Bryan Herter wrote:
I really enjoy the flight planning and abiltiy to use the winds aloft to help choose flying altitudes. But, I am wondering if IFly accounts for the speed gain of 2% per 1000' of Altitude into this? I fly a turbocharged airplane and as a rule of thumb see 2kts per 1000' in altitude. At 9500 I see 160KTS usually, 165KTS at 11,500 and 170KTS or better at 14,500 and so on. Just trying to see if this extra speed is considered or if I need to work that into my decisions on what altitude to fly at. If it is accounted for what speeds should be put into the aircraft cruising profile (sea level speeds, most common altitude speed, or a predetermined altitude speed the software prefers to see). At 4500' the plane slows down to 150KTS.
As you stated, your only recourse to account for performance vs altitude is to create multiple profiles, given today's "Current Aircrafr Profile" tool. Your post is clearly demonstrates the need to enhance the profile page. Creating and storing multiple profiles for the same aircraft requires time investment by the user and adds redundant data to the database. Altitude planning suffers because iFly can't use these multi profiles to interpolate since altitude planning is for a single aircraft profile.