One of the fun things about flying is you get to accessorize. Bags, electronic gizmos, etc. Here's some products that I've found helpful. Some of this is flying specific, but not all of it.
- BrightLine Flight Bag
- The Batman utility belt of handbags. It's relatively small and has 25 zippered pockets of varying sizes to hold things. There's even an instruction video showing you what goes where. It's very well constructed and just the right size.
- AMOD GPS tracker
- A very simple GPS tracker. No display: just press the record button to start and stop. Then copy the GPS track off the USB drive for visualization. Comes with photo geotagging software, too.
- Olympus Digital Voice Recorder
- I use this to record the radio conversations in my flights. Simple to use, good mono quality, mounts as a USB drive. Only drawback is it saves in WMA format but that's convertible.
- Clarity Aloft headset
- Piston engines are noisy. Old-school headsets are basically cups that clamp around your ears. Noise reducing headsets are better, but still uncomfortable and consume batteries. Clarity Aloft is a different solution. Foam earplugs that go in your ear canal with little hearing aid speakers embedded in them. If I get the plugs in correctly it's as quiet as my ANR headset but weighs nothing and isn't hot. Lightspeed makes a similar headset.
- Icom A14 handheld radio
- A small plane flies just fine even if the electrical system dies. But without a radio it can be a bit tricky to find your way back home and get cleared to land. I just ordered this radio, it's well reviewed. I picked it over other options because it's the smallest and lightest and I didn't want the VOR feature.
