Product Review: Foreflight Checklist

Back in October I purchased an app for my iPod Touch called "Checklist"from the folks at ForeFlight. I quickly set out to replicate the checklists for the Piper Warrior I fly most frequently. Creating a checklist is relatively easy, start from scratch or tweak an existing one via the provided templates. After inputting the framework of the checklist, I decided to mentally run through a flight while sitting at home to put the app through its paces. I quickly discovered that I would need to change the checklist to better fit the way my brain works, and for the particulars of club flying. This proved to be easy, with only one small snag (that will be discussed in the summary).

Having done enough "chair flying" with the app, I decided to schedule a flight to evaluate the product in the real environment of the cockpit. My wife joined for a sunset-into-night cross country flight to Fitch Beach airport (southwest of Lansing). I made some on the fly changes to my checklist once I began my pre-flight, and this is one huge advantage a digital checklist has over a printed one. The flight went fine, the sunset was spectacular with Lansing approach giving us flight following services until about 10 miles out from our destination. The whole time, my wife was calling challenges and I was doing things and giving responses.

As we taxied back to the active, we found a good use for the bright screen of the iPod. When the item "Trim, set for takeoff" item came up, my wife beamed the screen onto the trim wheel / indicator area between our seats and it made setting the trim very easy! As it was full-on darkness at this point we made note of the brightness of the display as a potential negative (again, to be discussed in the summary). The return flight was uneventful (which is how I like my flights to go), and I jotted some notes down post flight to send on to the developers at ForeFlight.

Summary:
The good: easy to use, easy to edit, simple and elegant in design.
The bad: when adding new items, it would place them at the bottom (forcing the user to drag them up to the desired position in the checklist), and the brightness at night.

The next day I sent my comments to the ForeFlight team along with some feature requests. Early in November I got a response from Adam at ForeFlight, telling me that an updated version of Checklist (with a change to adding items and a night mode) was available at the AppStore on iTunes!

I took another flight last night with the new version of Checklist, this time my wife stayed home (something about the cold temps). The latest version has added abnormal procedures checklists, which I didn't get the chance to try out (thankfully). The night mode works great, and adding items to a checklist is a breeze.

The bottom line:

As the product disclaimer states, Checklist should be used as a companion to a hard copy version, and in that vein it works brilliantly. People are all different and unique, in the cockpit of the Warrior are 3 different paper checklists! What Checklist allows me to do is to synthesize all the best info and procedures from the paper ones into a customized digital version that fits my sensibilities. The way my checklist is set up, everything has a logical flow and I have included extra items that elevate my level of precision in the cockpit. What I learned from the both flights is that (without a mount for my iPod touch) it works best when I have someone next to me to help use the device to greatest effect. I was able to use the app while flying solo, but I could tell that it was a bit distracting to use once airborne (ForeFlight's website includes links to RAM mounts which I have been checking out since last night). I purchased Checklist from the AppStore for one-time charge of $19.99 and I will continue to get free updates until (I presume) version 2 comes out. Having had the developers respond within a months time to suggestions and comments I had about the product makes me feel very confident that I will be taken care of as a customer. Adam also mentioned that version 1.2 will include an even easier way to create / edit your checklists on your computer and upload them to your iPod. When this arrives, I will be testing that feature on the checklists for the other two aircraft in the club.

Time these flights: 3.1 (total for both)
Total time: 128.7
Landings: 382