Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs) were developed to provide information and assistance to pilots faster and more easily than searching through paper charts—or to create a new generation of pilots that didn’t have one arm longer than the other from carrying heavy, oversized briefcases full of chart binders. Yes, we have liked ForeFlight from the beginning but noted immediately that learning what it can do might be intimidating. In talking with a lot of ForeFlight users we have found that our use of ForeFlight is much like theirs—learning enough to use what you need and never exploring other worthwhile features. Sure, ForeFlight frequently comes up with new features and capabilities, and we get emails about them that contain videos on how to make use of them. Yet often we don’t make time to watch the video and learn about features that can truly help us. In some cases, these features might be lifesaving. As a friend said, “There’s just so much it’s overwhelming. I know that I’m only using a fraction of the capability.”
Still, with a ForeFlight subscription users have access to a massive free library that includes training and webinars that cover use of all the EFB’s features and provide usage tips. Every time ForeFlight releases a new feature, the training video for it goes into the library. The only downside is that they are not presented in an order to walk a new user through everything from setup through use of features in a logical order. There’s hope.
As part of AvBrief’s exclusive EFB app coverage, we tried the ForeFlight Power Users Training and in Sporty’s tradition, found it to be resourceful with a high-quality presentation.
Customer Education
Recently, ForeFlight’s customer education team partnered with Sporty’s production team to create the ForeFlight Power Users Training course. It combines the intimate product knowledge of ForeFlight personnel with the experience of Sporty’s in creating high-quality video training courses. The result, in our opinion after spending many hours going through the course, is an interactive training course that takes a ForeFlight user from the very basics such as what an EFB is, optimizing your iPad, and deciding which subscription to purchase, through advanced use such as midflight diversions and advanced IFR en route tools. The course costs $75 for a one-year subscription and it is updated as ForeFlight releases new features or revises existing ones. The subscription renews automatically unless the subscriber takes action to stop the renewal.
Completion of the course generates a completion certificate for FAA WINGS credit.
Here To Help?
Our criteria for using an EFB is that it provides needed information for a pilot for all phases of a flight from initial planning through shutting down in the chocks. The pilot should be able to pull up such things as emergency information and reroutes in busy terminal areas when the workload is high, and adrenalin is surging, without creating an additional distraction because the information needed is confusing to find. We think ForeFlight meets those criteria; however, it also requires the user to do their part and spend some quality time learning features and workflows and accessing and using available emergency features quickly—so that the pilot doesn’t become the dog looking at the TV speaker with his head tilted, a confused expression and a thought bubble above him that says, “Huh?”
We think the new Sporty’s course meets the training needs for a pilot who truly wants to know ForeFlight intimately and is willing to spend the time to go through the course, iPad or iPhone in hand. Sporty’s says the course has eight hours of video material (plus a reference library). We think that’s conservative—there’s a lot of meat in the course. We found ourselves regularly replaying segments as we tapped away at our iPad because the course is so content- rich that we often couldn’t absorb all the material and/or do what the course was teaching on our iPad before the lesson moved on. We regularly learned of a cool feature and muttered, “I didn’t know it could do that,” or “That’s a much better method of doing something than I’ve been using.” We also learned ways we hadn’t known to personalize ForeFlight on our iPad to make it work better and faster for us.
The course is organized into three sections: Fundamentals, Advanced, and Logbook. Each contains at least 10 interactive lessons that flow logically and are bite-sized enough that one can take advantage of several minutes of free time and go through one or two rather than have to devote a major portion of an hour for uninterrupted focus on a lesson. The course can be run on any internet browser and works on smartphones, too. It keeps track of where you are and what you have accomplished so it’s easy to jump back in after terminating a session.
The lessons are set up to display a ForeFlight screen as it would appear on your device with audio describing how to make use of a feature in a step-by-step manner. Text of the audio is also displayed, reinforcing the material. (We would like the course to have a simple way to print out the text.) Often, as the lesson calls for tapping on a specific symbol or tab, a small hand with the index finger pointed at the location to tap appears, and then the user uses the computer mouse to tap on the tab or symbol at which the finger is pointing. We like that learning technique; it reinforces the actions that need to be taken by requiring user input at the appropriate time and place.
One thing that has bothered us for years is that when audio is accompanied by text, it’s so much faster to read the text than listen to the audio that we don’t get the benefit of essentially doing both at the same time. Sporty’s fixed that problem. The speed of the audio is adjustable. We found that running it at 1.25 times the normal rate was about right—and the audio didn’t sound like squirrels chirping as it got faster.
Workflows
Sporty’s advertises one of the benefits of the course is learning how to integrate various workflows into the user’s flying. We agree—if the user is willing to go through the necessary repetition to cement each process into memory.
We were especially interested in the way the course taught use of the emergency features as those are, hopefully, the least used of any of the ForeFlight features. We want to learn them in a calm environment, with plenty of repetition, so that if we need to use an emergency feature when things get ugly, we’ll have a fighting chance of pulling up the information we need in a hurry. Our comments after review of emergency procedures are that ForeFlight makes them about as easy to access as is possible and the course walks the user through each in a direct, easily understood manner. It also shows what is going to happen and be displayed in each step of using an emergency feature as well has how to easily get out of a screen that is presented but may only be needed briefly.
The same teaching technique is used in the Logbook section of the course. Frankly, we didn’t have any idea as to the depth of content and capability of ForeFlight’s logbook function. The course takes one through it in a logical and organized fashion.
Conclusion
We like Sporty’s ForeFlight Power Users Training course not only for the quality of the course but that it can be used as a reference source easily anytime a pilot wants a quick refresher on a feature. Plus, if the flying that the pilot is doing is becoming more complex, or new ratings are being added, the pilot can easily pull up and go through the lessons for the features they haven’t used before but are now going to be needed. We also like that as ForeFlight comes out with new features, Sporty’s will be updating its course to fit them in at the appropriate location. We’ll keep up with updates and report back.
