Here's Why You NEED Foreflight And How It Helps To Save Lives

in this video I'm going to present to you the case why foreflight is absolutely crucial to have and how I use it to keep me and my students safe if you are a pilot or you're interested in aviation there's a pretty good chance you've heard of foreflight it is by far the largest Aviation app in the world but when I was going through school I was not convinced I needed it and I didn't know how important it was as I have gone through my journey and I'm a flight instructor and a commercial pilot I need for flight and you need for flight and here are the reasons why we will break each of them down but there are three primary reasons why foreflight is such a critical app to have the first and by far the most important is the adsb traffic information number two is the weather information and number three is flight Planning by far the most important thing that four flight cam offer you is traffic awareness and traffic alerts foreflight can give you traffic information through the adsb system adsb stands for automatic dependent surveillance broadcast it's kind of a weird acronym in but all you need to know is how it works and how it works is every aircraft that's flying in the United States has to have an adsb out transmitter and what this adsb out transmitter does is it sends out a signal sending its information sending its flight information that flight information containing its altitude its speed and its heading so all aircraft give out that information and you can get a four flight receiver and this is called a Sentry a four flight Sentry and this is an adsb in receiver so this adsb in receiver takes all that adsb information from other aircraft and it can connect to your foreflight and give you traffic information so the super cool thing is if you get a four flight Sentry which is that unit that takes all that adsb information in you can connect a bunch of different devices to it so I use an iPad mini and I use my iPhone and then I can have traffic information coming into the aircraft through multiple different devices now this bigger unit of the four flight Sentry is great the other thing this gives you so it gives you adsb information your GPS information Nation but this one also gives you carbon monoxide information which is really critical you know as a helicopter pilot in the summer months when you're sitting on the ramp and those blades are spinning as you're just letting your engine warm up or cool down you're getting those carbon monoxide fumes all around the cabin and it's really good to have an indication of what's going on so you can open the window or kind of expedite the process but so this is this is one of the larger units I think this one's about eight hundred dollars there is a small unit I think it's called the Sentry mini and the purpose of that unit is it just makes it a lot more Compact and it's about half the price it's about 350 dollars so 350 dollars to get all this vital traffic information is worth its weight in gold you could ask me the question it's like hey Devin why do you really need that traffic information and so I would say Obviously you would want it at like an uncontrolled airport so an airport where there's a lot of flight training going on there's not an air traffic control tower there's some really really busy airports that do not have air traffic controllers and in those cases it's really good to have some adsb information yes everyone should be talking on the Pilot radio the pilot to Pilot Channel and making their position reports about where they are in relation to the airport but a lot of times that doesn't happen some people are on the wrong frequencies some people don't have their radios on some people don't care to some people are just cowboys and want to come straight in and sometimes and I've had a lot of really close calls that are really uncomfortable so if you've got that pilot to Pilot communication as well as adsb traffic you can literally see where aircraft are coming what heading they're on what altitude they're on how fast they're going all of that information coming in plus the radios plus being a good observant pilot of the area around you gives you a lot better chances of survival and coming home at the end of the day many of you helicopter Pilots out there might have heard about this recently but a couple weeks ago there was a fatal mid-air Collision in Australia where two tour helicopters collided and it's really devastating now all the facts have not come out about it yet but mid-air collisions do happen they happen more more commonly than you might think and the perfect case was that specific day it was a really beautiful day but sometimes things just happen and sometimes you can Collide and if you can have any piece of information that helps you know where other people are and to avoid a collision it's crucial and the final thing on that thread is yes you can see all the traffic on foreflight so you can see all the little airplanes in relation to you but the really nice thing that foreflight does to really try to avoid a mid-air Collision is if you are on a collision course or you're really in close proximity floor flight will populate a message on the screen a big red message that says it's traffic at your one o'clock six o'clock nine o'clock whatever in relation to you at the same altitude 300 feet above you 300 feet below you so you know exactly where to look you've got a direction and you've got an altitude just like an air traffic controller would tell you and that is really critical there's been times where I didn't know I was near traffic and then four flight just said hey there's traffic at you two o'clock 300 feet above so I look at my two o'clock and I look like kind of like 300 feet and it's like oh crap there is so you know you're potentially in a conflict area so all of that information is absolutely vital worth its weight in gold that is by far the number one reason why you need for flight and a Sentry unit and so the only downside is you do need that adsb in receiver to connect to foreflight but it's absolutely worth the cost all right reason number two why you need for flight is the weather information for Flight by far has the most comprehensive weather information by any Aviation Source in my opinion now it is not necessarily FAA approved weather information so if you're going for your check ride or you're in Flight School definitely use the FAA weather resources but in terms of everyday flying getting an overall picture getting a sense of the weather for Flight by far has the best so I typically use uh the iPad Mini for like my work and while I'm flying in the helicopter but I have got four flight on my phone and I use both of them a ton typically how I start my day is like I'll wake up and I'll look at my phone and I'll go to foreflight and that's the first place I go to get a gen General sense of the weather and start building My overall weather picture the first tool look at is the Metar the meteorological eardrum report this is updated every hour and this just tells you exactly what's going on at the airport right then so you've got your time that it was taken at the winds the visibility the clouds the temperature the dew point and the altimeter so I can know what the day is starting like and then the next place I'll go is I'll go to the TAF the terminal air drum forecast and I'll start to scroll through that and start to see what the weather picture looks like as the day goes on also look at the MOs and the MOS is similar to the TAF and it's the expected weather so I'll look at that and then I'll go to the Daily now I love the daily the daily is probably the best place so at the top you've got your information bar so you've got like the overall weather picture so it's going to be cloudy the flight category the ceiling the visibility all your pertinent