I’ve been working on a program for the Pocket PC to perform aircraft weight and balance calculations, implemented in C# using version 1.1 of the Mobile .NET Framework. There are plenty of programs available that do this, but they all had little usability quirks and few had all of the features I was looking for: a graphical CG envelope, takeoff and landing fuel calculations, and multiple airplane profiles.
You start out by creating a new airplane profile, then configuring the center of gravity limits from the chart in the Pilot’s Operating Handbook. Then you enter the actual weight and arm values for each station (including Takeoff and Landing fuel weights), and hit the “Calc” button. A screen appears that shows the values for the Takeoff, Landing, and Zero-Fuel center of gravity at the top, and plots the values in the graphical envelope. If any of the center of gravity values are out of the limits, they will appear in red .
At the moment there are still a few features I’d like to implement before I make it publicly available, such as the ability to specify moments instead of just arm values for each station. I’ll probably put together a product page in the next few weeks. In the interim it’s been a useful tool for speeding up the pre-flight calculations!
What I need now is a good name for the program. “Weight and Balance” is terribly unoriginal (but it is descriptive!).
