D. Patrick Caldwell on The Joys of Flight

A few months ago, I had the very good fortune to hear from some of the guys over at Flight Schedule Pro about a new product they were introducing. They asked me if I'd be interested in working on the mobile portion of the project (you know, being a pilot and a .net developer). I jumped at the opportunity and the application has since gone live.

The service is an online logbook called SkyLinked. To be sure, I'll be writing about the logbook and its many wonderful features, but for now I'd like to write about the Airport Data service. Earlier this month, a friend of mine and I jumped into the Super Decathlon and cruised up to the lake to do some aerobatics. Just north of the lake, Lee Gilmer Memorial Airport (KGVL) was hosting the Cracker Flyin, so we decided to take a quick visit.

The only problem was, we didn't have our charts on us and we needed frequencies and runway data to get in safely. We descended to cellphone range and he pulled SkyLinked Mobile up on his iPhone. Sure enough, using the airport data service, we were able to get all of the airport data we needed including communication frequencies and runway information.

To get to the airport data section, go to the SkyLinked Mobile Homepage and click Airport Search. That'll bring up a page that looks like this one:

Put the ICAO airport code in the search box and hit the Search button. If you search for KPDK, you'll get this screen:

From this menu, you can get to just about any airport data you need. There's an information page for communications and there's an information page for each runway or helipad on the field. Here are a few screenshots of these pages:


Have fun. Be safe. Happy Piloting.