iFly GPS Forum

There aren't too many places where Time-Of-Day appears.  I talked myself out of whining about most of them but there are two that concern me. 

The waypoint ETA instrument seems to show a 24 hour version of local time.  If ATC asks me for such an estimate, I'm going to have to do arithmetic in my head because ATC doesn't want to hear local time.  Ideally it should be UTC with a Z suffix.  But if it has to be local, it should really have a suffix of CDT, MST, or whatever.  In any case a control should be available to switch time coord's between Z and local; I searched but couldn't find one.

Another TOD issue puzzles me as well.  I'm curious why the flight plan doesn't show 'estimated' ETA at each waypoint.  I think this was the case on DUATS and I think it would be good to know.  Even though it's unlikely that you'll take off at the exact flight-planned departure moment, still an occasional check to see that you're still 14 minutes behind sched would reassure you that you are indeed flying the plan.  Or better yet, once the Next waypoint ETA is calc'd, let all of the flight plan waypoint ETAs get updated .

DJ

I did a quick check, and I can't find a place to change the time from local to UTC.  Perhaps if you changed the system time on whatever computer you're using iFly on. 

The flight plan window I see has an ETE for each leg of the flight.  I don't see anywhere to enter a departure time, so the iFly program has no idea when you'll get there.  If you add the ETA intrument to your screen, you'll get the estimated local time of arrival for your destination, but that won't help to see if you're ahead or behind schedule, as I think it's dynamic, so that if you encounter head or tail winds the time will continue predicting based on the airspeed in your aircraft set up and any forecast winds.  So, I think, if you say your aircraft flies at 100 kts, and you've got an unforecast 25 kt tailwind, the ETA will keep getting sooner and sooner, but it will still be based on your planned airspeed plus or minus any forecast head/tail wind. 

I'm very pleased to see fuel, miles, and time for each leg in the flight plan,  plus accumulated values calculated for each leg as well.

Also very happy to see leg altitude adjustable in the flight plan view.  Leg alt combined with way point alt gives a way to plan a long leg at 7000 that climbs to, say, 8000 (MCA) before crossing the next waypoint. And the HITS display gives a nice 3D path to remind you to do it.

Thanks to the team at AP.

DJ