Greg In The Desert

Eclipse aviation was a Albuquerque, NM company that made the Eclipse 500 Very Light Jet. They went bankrupt in 2008 and the assets became Eclipse Aerospace. There were some 500-series jets made and of course there’s an app for that.

The application uses various data points: distance, weight, temperature and such to help create flight plans. If you own an Eclipse 500 jet, the $99.00 price tag is probably not significant. There are no reviews, I don’t own an Eclipse 500 so I couldn’t say how good it is.

Eclipse 500 is $99.99 on the iTunes App Store
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If you have ever poured through a VLJ Aircraft Flight Manual, you know performance data is contained on numerous different pages, and sometimes requires four-way interpolation between temperatures and altitudes. This program not only organizes this critical data on one page, its easy interface with scrolling wheels allows the pilot to accurately and quickly create pre-flight planning specific to the mission, number of people, baggage, seat position, and fuel load from the comfort of home in a fraction of the time it would take to look up in an AFM.

As an added bonus, the E 500 flight planner displays suggested Emergency Return To Base Vref and landing distances at gross weight. Although it is never recommended by the manufacturer to land at weights in excess of Maximum Landing Weight, in the event of a catastrophic failure on departure, these calculations provide the pilot a valuable reference for landing speed and distance required at a given density altitude, and may be an important consideration in the go/no-go decision during pre-flight planning.

We are always looking for ways to improve our products and look forward to your feedback regarding additional functions that would enhance your use of our software. We would love to hear from you:
punkstarstudios@mac.com

E 500 Planning Features:
- Full W&B with graph (based on seat configuration)
- Pressure Altitude
- Take off thrust
- Uncorrected TO distance
- TO Distance corrected for winds and slope
- Vr
- V50
- Vy
- Vyse
- Vref
- Rate of climb
- Uncorrected Immediate Return Landing distance
- Immediate Return Landing distance corrected for winds and slope
- Cold Air Calculator

FIKI and fuel/range calculations are coming soon.

* Pilots should always refer to the latest approved AFM as the final source of data used to determine the safety of flight.

The E 500 Flight Planner was developed after consultation with Eclipse instructors, Eclipse type rated pilots and Eclipse Mentors. The features emulate the data required in training for pre-flight briefings and scenario based training events. The biggest advantage of the planning tool is to accurately and quickly provide a pilot weight and balance and fuel loading within the limitation of the aircraft for a given set of assumptions prior to actually arriving at the airport and interfacing with the ACS (aircraft computer systems).

“I personally use several of the PunkStar Studio iPhone/iPod applications. Some, like the Cold Air Calculator, are incredibly useful for even the most advanced pilot, while others, like the Hold Pattern Calculator, are perfect for demonstrations with my students (who are thrilled when they see it for the first time). I’m a loyal customer/user of several of the PunkStar Studio apps (even non-aviation related) and look forward to their future releases. I highly recommend their products to all aviators, from the professional airline pilot and flight instructor to the casual pilot.”
- Ed Pasquale ATPL
Transport Canada Pilot Examiner and Seneca College Flight Instructor

Tesla finally announced their new Model S Coupe last week. This is the car that Tesla was supposed to build in Albuquerque, but moved the manufacturing to San Jose California when they got a better deal. That didn’t work out either and it’s not clear to me exactly where they plan to build the Model S.

I lived in San Jose in 2001 and it’s a crazy place compared to Albuquerque. I’m still not sure how they ever thought it would be cheaper to produce the cars there rather in Albuquerque in the long term. It could end up being a good thing for Albuquerque if they go out of business like Eclipse Aviation did. I’m certainly not wishing for Tesla to go under but the times are tough and I’ve read some possible bad news in that regard. I would still like to see them have some manufacturing in Albuquerque.

At $40,000 over 500 sedans have already been pre ordered. It’s a good looking car but I won’t be on the buyers list anytime soon. Maybe if they came out with a pickup truck I might have to get out the credit card.