hotrod180 wrote:Thread drift....I use the free Avare app.
Only works with Android devices, in fact I bought an Android tablet specifically to use it for airplane navigation with Avare.
Most people I know use ForeFlight, in fact one guy uses ForeFlight Pro.
Why? "It costs more, it must be better."
I'm pretty frugal, I've always figured why pay for something if you can get it for free?
Usually you get what you get pay for, but Avare seems to work well.
It does most if not all of the same stuff the pay apps do,
and what it doesn't do I guess I probably don't need since I haven't ever wished for anything better.
I have Foreflight Pro, and the reason is that for IFR use, it's a whole lot better than most others. Having geo-referenced approach plates (the reason I first went with FF Pro) was worth the additional fee at the time and still is. It also has geo-referenced taxi diagrams, which is handy, even at smaller airports that are unfamiliar, but especially at larger ones. Coupled with Stratus, the amount of enroute weather information in Foreflight is phenomenal. On the ground, flight planning is made easy, and being able to file and get emails back that not only has my plan been filed but also my expected clearance allows me to input the anticipated routing before calling for my clearance. Top all of that with "best in the business" technical support. All in all, very much worth the $150/year it costs. Granted, that would buy me about 3 hours of LL, but it's a small piece of my annual airplane expenses.
It's also a whole lot less expensive than a chart subscription for comparable paper charts. And, FWIW, it's about a third of the amount I pay to maintain my Garmin subscription to keep my 430W updated, yet it is kept current every 28 days, just like the Garmin subscription.
For VFR-only pilots, perhaps the sophistication available from Foreflight isn't as important. For anyone who travels far from the home drome and goes IFR when doing so, it's pretty darned good and well worth its cost.
Cary