I was trying to figure out how to mount my iPhone in the truck but I didn't want to drill any holes in the dashboard.

My first task was to decide suitable places for the iPhone and then look for mounting options in those areas. I finally settled on a spot to the right of the radio controls.

The truck has plenty of storage options. I decided the little coin area on the passenger side was not of much use to me.

I started by cutting a wooden plug and contouring it to match the share of the cubby hole. It needed to be tapered on one side and on top. Once I hade it close, I then mixed up a small amount of resin body filler. I layered it onto the wooden plug much like frosting a cake. I then loosely covered the coated plug with plastic wrap and pressed it into the cubby hole and let it cure. This resulted in a nearly perfect match fit.

I lightly sanded the matched plug and then sprayed three coats of a rubber like coating called Plasti-Dip. The coating not only made up for the small amount of material I sanded off but also provides a grippy surface. When the resulting plug is pressed into the cubby hole, it grabs and stays in place firmly.

I attached a standard 1″ RAM Mount ball to the end. From that point, I can use any of my RAM Mount accessories. The iPhone used a 3″ arm and an X-Grip. The plug is so firmly in place, I suspect it would even hold a tablet.

Nick goes for a run on the runway

There are times when you know there is going to be a Kodak Moment and you’ve left the Hawkeye at home.

I’ve written many times of the quality of modern smartphone cameras. While they are not going to capture a great telephoto image, they can definitely capture some great moments of your life.

I can understand why a recent tweet from a professional photographer proclaimed the Lumina 920 was his new favorite phone. It has, by far, the best camera available today in a smart phone.

So, my advice is – if you are going to get a smart phone and you know you will use it for most of your photos, get one with a good camera!

A web forum member asked about “racetracks in the sky” – referring to flight tracks that are depicted in three dimensions. I've had APRS in my airplane since the very first flight.

I answered the forum question but then decided to create a little video to demonstrate how I get those rolercoaster pictures.

Here is why I consider an iPhone to be a more of a computer than a phone.

I fired up DisplayRecorder on the iPhone to record a demonstration video. I started by opening Mobile Safari on the iPhone. I then visited mail2600.com which processes and maintains aircraft APRS data. I showed a map view of a flight. I then clicked on the “Google Earth” link and the website downloaded a KML file. Safari automatically offered to launch the mobile Google Earth app. I then did a little navigating – pan, zoom, and rotate. Finally, I stopped the recording.

I had DisplayRecorder save the video to my camera roll. I then launched Mobile iMovie where I cut out a few mistakes I had made, added some captions and a few fade effects. I had a 1 minute and 15 second video.

Next, I launched Mobile GarageBand, picked a tempo and then did some quick math to determine how many bars of 4/4 music I needed to make 1 minute an 15 seconds. I grabbed a couple loops of Latin rhythm and sequenced an electric keyboard track. I finished by having GarageBand transfer the new music back to iMovie.

iMovie combined the music and the edited video and exported it directly to Vimeo. Vimeo transcoded it and sent me a notification.

I launched Mobile Vimeo and grabbed the web markup from its “share” feature.

I finished by launching WordPress for iOS, pasted in the Vimeo markup and authored this blog post.

At no time did I turn my office computers on. They entire process was complete on my iPhone.

I’ve had it with those all-in-one printer/copier/scanners!

I print very little but I try to scan papers and documents to avoid losing them and having to store folders and boxes of papers. The problem is that my “oh so wonderful” HP 7780 networked printer / copier / fax machine is always breaking down. I don’t print enough so the heads get clogged, the color cartridges dry up or become defective, or it simply won’t start without being unplugged first.

I’ve taken to using my iPhone to photograph documents. It has worked “just OK”. The problem has been lighting and holding the camera steady and perpendicular to the document. Today I solved those problems.

If you click on the image from this post it will open a much larger copy.

I cut a small hole in one of two boards. I then cut stand-offs to separate the boards. When my iPhone peers down through the hole in the upper platform, it has a perfect view of an 8.5″x11″ paper on the lower platform. I added two 12″ fluorescent lights.

I can either use the standard Apple Camera app or one of the camera apps designed for document copying such as Genius Scan or TurboScanner. the latter is shown in the included photo

UPDATE: I discovered the “legs” I cut were a bit too short. The ideal length is at least 12″ to work well with 8.5″x11″ pages.

