KRnetHeads, Anybody know if the iFly 720 will work with a Stratus 2 ADS-B? Their website says it works with the Stratus "Gen 1 Beta", which seems odd, but that info is rather dated information. I'll call Monday and ask, but I'm curious if anybody's used the Stratus 2 with the 720. Despite having a fancy MGL iEFIS touchscreen in front of my face, the iFly 720 has become my favorite navigation tool. It's dirt simple, intuitively obvious, and a very well thought out interface. I figured out how to enter Lake Parker arrival GPS coordinates into the 720 in about a minute...an hour later I was still trying to get the same coordinates into the MGL iEFIS...and never got there!
Picking my way through all the weather on the way back from SNF convinced me to 1) kiss the ground when I finally landed, and 2) buy an ADS-B so I could see the rain next time! I let my XM subscription lapse long ago...philosophically opposed to paying $30 a month for that, especially with the flaky (5 pound) laptop interface. I borrowed a Stratus 2 for the Chino trip and was duly impressed on iPhone and iPad with Foreflight. It's really nice to see not just weather and traffic, but airport AWOS info realtime. This can be a life-saver when it comes to choosing the airport you want to land at during high-wind situations. The beauty of an iPAD is that if yours croaks, you can borrow or buy a new one and be back online in a day. If your fancy EFIS croaks, you may be down for a month waiting for a repair or replacement. Steam gauges do have their appeal as well...somebody at the airport is bound to have an ASI or altimeter you can borrow for a few days, but not your particular brand of EFIS while it's "back for repair". I'm rapidly regressing to the thought of the good old reliable Grand Rapids EIS for engine monitoring, iFly 720 for navigation, and iPAD with Foreflight with ADSB for redundancy. And of course, the iFLY app can be run on the iPAD without the dedicated box, so now we're talking really inexpensive situational awareness. The MGL iEFIS is sorely lacking in engine and flight data logging capability through the SD card, among many other things, such as documentation... Planning for McMinnville... -- Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com http://www.n56ml.com
