Altimeter for Aviators vs Ecliptic Compass

If you want a 'real' Altimeter, look no further. No GPS used here. Learn how a real pressure Altimeter works such as you would find in an aircraft. Altimeter for Aviators is primarily designed as an Apple Watch application, although it does also work on iPhones or iPads that have a barometer. Provided your watch has a Barometer it will even run stand-alone (no iPhone needed). Student and instructor pilots will find this App to be a valuable training tool, while those knowing how to use an altimeter will enjoy having it on their wrist. To obtain your Altitude (height above sea level): Set the 'pressure setting' to the current air pressure at sea level. Weather forecasts often give this (eg the BBC Weather App includes pressure in mb). You can also obtain the pressure from weather pressure charts or from METAR reports from airports (eg Q1017). In aviation speak, this is known as the QNH. Set the pressure setting by rotating the 'crown' on your watch. You can then 'Lock' this setting so you don't accidentally change it by doing a long-press and choosing 'Lock'. Alternatively, if you know the altitude of the point that you are currently at, you can rotate the watch crown until the Altimeter reads the correct altitude. To obtain your height above a certain location: Set the 'station' pressure for that location (the actual air pressure at that very point). Aviation language calls this pressure setting QFE. If you are at that location, you can just rotate the crown of the watch until the Altimeter reads zero. As a short-cut you can alternatively long-press and then pick "Zero (QFE)". To obtain your Flight Level (FL): Another setting that pilots use is the standard setting of 1013.25mb. This is used above 3000ft roughly and instead of giving you an accurate 'Altitude' gives you what is known as a 'Flight level'. Long-press and select the "STP (FL)" option as a short cut (FL stands for Flight Level. STP stands for 'Standard Temperature and Pressure'). If you are more familiar with inches of mercury (inHg) rather than hectapascals (hPa) or millibars (mb) then toggle this with the 'Units' menu item. Note that mb and hPa are the same unit. ACCURACY WARNING: Your watch (or iPhone) pressure sensing device has not been calibrated in the same way that the expensive altimeters found in aircraft have been. Your electronic device also has more points of failure and error being miniature and electrically based so this App in no way replaces or can be used for actual flying. If you run this App side by side on two different iOS devices, the chances are they'll give you slightly different altitudes. Further, if you're a pilot the pressure in your cockpit is unlikely to be as accurate as the location of the static pitot tube and will be susceptible to changes due to air vents being opened, doors with gaps, any climate control, your speed and any vibration. WEATHER WARNING: Air pressure changes throughout the day can cause readings to drift by up to 1 foot per minute, so keep the pressure-setting up-to-date by updating it whenever you can; as you get to any locations of known altitude or hourly if receiving pressure settings in some other way. Colours: Altimeter for Aviators shows how recent the altitude was calculated (it's not constant) White = updated in the last 10 seconds Yellow = updated between 10 and 60 seconds ago. Pink = updated between 1 and 10 minutes ago. Dark Red = updated more than 10 minutes ago. Altitude units: The long hand shows 100s of feet. The short hand 1000s of feet. The inward pointing edge arrow shows 10000s of feet. The barber pole (stripe at the bottom) is visible below 10000 feet, so if it disappears you are at risk of Hypoxia.

Features: *Normal Compass(check the location shown in the bottom first. You can use the button in the bottom left to retrieve your current location) *Drawing the Ecliptic Plane, the Sun, the Moon and the planet symbols on the compass based on your location. *Showing the Sun, the Moon and other visible planets directions(azimuth) on the compass based on your location. *You can use the celestial bodies direction to confirm that the compass is pointing to the north. You can even using the celestial bodies' directions to manually rectify the compass pointing if it shows the pointer is offset by background noises. *Horoscope chart based on current time and location. *Custom time and location for the ecliptic plane view and horoscope view *10 random locations to see what the sky looks like in other locations. This is not just another compass App. Other than the normal compass feature. The Sun, the Moon and other planets' direction are also shown on the compass so that you know if the compass is affected by the background noise or not. We all know that the compass is easy to be interfered when you are inside a concrete house, near electronics or some other situations. But currently the built-in compass could not neutralize those background magnetic fields. Here comes this Ecliptic Compass app, you could use the Sun, the Moon's or even some planets' azimuth(direction) to know that if the compass is pointing to the north and you are heading to the right direction. As long as you could see the celestial bodies in the sky. Manually rectifying the compass, if you find that the Sun or the Moon's direction in the sky is offset quite a bit from the computed direction. You could use the Manual Rectification feature to temporarily to override the pointer so that your could still get the right direction. Power efficient, the app is designed to work offline most of the time. No unnecessary feature/APIs is called, No data collection. The location service only tries to get your coordinates at start-up or when you tap the big refresh button from surrounding hotspots, data or GPS. It uses data only when you want to use the map to retrieve a place's coordinates. You can also use the offline location database to search for the latitude/longitude from over 40 thousand cities and towns. Location database is provided by Simplemaps.com under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Colorful astrological symbols, we use astrology/astronomy symbols to show the luminaries, planets and zodiac signs. And the colors we use follow the astrological conventions. Renaissance astrological art, the twelve zodiac signs art is from the Zodiac Clock at San Marco square in Venice. Preset places, there are about 10 preset places(coordinates) at the moment which you could try and get the feeling about how the app works. Custom location and time, you could input the latitude and longitude and time to draw the ecliptic items and horoscope chart.