Nice Review in IFR Magazine

[TomATL]

I received IFR in the mail yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised to see a 2-page review of Pilotedge. I wish I could attach a link, but this is primarily a dead-trees-type publication. The summary was that they really liked it, but hope for more traffic in the future. (I think we all agree with that assessment).

For those of you who are RW instrument-rated pilots, this magazine is one I'd highly recommend. It's well-written, topical, and takes a "real-world" approach to instrument flying. You can see their (limited) website at ifr-magazine.com.

[Tim Krajcar]

Yes, Jeff did a great job on the review, very complete & thorough.

I know Keith did submit a letter to the editor with a couple small factual corrections. Not sure if it will make the cut for print or not, so I'll share it here just in case anybody else reads the review and is puzzled. I'm pretty sure Keith would share this here himself but he's in transit back from Oshkosh at the moment.

To the IFR Magazine Editor:

I read your review of the PilotEdge service in the August issue. I have a small correction, and a couple of observations.

While the network does employ the use of automated aircraft in Class E/G airspace, there are no plans to utilize recorded ATC chatter. We feel that would be a step on the wrong direction, as pilots 'tune out' recorded chatter pretty quickly, based on studies conducted in Level D Flight Simulators with the airlines. The plan is to attract more live customers or frequent fliers to increase the radio congestion through more organic means. Over time, we also hope to add more controllers.

Regarding the current live traffic density, while having real world traffic levels might be a desirable outcome, we believe there is significant training value the way the network stands today. The
drones' are there to cause additional traffic pointouts from ATC and to practice see & avoid procedures.

There is no published way for pilots to send text messages to ATC. A supervisor or controller can initiate text messages to the pilot if there is an issue with the voice communication, but there isn't a general mechanism for pilots to initiate text messages to the controllers.

Regards,
Keith Smith
PilotEdge Founder

Overall, I want to reiterate our thanks to Jeff Van West and the IFR Magazine staff for a thorough, well-constructed review. IFR students and pilots can really make tremendous benefit from PilotEdge, so getting in front of that market is fantastic.