It’s been just one week since I sold my iPad 2. A single week without a tablet. What have I learned? The iPhone battery sucks. (Ouch, that’s harsh! Tell us how you really feel.)

I start my day at 5:30am. Once my espresso is made (and Nick, my dog, has been fed) I sit down to read my news feed, catch up on social media, check for any deals, and to a little hangar flying at a one of the many Internet forums. All told it is about an hour of surfing the net using my WiFi.

Next, I check in with family during a 30 minute phone call (while walking Nick, my 9 month old sometimes hyper puppy).

By this point the iPhone is reading between 60%-70% battery left.

If I do nothing else, the battery drains to about 25% by 5pm. If I take a 30 minute break and spend half that time during the net, the iPhone will fire off the 20% warning by dinner time.

It won’t last the evening when I have a tendency to check the news feeds and hangar flying (while sitting with Nick, my hopefully tuckered out Catahoola).

This week I’m working in the shop so I take a few more breaks. If I don’t put the phone on charge, it’s dead before I am.

What does all of this have to do with me selling my iPad a week ago? Loads!

Previously, the digital surfing in the morning and any checking of emails or placing mail orders all took place on the iPad. With the split of duties, the iPhone rarely had a problem lasting the day. Now that everything falls to the iPhone 5, it isn’t up to the regiment.

Three more weeks. I vowed to go a month without a tablet. Three more weeks …

Some thoughts after two weeks with an iPhone 5 … Well two iPhones actually …

Let’s start with the big four issues – call quality, getting stuck with only Edge or no data service, getting stuck off WiFi. and poor battery life.

AT&T support had me try lots of things over three days before giving up and suggesting the phone be replaced and then suggesting replacing the SIM card. Ultimately, none of these actually resolved the issues. All tolled, it cost me 8-10 hours of my life and $45 is gas and tolls for the drive to the nearest Apple Store.

So at this point I’m on my second iPhone 5 and my second SIM for the phone and one thing is better and all other things are just the same.

The first iPhone 5 had a small scratch on the aluminum. This is consistent with Apple’s attempt to improve quality control. The replacement phone has no scratches – so one thing did get better.

Along the way, I bought a nan-SIM to micro-SIM adapter. This let me test the iPhone 5 SIM in my old iPhone 4. The conclusion was the SIM was fine and the local cell towers are not great but not really any different from a month ago.

*Personal Opinion Alert:*

My guess is that the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 network switching algorithms are at the root of the problems. The iPhone 5 has LTE. However, there is no LTE in my area and I am between two cell towers. It appears the network switching is getting stuck on a weaker tower and/or is constantly hoping for an LTE signal. This results in a much shorter battery life and often failing to settle with a 3G signal.

It turns out there is some interdependency between LTE and cell calls too. You can not toggle the LTE option while on a call without dropping the call. I don’t understand this one but I did find several cases of people attributing poor call quality to LTE “hunting”.

So, when I turn off LTE on the iPhone 5, my battery life returns to that of my iPhone 4 (but no better), call quality returns to that of my iPhone 4 (but no better), and my data service returns to that of the iPhone 4.

The remaining issues are that the data service still can get stuck at “E” (for the low speed Edge service) and can occasionally get stuck not connecting to my home WiFi (even though it sees it and has the password). I attribute the latter if not both of these to iOS 6. I would not be at all surprised to see a update quietly appear to improve the switching and connecting algorithms.

My work around for “stuck on E” is to cycle the Airplane Mode. My work around for not connecting to my WiFi is to manually select it from the Setting menu. Both of these are annoying but they work. (BTW: the failure to connect to WiFi has been reported and witnessed on other devices running iOS 6 so that further points to some software problem.)

So, while the iPhone 5 has a wider screen (which doesn’t really help with anything) I do like the better camera and faster CPU. Still, it’s not even close to being a good justification for the cost of the upgrade. Remember, you might get the iPhone 5 with a new contract for $200, $300, or $400 but you will also need a minimum of one extra charging cable at $20-$30 and a new case at $20-$60 and none of your old accessories such as a charging dock or clock radio or stereo speaker dock or car interface will work so there’s another $75-$300 in extras (and they don’t even exist yet).