for different aircraft. I guess the Maule will be a tiny circle and you might not even see the outline for a motor glider. Cool feature no matter what, especially if there is NO airport option available at all. And if your engine quits at night.... hmmm.. . I won't even go there.

Link: https://foreflight.com/campaigns/9/

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If you lose engine power, Glide Advisor™ helps you quickly assess your options and locate a safe spot to land.

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ForeFlight 9 also adds Glide Advisor. When the Glide Advisor is activated, ForeFlight displays areas on the moving map that are within a power-off glide based on altitude, terrain data, winds aloft (if available) and user-provided glide airspeed and ratio. On flat terrain, the glide range perimeter appears as a circle or ellipse shaped by the wind. In hilly terrain, the glide range perimeter is shaped by elevated terrain.

I was thinking about what the glide ratio might be on my Maule when filling out the aircraft specs. I didn't see a negative sign on the keyboard.

I'll be interested to see what the glide ring looks like, next time I'm up.

One thing I learned by accident is that if a mistake is made inputting the information on the glide advisor page, it can't be changed there. I had to contact Foreflight, and got this advice: It has to be changed by going to "more", then "Aircraft", then when your airplane's tail number comes up with a circle "I" next to it, click on the "I". Now you can change the glide speed and glide ratio in the pop up menu. Hopefully they'll put this info in the updated manual, when that comes out with the next update.

Cary

Mine is updating at this moment. Is this an extra cost or is it included?

It's included. The only thing that has an upgrade cost in this version is SXM Radio Music control if you have a specific SXM receiver.

~Chris

Chris I would put in a 5 to 1 glide for your Maule. This is probably a little less than what the actual L/D is, but it is conservative and more realistic. Maule certainly didn't have giant draggy bush tires installed on the prototype on the day they measured the glide angle for the brochure

When you have glided to wherever your landing spot is, you still need to make some sort of a pattern or quickly line up with the wind, and having 200 or 300 feet to do that when you get there is probably a good thing.

Another thing that none of these E-geniuses ever seem to get is that the real world contains rising and sinking air that will completely invalidate any calculated glide angle.

Wind blowing in mountainous terrain? Multiply your glide angle by 0.3 to 3.0 depending on 20 different factors.

Flying on days with atmospheric heating and cumulus clouds? Downdrafts have put airliners (with 100K lbs. of thrust available) into the ground. Updrafts and mountain waves have kept a P-38 fighter aloft with both engines feathered.

Their glide advisor is probably a nice thing to have, and represents a lot of effort to do the right thing, but it has to be used with a fairly good spoonful of common sense and not blind faith.

EZFlap wrote:Chris I would put in a 5 to 1 glide for your Maule. This is probably a little less than what the actual L/D is, but it is conservative and more realistic. Maule certainly didn't have giant draggy bush tires installed on the prototype on the day they measured the glide angle for the brochure

8:1 at gross, standard day.

Adjust from there.

Glide gets worse as the plane gets lighter (less energy in a lighter airplane).

Best glide speed gets slower as the plane gets lighter.

Don't fly to the edge of the glide range unless you have no other choice.

If you are a mile high in a Maule at 8:1 you have two hundred square miles to choose from. Pick a good one. (A = π × r2)

EZFlap wrote:Chris I would put in a 5 to 1 glide for your Maule. This is probably a little less than what the actual L/D is, but it is conservative and more realistic. Maule certainly didn't have giant draggy bush tires installed on the prototype on the day they measured the glide angle for the brochure

EZFlap wrote:Their glide advisor is probably a nice thing to have, and represents a lot of effort to do the right thing, but it has to be used with a fairly good spoonful of common sense and not blind faith.

Thanks for those bits of guidance. I'll do that.

One cool thing that they did with their glide advisor was use forecast winds aloft and terrain data to help develop a more-informed picture of glide performance. Kinda neat. Certainly doesn't account for those other things you described, of course. But glad they were using their beans with the available data.

rw2 wrote:

EZFlap wrote:Chris I would put in a 5 to 1 glide for your Maule. This is probably a little less than what the actual L/D is, but it is conservative and more realistic. Maule certainly didn't have giant draggy bush tires installed on the prototype on the day they measured the glide angle for the brochure

8:1 at gross, standard day.

Adjust from there.

There seems to be a happy medium in there somewhere. I appreciate the experienced guidance.

