Control Vision Announces Pocket Plates™

Pittsburg (KS)-based aerospace engineering company Control Vision Corp., makers of Anywhere Map, Anywhere WX and Anywhere AI, just announced PocketPlates™, electronic NOAA approach plates for the Pocket PC platform. The subscription-based plates include the lower 48 US states and can be displayed on most Pocket PCs such as Compaq’s iPAQ, the Dell AXIM, HP Jornada and other widely used PDA devices.

Ensuring Crowds at the Booth:

The roll-out is scheduled for April 3, 2003 at Sun ‘n Fun. PocketPlates relieves pilots of carrying large quantities of printed “Approach Plates,” collections of terminal procedures issued by NOAA every 56 days. TERPS are issued for all US airports with published instrument approaches. An entire set of US approaches consisting of 24 books averaging 450 pages each fits on a single memory card in PocketPlates. “Instrument pilots all face the same problem,” said Control Vision president, Jay Humbard. “We fly with a large box of approach plates occupying a seat in the airplane. They are aged before they are even printed, and within 56 days we have to recycle the whole collection.” PocketPlates is a separately running application that can be used with or independently of Anywhere Map, although certain resources made available through Anywhere Map enhance its function.

GPS Referencing Helps Situational Awareness

PocketPlates’ most unique feature is GPS CALIBRATION. If two or more known map objects are identified such as a fix and a VOR, the plate becomes a geo-referenced map displaying the aircraft’s current position in North-up mode, providing critical  Situational Awareness. This feature works with any GPS-equipped PocketPC, with or without a Nav program.

Redundancy? All You Want:

Pocket PCs are extremely reliable and sturdy computer platforms. Nevertheless, PocketPlates addresses the issue of material redundancy by providing a PC-based utility called the Plate Manager that prints hard copies the same size and format as NOAA plates as a backup for any planned flight. The pilot simply prints out plates along his route including destination and alternates, allowing him to fly with both paper and electronic references.

Always Current

A special feature of PocketPlates is the update process. The Plate Manager utility which resides on the owner’s PC or laptop computer checks for revisions in the library when online with PocketPlates.com. It automatically updates any plates that have been modified. Modifications are available from NOAA every 28 days, providing updates to PocketPlates’ owners well in advance of the 56-day printed book cycle.

All this, and the price is low, too...

PocketPlates is priced to compete directly with the most-economical plates available today. The basic subscription is less than one-third the price of a one-year NOAA subscription, and Control Vision plans to offer the first six months of upgrades free.

FMI: www.controlvision.com