Avalon International Airshow, 2015 - Voice-Breakingly Good!

 As the unofficial holder of the ‘talks under water’ award, it takes a lot to break my voice. I do demos for a living and my favourite pastime, aside from flying, is talking. I prefer controlled airspace to class G, largely because it gives me a greater chance to talk. So when I lost my voice on the last trade day of the Avalon Airshow, it was a certain sign of how busy the show had been for Team AvPlan.

The AvPlan Crew gets ready for Day One

Avalon 2015 was the most successful airshow yet for AvPlan EFB.  On the Tuesday, it was announced that we had won the Civil Industry National Innovation Award 2015. Bevan attended the ceremony, where the award (a glass boomerang) was presented by Air Marshal Les Fisher.

Bevan receives the award. Photo John Harris.

The AvPlan stand, in hall 2, began buzzing on Tuesday morning and didn’t stop. With the impending launch of version 5.0, pilots were lining up to see our new features, to offer feedback and (mostly) praise about AvPlan and to share their experiences of using the app. We had visitors from all over the country, including jet pilots; a ballonatic; a state senator who never flies without AvPlan; a Powerball winner ($20m! Can you imagine? He was visiting Avalon with ten mil to spend and popped by to say how much he loved AvPlan); and a myriad of pilots from the Army, Navy and RAAF.

Rochelle and Bevan

All five of us – six on Friday when Rochelle popped in to help out – were flatchat the whole show. Popular questions were around our upcoming iOS release, V5.0; our impending Android update, and the ever present ‘what’s the difference between you and the other EFBs’ (which is one of my personal favourites, as I love nothing more than demonstrating AvPlan’s Mega VFR maps, amazing weather radar overlay, velocity world weather and active airspace options – to name but a few).

On Wednesday, I handed over the AvPlan iPad to Peta Denham Harvey, who is the first pilot in the Women Pilots' Relay https://www.facebook.com/WomenPilotsRelay?ref=hl from Avalon to Launceston, counterclockwise. The relay has already raised over $7000 for cancer research, and AvPlan is proud to be a supporter.

Handing over the iPad to Peta Denham-Harvey

After having met what seemed like every single one of our users – and lots of new users, too – I left on Friday, while the rest of the crew continued through til Sunday, enjoying the airshow and questions from the general public.

On behalf of the AvPlan team, I’d like to thank everyone who came by to offer their feedback, support and their congratulations on our winning of the award. 2015 is shaping up to be the best year yet for AvSoft Inc, and I’m delighted to be a part of it.