I have flown since 1985 and am quitting owing to medical reasons. I have 6300 plus hours in singles with commercial and intrument ratings. I have averaged 250 to 400 hours per year especially in the last decade since I am an author and a lecturer specializing in the fine arts (I was once the director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.) In fact since 9/11 I always flew my 182 RG Cessna or my 206 Turbo TKS-equipped to every lecture or book promotion. For 7 years my wife and I flew to Anguilla for the New Year's holidays. Last September I flew the 206 from New York to San Francisco and back (22.5 out and 17.8 back) and had a wonderful time.

      I have owned Airgator equipment virtually since the company started, progressing from an iPaq to a Navpad. Before that I used another firm's primitive low-earth satelite system. Without the Airgator superior programs I would never have been able to avoid dozens of hours of hazardous weather. The beauty of the system is that it enforces prudence in the air. Many times I saw weather that kept me happily in a motel room for a night or two. In the air I was able to amend my clearances repeatedly for safe passages or a confident stop and wait for better conditions. On the way to San Francisco last September I was able to calculate from the Airgator data that it would be very unwise to try to get to a field near Salt Lake from Rapid City and so I made a safe landing at Casper WY. No other systems I know of would have given me that complex data in minutes.

      My 206 had both the Airgator and the Bendix weather systems. Although Bendix was very good, Airgator was far more reliable and far more informative. I recently took my Airgator equipment with me on a Cessna 182 to the Bahamas and was pleased (yet not surprised) when the Garmin 1000 weather system built into the 182 failed and the Airgator continued so my pilot friend and I could safely navigate around a pair of seriously threatening t-storm systems.

      Since my 206 is allowed to penetrate icing I found the accurate cloud tops and layers vital for safe navigation through a multiple of cloud layers.

      In my opinion there is no better situation-awareness system than the new 3D horizonatal and vertical position on the NOAA approach plates.

      Bottom line: Airgator programs makes one a more prudent and professional pilot.

      What more can one say?

      Thomas Hoving