Track and Distance Computer..??
 

Help please......

Does anyone know of a small pocket size electronic computer that will allow you to calculate Track and Distance from a Lat/Long to another Lat/Long...or from a known Airport to a Lat/Long....

Manufactures name, model number etc would be a great help.

eg.....[The same output that you can get from the area nav systems via the flight planning pages].....but a small portable [pocket] size device.......Thanks.

I use a Palm 500 with a free downloadable program called CoPilot. Plus a program for all E6 functions....and the normal PDA programs. You can download data bases of all navaids....plus create your own.

I've got a palm PC thingy, running Windows CE. Are there any nav, weight/balance and suchlike programs for those ?

CoPilot does all flight planning....plus flight plan entries for US/ICAO flight plans...W&B, provides a graphic chart for W&B....pretty slick program. Only problem in Bell products is the jumping jack ride can make it hard to enter data......but that is an engineering issue not the programs fault.

Bout' 15 years ago (pre GPS that is) there used to be a little scientific calculator that had exactly what you are looking for. Had a database of Australian airports, navaids etc. and you dialled in from A to B etc or bearing distance from such and dialled your present and it would lead you through the wind, TAS and all the rest to cive you a course etc. You could also put in BD and arrive at a L/L or 2 bearings from any navaid and arrive at the same.

Was peddled by Dirty Harry's ( then Hawker Pacific) and was I think simply called Compu Nav.

Failing that you could if you were really keen, make your own based on the data available here: http://williams.best.vwh.net/avform.htm

There also used to be a really good booklet around with aviation algorithm's in it so again you could do a DIY program for whatever.

I have one of these Compu - Nav's somewhere. Emphasis on somewhere. IIRR the loaded from an compact cassette audio tape. Those were the days. Could even have pre-dated the current Billy Boxes.

There are various programs for Palms that do this. I assume they also exist for PocketPC models. If the device will run a spreadsheet, such as Excel, it can certainly do the job. The Aviation Formulary, already posted, is THE place to get the formulae you need for it. Every pilot should have Mr. Williams' site bookmarked.

Use your HEAD...
 

.... you could just work it out in your head ... saves batteries .... keeps the grey matter working!

Red Wine

Get any Palm. Get FlyByNavPro, at SkyWriterSoft.com

You'll be in business. It comes with a complete US/Canada database, & a European database is also available for download. These give all public airports & navaids. The Pro version does multiple legs, the standard version only does one leg at a time. No helicopters in the aircraft database, but it's easy to input your own. It's been choking on my database of Gulf of Mexico platforms, almost 6000 locations, but I think it's my problem with the file.

The site allows you to demo it over the internet, or you can download a demo to use on your Palm.