Flitesoft Flight Planning Software
Product Review
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FLITESOFT
from RMS Technologies
Click on thumbnail pictures to enlarge.
FLITESOFT is a very intuitive, straightforward flight planning software package. It comes with Vector Maps of the entire US (US version) which includes a block from west of Hawaii to the northern tip of South America to eastern Canada to the Aleutian Islands? (Here?s a fun flight; check out the NDB on Amchitka Island. A hint: its AHT at 379 KHz.) Coverage outside the US, Canada, Mexico and Central America is limited to navigational aids.
It runs entirely on your local PC except for updates to TFR?s and weather retrieval. The system is comfortably quick in the Windows XP environment with as little as 256 Mb of RAM. We can see a slight difference in performance on the machine with 1 Gb of memory. The program is frugal with disk space.
FLITESOFT Professional (the best value for the money at $200 in late 2006.) comes with everything you need to create, modify, check and file basic VFR and IFR flight plans. Weather and filing are done thru a DUATS connection. (ATTN Pilots ? lets start sending letters to folks to keep the DUATS system around as the most economical and practical way to get GOOD weather briefings.)
If you need added chart capabilities and would like the FLITESOFT program and data updates, the Update service is only an additional $100. AND, this includes all the downloadable Sectionals, Terminal Area, High and Low Enroute charts you would like to download. After you download the sectionals for your flight plan, you can follow the plan seamlessly across the sectionals to your destination.
Pilot and aircraft data are as complete as you would like to have them. You can customize performance and weight/balance for your individual aircraft starting with one of hundreds of planes which come with the software.
Creating
a flight plan is as simple as clicking (on the chart) on the successive stops
you wish to make or entering the designators
(or names) of the stops in a worksheet. You can RIGHT click on almost any item
on the charts to get further detail including airport diagrams if available.
Intuitive software is important today as we can be called on to use so many different programs in a normal business day. FLITESOFT fits the intuitive mold. I had used it for several weeks before even opening the manual.
In addition to the Worksheet and Chart pages, FLITESOFT has
a flight profile view which helped us to find those pesky volcanoes in southern
Mexico, and practically any output form you would like to have. Outputs are:
Flight Log (all the stops and waypoints in text form), Flight Plan (the same
form as the standard), Flight Report (Detail of all your stops in terms of
weather and Notams, Waypoints (navigation at each), Costing (fuel information)
and Route Weather.
FLITESOFT is actually fun to use. Last night we traced the flight of the Cessna Caravan team which was featured in the November issue of AOPA Pilot.
One additional NEW feature which we like especially is the FLITESOFT Snap feature. With a blank USB Flash Drive (1 Gb recommended by RMS), you can copy your current FLITESOFT with YOUR routes, pilot info and plane info so they can be used on any practically any other computer. The program does NOT install to the other computer, so you can carry FLITESOFT with you to check or modify your trip at stops along the way.
The version we are using at FlightSmith is 4.5. Here are details regarding contacting RMS for this program.
