AOPA members offer five favorite apps

On Nov. 18, I wrote a column based on apps AOPA Facebook fans said they couldn’t live without via a poll. I pulled more in my Feb. 26 column. AOPA members are passionate about the apps they love, so below are another five. These are not endorsements of any app.

1. LabTimer (free in iTunes)—When you need yet another timer, a member raves about this iPhone app. It features the ability to run four timers that can be individually configured as count-up or count-down with alarm; display in hours, minutes, and seconds; ability to add customizable text labels for each timer; and small icons describing the state of all timers.
2. Avare (free in Google Play)—A member calls this smartphone app handy for looking at sectionals, terminal area charts, IFR en route charts, and airport/facility directory information. It also enables manual browsing of charts and other materials, even without cell service or GPS.
3. FltPlan (free in iTunes and Google Play)—“Heckuva bang for the free buck” is how a member described this smartphone app. Features include location and en route weather briefings with radar; downloadable U.S. and Canada approach plates and U.S. airport/facility directories; the FltDeck Guide with access to airport and FBO information for more than 6,000 airports in 17 countries; and a fuel conversion tool that allows you to calculate avgas and jet fuel weight.
4. Yalldo Mobile Flight Tracker (free in iTunes)—A member loves this iPhone/iPad app, along with the Yalldo flying service website, for planning trips. The app allows users to add photos to a flight log, connect with friends who also fly, and use the built-in GPS and camera to record a GPS track and take photos at the same time.
5. AccuWeather (free in iTunes, but $2.99 for the ad-free version, and Google Play)—This smartphone/tablet app has nice hourly and weekly forecasts, a member says. It features hourly and 15-day forecasts for 2.7 million locations worldwide in 22 languages, offers severe weather push alerts, gives current conditions that refresh every five minutes, and allows users to customize forecasts.

I’ve received some emails from Windows Phone users asking for their apps to be highlighted. If you have any, along with iOS and Android apps, please send them here. I’m also looking for your favorite apps covering fuel, FBO/aviation services, flight training, instrument simulators, and radar. The complete list of apps I’ve highlighted since October 2012 is in AOPA’s online archive.