XAvion - anybody tried it?

[CT4ME]

I ran across an interesting iPad app - XAvion. It was created by the guy behind X-Plane (flight simulator). It's not quite an EFB, but can do navigation, Hiway in the Sky, and airport info. It's been updated a lot, and most recently works with ADS/B units, and AHRS. It has synthetic vision, It does a good job of weight/balance and a bunch more. It's biggest feature is a safety thing... it's constantly figuring your glide circle and finding airports that you can glide to. It's $99, but not sure if there is any sort of ongoing subscription. Anybody familiar with product??? If nothing else, the guys at WingX, Foreflight, & Garmin should be looking at some of these features.

http://xavion.com/

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KE00OMiKVQ&hd=1

[FlyingMonkey]

I have heard Austin Meyer discussing this app before. He eventually wants to integrate it with autopilots do that if the engine quits, the autopilot and app will work together to bring you all the way down to the flare in your best landing option...heady stuff.

[CT4ME]

Got a message back from Austin... No current subscription cost, but will likely add them if/when they go with full moving charts. At this point there is no trial, but you can buy the $9 version for X-plane and try it on the ground.

This thing is pretty cool... Austin seems like some sort of genius...

tim

[FlyingMonkey]

Oh yeah, Austin *is* a genius. He pretty much wrote all the early versions of X-Plane by himself, and he really knows how to come up with great ideas and follow through on them. This looks like one of them.

 

If you end up using this tool, please post a review and let us know how it works for you. So it currently doesn't do charts and flight planning, just the "faux" GPS-derived EFIS and the HITS and emergency best landing path thingie? If he adds in the charts and planning an can overlay the emergency tool on a track up en-route chart, I think this could be a real winner.

[CT4ME]

Well, it does Highway in the Sky "Hits" navigation... but not a moving map with charts. You put in a direct-to, or a path of places, and it creates the rectangles in the sky that you follow. Airport info, freqs, runways are available. One really cool thing it does is remember how much runway you needed at various conditions. So, if you fill out the weight/balance thing before you leave, it monitors your take-off and remembers precisely how much runway you used for lift-off. After a while, it becomes familiar with your aircraft and will predict with surprising accuracy, how much runway you will require.

At this point, it looks like he's figuring a person would use their glass panels and garmin built-ins to navigate the plane, and would use this as an instrument backup and emergency tool. It looks like updates are done every week or two, so who knows what it will look like in the Fall... He added weather and traffic in one weekly update, and even updated the emergency glide thing to consider real-time winds in the same update.

tim

[rookie]

Tim,

 

I have it but don't use, mostly because I want to use the ipad for navigation. Also my preferd location for the ipad does not allow for vertical mounting. Your analysis of how xavion is intended to be used is right on, as an emergency tool.

 

al