AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2012 - 34

BRIEFING

PILOT PRODUCTS

Brightline Bags Flex System
You asked for choices, you got them
B Y I A N J. T W O M B LY THERE ARE TWO SCHOOLS of thought when it comes to product design. One is to create a product the market didn’t even know it needed that’s easy to use and fits perfectly into people’s lives. The iPod is a great example. The other philosophy is to give customers what they ask for, which Brightline Bags has done with gusto. At first glance, the Flex System is the most complicated flight bag one could ever imagine, although “bag” in this case is relative. The Flex System is more of a catalog of bag options, each with a unique size, shape, and purpose. Spend some time playing with the system, however, and the thing starts to make sense. There are 11 different pieces in all, each more or less interchangeable with each other. It would take a doctorate in physics to understand all the various combinations. Thankfully Brightline has done much of the hard work for us and created five preconfigured bags of various sizes. If you want more than five options you go to work picking a center section, end caps, and side pockets. That exercise will get

you everything from a cool (in a pilot nerd sort of way) briefcase to a large overnight suitcase. The new features are too numerous to name, but let’s just say that a lot of thought went into the system, and as a result the features are very impressive. Each bag is slightly bigger than the previous Brightline offering, meaning it can fit a laptop easily, not to mention an iPad or two. The side

pockets come and go easily, and the scalability of the system allows you to keep everything packed and just add on or take off sections depending on your needs. Price: $12 to $265 per piece Contact: www.brightlinebags.com; 417-721-7825

New from ForeFlight
ELECTRONIC FLIGHT BAG SOFTWARE MAKER ForeFlight (www.foreflight. com) recently introduced a runway incursion avoidance feature as part of its expanding package of Advisor features. Now when a pilot uses the app while taxiing on an airport, a large box will pop up and warn him of an impending runway crossing. Another box pops up when the pilot has entered the runway environment. There also are aural alerts that can be sent to a headset that meets a certain Bluetooth protocol. Currently only Lightspeed’s Zulu.2 (www.lightspeedaviation. com) meets the standard. Headsets with an auxiliary jack can be connected to the iPad and receive the alerts as well. The technology, which was developed by the MITRE Corporation (www.mitre.org) and fine-tuned by ForeFlight, works by establishing a set “box” around the runway and bringing up the alert when the pilot gets close and within it. Certain larger airports with more complicated layouts were manually altered to get a more precise and correct alert. The latest edition of ForeFlight also includes X-Plane support. This feature enables X-Plane users to use ForeFlight on the ground, enhancing the simulation experience and making it easier to learn the app’s features. Both the new Runway Proximity Advisor and X-Plane support are available now for download in Apple’s App Store as part of any ForeFlight subscription level.

34 | AOPA PILOT November 2012

http://www.brightlinebags.com http://www.foreflight.com http://www.foreflight.com http://www.lightspeedaviation.com http://www.lightspeedaviation.com http://www.mitre.org

AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2012