BruceAir, LLC (bruceair.com)

I’ve longed use the Web and PC-based flight-planning tools to check the weather, lay out and file flight plans, and retrieve information about airports.

Voyager, my favorite flight-planning program, also prints current instrument approach charts and other essential information that I can carry along in the cockpit. Many FBOs have computers in the flight-planning room, so even when you’re away from home, you can take care of preflight business via the Web.

But not all airports offer such services—the office may not even be open, as I recently discovered on a fine Saturday morning at Walla Walla, an airport with an operating control tower and airline service but nobody at the FBO on weekends.

Cell phone service, however, is available at most airports, and thanks to products like WingX from Hilton Software LLC, all of the online aviation-related services I rely on are available through a Web-enabled PDA or Smartphone (the current list of supported devices is on the WingX Web site).

To read a detailed assessment of WingX, visit the product review page at BruceAir.com.

James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic, has contributed a fascinating article, "Taxis in the Sky," about DayJet, a new on-demand flying service that uses the Eclipse Very Light Jet (VLJ). You can read it online at the Atlantic Web site.

Like many pilots, I start watching the weather days ahead of planned trips. Unfortunately, the Outlook Briefings offered by Flight Service Stations and other official sources of aviation weather are about as useful as the tips you get from financial advisors (or bookies).

I much prefer the National Weather Service forecast discussions prepared by local NWS offices. These descriptions of current and forecast conditions, including outlooks, offer forecasters' analysis and opinions of what the various computer models and observations imply about upcoming weather.

The easiest way to see the aviation forecast discussions for areas that interest you is via the map at the NOAA Aviation Testbed site. Click a region on the map, and up pops the text of the latest discussion. Of course, you must supplement the discussion with official reports and forecasts, all of which are available at the Aviation Weather Center, the Aviation Digital Data Service, via DUATS, and from Flight Service Stations. You can find an extensive list of weather and flight-planning links on the Aviation Resources page at my Web site, www.BruceAir.com.

To learn more about weather briefings and tools available to pilots, see Aviation Weather Services (AC 00-45F), available as a free download (.pdf) from the NWS. The General Aviation Pilot's Weather Guide is another excellent portal to weather information.

The latest "Ask the Pilot" column at Salon.com is an evocative essay about the DC-8 and transatlantic flying in an earlier era, albeit one only 20 years ago. It's a good read, and a reminder of how quickly aviation has changed, even if some fundamentals, such as cruising speed, haven't kept pace with high-tech cockpits, more fuel-efficient and reliable engines, and other developments.