New Toys....

Ever wonder why "guy stores" and magazines are full of electronic gadgets?  We love the stuff.  Pilots probably even more so, as we are quite literally living our childhood dream, and have never quite giving up on the concept of playing with toys.  As the guys get together for supper in any corner of the world, most dinner conversations revolve around someone's latest and greatest Smart Phone, at least until well into the third round and the wildly exaggerated "there I was..." stories start to flow. 

But back to the toys....

First came the Palm Pilot, and pilots everywhere were using them as the first ereaders, flight planning tools, currency calculators, maps and navigators, whatever you could get them to do...and with every new nuance in technology, there we were.  Someone would show up at base with the latest and greatest, pontificate it's virtues, and next tour, everyone but the odd curmudgeon would have one.  I decided to get off the train for awhile, but it was not to be.  The company I'm now with (fifteen years and running) has fully embraced the ipad.  We use it for everything.  All the aircraft manuals, operation manuals, equipment manuals, charts, checklist, approach plates, weather and notams, flight planning, weight and balance, scheduling.....is all done with ipads we carry in the cockpit, synced to the company's main server so everyone stays on the same page.  I do miss the huge old leather pilot bags we had to carry, full of huge worn leather bound manuals with coffee stained pages falling out, multitudes of colourful maps breaking on their folds, covered in pencil and ink marks from previous adventures, equipment manuals that have been carried for years but have probably never been touched and looked as new as the day we got them, some still in their plastic packaging, old stapled together cheat sheets that every pilot makes up on weather days then forgets, sick bags for weak stomached passengers on rough days, plus old batteries and cables, broken pencils, leaky pens and gum wrappers.....I miss the old dinosaurs, but I am slowly changing teams.  As a TRE, who has taken living out of a suitcase to a new level, I've finally broke down and bought myself an ipad mini.  It's presently streaming some old Fleetwood Mac blues, the old Peter Green/pre-Stevie Nicks blues, through a blue tooth connected travel speaker, and I'm struggling to consolidate my files, stripping down to the bare minimum of required information, syncing to online clouds, backing up and organizing my music, trying to figure out a new log book and how to get my 11,000 hours into the thing with a minimum amount of work, writing my blog, chatting on Skype...

...playing with my new toy.