Who doesn’t like free stuff, especially free stuff that we would normally pay good money for. Even better, stuff for free that we would normally pay good money for that we can use for flying! John Baute got tired of two things, carrying around a suitcase full of paper IFR charts and approach plates, and paying for printed charts and plates (every couple of months when they expire) when the information is free from the FAA. To solve both problems, John started pdfplates.com.

His website takes the .pdf (Adobe Acrobat document) data from the FAA and packages it into a readable format for handheld book readers like Amazon’s kindle, Sony’s ebook reader, standard laptops and even iPhones and blackberry’s (though the small phone screens make charts hard to read). Again, downloading all of the charts and plates from pdfplates.com is free. John promises to keep providing the IFR charts and approach plates free of charge as long as donations to the website from grateful pilots continue to pay for his hosting cost. Thanks John, you’re my hero of the day!

(Thanks to AOPA Pilot magazine for bringing John’s website to our attention in their article “It’s free...really”)