I have it on good authority that the next rev will allow for inputting helium filled bushwheels and frames filled with helium.


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Barnstormer wrote:I have it on good authority that the next rev will allow for inputting helium filled bushwheels and frames filled with helium.

You don't already account for that in your weight and balance!?

It's 2017. Thank you ForeFlight for this feature.

Other advances like this concept for using something similar to "Google Glasses" would provide an interesting additional technology.

Now throw in night vision capability and/or FLIR, Highway In The Sky HITS, and even night time engine out scenarios might be less nasty.



...those avionics and software folks sure do provide pilots with a lot of opportunities to spend a few AMUs.

rw2 wrote:

Barnstormer wrote:I have it on good authority that the next rev will allow for inputting helium filled bushwheels and frames filled with helium.

You don't already account for that in your weight and balance!?

I tried that a couple of times but just when I was about to get a weight reading a little breeze would blow the plane off the scales.


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God forbid that ForeFlight ever implements the "highway-in-the-sky" metaphor in their app. And if they do, they better have a way to turn it off, or they lose me as a customer. The HITS approach forces your eyes to remain inside the cockpit, following the little boxes through the screen, lest you fly outside them and lose positional guidance.

The last thing we need is a bunch of people flying around VFR with their heads buried even further in the panel! Last time I flew cross country, a Cessna crossed just below and in front of me, at a 45° angle from back to front. I saw him at the last minute and was able to pull up and turn away. He was close enough for me to see he had his head buried in the cockpit... Never once looked up or reacted in any way.

JP256 wrote:

The last thing we need is a bunch of people flying around VFR with their heads buried even further in the panel!

+1 on that for sure.

You know, on second thought, that is absolutely right. Maybe a HUD option might be okay??, but glued to your glasses is not my idea of flying either. I recall reading that they were tying together some sort of emergency autopilot and the HITS capability. If you were in really deep trouble, you could hit some sort of an advanced autopilot function that would actually fly the plane to the nearest airport. I presume you’d still have to land the thing, but hey, it is 2017 and you see what the drone people are doing. That was my interest in the HITS, for real emergency situations, say a cardiac event or?

Back to the ForeFlight Glide Function, I think it’s got potential. I still don’t have a software package, re ForeFlight, FlyQ EFB, Garmin Pilot, Hilton’s WingX, etc. When I get back in the air I’ll decide. The glide feature may be one factor to consider. I am sure the other packages will soon feature something similar.

As an aside, I see Hilton Software just won a major 17 Million Dollar Contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, so that ought to liven things up at WingX.

Link: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hilton-software-awarded-17m-aeronautical-mobile-application-contract-by-the-national-geospatial-intelligence-agency-300429793.html

JP256 wrote:....The last thing we need is a bunch of people flying around VFR with their heads buried even further in the panel! Last time I flew cross country, a Cessna crossed just below and in front of me, at a 45° angle from back to front. I saw him at the last minute and was able to pull up and turn away. He was close enough for me to see he had his head buried in the cockpit... Never once looked up or reacted in any way.

Think it's bad now, wait til we all have that whizbang ADS-B in and out.
No need to look out the windows until you're on short final.

Did a couple flights yesterday and turned on Glide Adviser. I found myself looking at it out of curiosity to see where it predicted I could glide to and how that compared to my gut feeling, or lack there of. It's cool to watch the profile change as you're flying over hills and such. I'd give it a thumbs up since it doesn't subtract anything from FF (it can be turned off). Jury is still out on actual usefulness though.

Hazard Adviser.... now that's the really cool feature. Classic terrain warning graphics but overlayed on VFR/IFR sectionals.

-asa

JP256 wrote:
The last thing we need is a bunch of people flying around VFR with their heads buried even further in the panel!

+2

Head inside the cockpit is not a new problem though... There is a really great old short story by Richard Bach, called "return of a lost pilot" or something like that. In the beginning of the story, he recounts an incident flying low level in a military aircraft, with his head buried in the cockpit chasing some instrumentation problem, and his wingman calmly asks him "do you plan on flying into this mountain?"

The aircraft involved was an active duty F-100 if I recall, and I had read this story as a teenager (published in the book "A Gift of Wings") , so the incident could not have happened very recently.

Starting to catch up with Garmin Pilot, had this feature for a little bit.

Had the ipad off for over a month and took about 20 min before it decided to update to 9