weather information but then you can kind of scroll through the bottom and you can get uh the exact weather at the exact time so this all together plays into knowing what the weather is going to do having a sense of the weather and that is crucial the other thing I absolutely love about floor flight and foreflight's not the only app that does this you know there's some good online websites that do this too but if you look at the sectional you can turn on the flight categories of the airports over every airport it'll put a bubble with a color in it to indicate the flight category so green indicating VFR visual flight rules good weather conditions blue indicating marginal vfrs so weather conditions that are a little bit less than VFR but they're not bad yet and then red will indicate IFR so poor conditions most helicopters are not flying in IFR conditions and then you've got pink which is low IFR which is the absolute worst of the worst even instrument approaches get really difficult at that point so if you can look at a sectional of an area and if everywhere is red and pink you know like okay I'm probably not gonna get a lot done today but if it's like green and kind of blue then you can go into some further research the final absolutely critical piece of information that foreflight can give you while in Flight is your weather radar now most people out there know how a weather radar works it basically just displays precipitation and storms moving in which is really critical to have as a pilot but here's the thing on your phone and on an iPad if you don't have Wi-Fi or cell reception you're kind of screwed you know you don't you don't get that radar information anymore so what foreflight does is using that Ford flight Sentry receiver it can still give you that radar information so it gives you adsb radar connected to your iPad or your iPhone so now as I'm flying along I don't have cell service but I still have radar information and I know where the storms are and that is absolutely critical I mean I can't overstate how important that is to still have radar information and know where things are moving and the third and final most important thing that foreflight can do to you to make you a safer pilot and make you a more efficient pilot is the flight planning you know when you want to plan a flight a cross-country flight you're going somewhere away from your typical home airport there is not a better tool in the the world than foreflight and this is this kind of goes without saying but it is absolutely mind-boggling to have an entire sectional of basically the entire United States or wherever you live in the palm of your hands you know you can zoom in on anywhere and uh get information you know you can you basically have a map of the entire world right there in the palm of your hand when I was in flight school and it wasn't that long ago you know we were I was still flying with like a paper sectional and that's how most people should be taught I think you should be taught and learn how to use a paper sectional but that paper sectional is relatively limited and if you get outside of that sectional coverage area on that paper sectional and then you're kind of screwed but to have just this small little thing to have a map of all the airport information you need like airport identifier frequencies elevations traffic pattern altitudes all of that in the palm of your hands is just it's really ridiculous but when you're flight planning there's no easier way than to put in two airports in four flight and you say hey I want to go from this airport to this airport and it tells you the distance since the other thing I can tell you which is really critical and it makes it really it really elevates the safety is it'll tell you your fuel burn so if you can put in a profile and let's say in a helicopter you're cruising at 80 or 90 knots so you say I'm going to cruise at 90 knots I'm going to go from this airport to this airport it'll tell you how much fuel you're going to burn which is great but the other thing and this is probably my favorite thing about it is what it will do is calculate the winds Aloft so as you climb in altitude the winds change so you may have a headwind you may have a massive Tailwind so if you're going from this airport to this airport you can choose and see which altitudes are going to give you the best most favorable favorable wind even when I'm going to airports that I typically go to and fly to I will punch them into floor flight and I will see what the winds at different altitudes are doing so if I have to climb another thousand feet but I'm going to get a 20 knot tailwind and I'm going to get there in half the time that's crucial information you know that's very critical so having that winsloff information and like I said I mean just having all the FBO information you know when you get to the airport Where Are You Gonna Park you can also look at fuel prices if there's two airports really close but one airport has 50 Cent cheaper gas that I mean that's awesome you know it goes without saying but another important thing is you know instrument approaches you know as a flight instructor with an instrument rating that gives instrument instruction no greater tool than four flight four instrument approaches you know we can go out and do three or four approaches and have all of those approach plates pulled up on the iPad or the phone even I know they're up to date I know they're the most accurate instead of having my student have to print them out which works too and I I do encourage them to do that sometimes but sometimes you might be given an approach or you might have to go to a new airplane that you weren't planning on and like in the real world what if you have to divert to an airport where you didn't have those approach plates printed so you need the instrument approach information and you can just pull it up on foreflight it's hard to really overstate the amount of information that foreflight can give you and how it can make you such a safer pilot so you know in conclusion if you have a cell phone or an iPad Mini and you've got a fourth flight Sentry and you've got the four flight set up maybe it's a thousand dollars in total a thousand dollars for the most comprehensive information about Aviation and making you the safest Aviator in the world a thousand dollars is no Spence to expire you know you get super life-saving traffic information traffic awareness knowing where other people are knowing where other people are so they can't hit you and you don't hit them you get extremely comprehensive weather information building out your weather pictures so you can get a general scope of what's going on absolutely critical and you get super comprehensive flight planning for legitimately every piece of information you can need for any flight that is awesome and if you can have foreflight on your iPad your phone and on your desktop using all three of these and for a relatively low cheap subscription price it is undervalued for flight could charge a lot more for the product they delivered so no this is not a sponsored review I have no relation to foreflight I'd love to I absolutely love love their product it is the best app I have on my phone if you guys fly out there and you're using for flight you probably have some pretty positive reviews let me know what you think down below do you use fordfly do you like it are there anything is there anything that you don't like about foreflight let me know down in the comments below I will see you guys on the next one if you want to support the channel check me out on patreon links to everything I talked about are in the description below and I will see you on the next one take care thank you foreign

Channel: Pilot Devin

Views: 12,463

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Id: YC9Ao2tkko8

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023