No, Apple’s iPad isn’t going to put Dynon or Garmin out of business—ever. But it will continue to rob sales of big-screen display suites because face it, the current big-screen iPads look pretty darned good. But while the troops are pretty, iPads can’t fight the heat that ultimately shuts them down in a hot cockpit, making them useless primary instruments for IFR flying. Plus, mounting them on the panel like you would a Dynon or Garmin can be crude at best, and we’ve seen some ugly and unsafe attempts at securing them. From the experimental world comes Falken Avionics, attempting to tame that dragon with two eye-catching iPad mounting solutions, including the FlightDock. You’ve heard of these guys, originally called Open Flight Solutions, founded by Steven Sokol and launched in 2016 with a Kickstarter campaign to fund the FlightBox quick-build kit for the Stratux open-source ADS-B receiver. It was a huge success.
At AirVenture last summer it was showing the FlightDock iPad panel-mounting system. Other than getting the iPad up on the panel, the idea behind the FlightDock is to also make the tablet easy to install and remove, while a built-in active cooling system works to keep the iPad from overheating. Unlike the Guardian Avionics SmartDeck, which uses hardware to mount the iPad in the panel, the FlightDock contains the iPad on the outside. This makes for an easier installation, while avoiding major panel modifications that can become obsolete as the iPad line changes size over time. The current product works with all full-sized iPads except the iPad mini.