Stumbled on this one while prepping for my Flight Review. I’ve always found writing in the cockpit to be clumsy at best. Combine my terrible handwriting with some turbulence and writing on a Foreflight scratchpad is a recipe for “Approach, say again please.”
A small developer has made an aviation keyboard add on for your iPad that may suit you. For 3 bucks I can now actually organize and READ my notes on my Foreflight scratchpad.
Hooray!
To get started, grab it from the App store.
Next find your settings icon.
In the General menu, find the keyboard settings
Click on your installed keyboards (you probably only have one, I happen to use a few others already for my day job stuff).
Click on Add New Keyboard
Click on FFKeyboard to add it
You should now see it on your list of installed keyboards
Now open Foreflight
On the More tab at the bottom, click on settings and find the Extra Keyboard Keys setting (mine was on the bottom of the long list) and make sure it’s on.
Now open a new scratch pad and choose the “Type” Template
You can cycle to your new keyboard (and back to the Apple keyboard) by using the Globe button.
You’re now all set. It’s arranged in a logical order and like all new tools is something you should practice with a little before trying to use in flight.
The FFKeyboard is available on iTunes for $2.99
Author’s note/addition:
The keyboard is available for any iPad app. Should work on Garmin, WingX Etc.
If someone with a Foreflight competitor wants to get me an eval copy I’ll be happy to write it up on other platforms. I just happen to be a current Foreflight customer, but I’m not picky 🙂
Here it is on the built in iPad Notes app:
Evadot 