Aviation Tools
Flight planning calculators for light aircraft — density altitude, takeoff and landing distance, weight and balance, and the wind maths an E6B does, for study and planning alongside the aircraft own charts.
Heat adds as much density altitude as the terrain does — and the linear 10%-per-1000ft rule beats the compounding version people reach for.
Crosswind & Headwind CalculatorThe clock rule reads high on crosswind, which is the safe direction — and fails completely on headwind, because cos is flat near zero.
Wind Correction & True AirspeedA round trip in wind loses exactly (Vw/TAS) squared — the tailwind home never makes up for the headwind out. Plus the E6B rules, checked.
Fuel Burn, Endurance & ReserveA headwind of 20 per cent of your airspeed costs 25 per cent more fuel, not 20 — the extra is x/(1-x), and it runs away fast.
Top of Descent CalculatorWind changes the descent rate, not the distance — and the 3:1 rule is really a 3.14 degree path, not the 3 degrees it is named after.
Weight & Balance CalculatorWhether the CG envelope binds at all is type-specific — a 172 shape almost never leaves it, a tandem two-seater leaves it half the time.
Drone Mapping & Flight TimePhoto count scales as 1/altitude squared, and the shutter — not the battery — usually sets your flight time on a detailed survey.
Pilot Currency TrackerA flight review does not make you current — separate clocks. Plus the three definitions of night, which do not line up and invert going north.
About these aviation tools
The number that catches people out is density altitude, because it is not the number painted on the chart. An aeroplane responds to the density of the air it is actually in, and density altitude is pressure altitude plus roughly 120 feet for every degree Celsius above standard — with standard itself falling about two degrees per thousand feet. So a five thousand foot field on a thirty degree day performs as though it were at very nearly eight thousand, and a twenty-five degree excess over standard has added as much altitude as the terrain underneath. The consequence is not a small correction. Ground roll scales as one over the density ratio times the power ratio, because the wing needs a higher true airspeed to fly at the same time as a naturally aspirated engine is producing less power, and those two effects multiply rather than adding. Worse, the distance over a fifty foot obstacle degrades faster still: the multiplier between ground roll and obstacle distance runs about 1.78 at sea level and 1.92 at eight thousand feet, because climb depends on excess power and that is the first thing altitude takes away. On a short strip with trees at the end it is almost always the obstacle figure that runs out first, not the runway. There is one lever that genuinely helps and it is the one people are most reluctant to pull. Ground roll goes roughly as the square of weight, so ten per cent under gross is nineteen per cent less roll — leaving two passengers behind does more than any amount of technique. The rules of thumb in this area are better than they look, incidentally: adding ten per cent per thousand feet tracks the physics to within about eight per cent, while the tempting improvement of compounding it runs nearly thirty per cent high by eight thousand feet. And every calculated figure here is optimistic against a real chart, because propeller efficiency, rolling friction and ordinary flying are all left out. The aircraft own performance section is the authority; these tools are for understanding why its numbers move.