November/December, 2002 issue

"Hal Stoen, the man behind the Stoenworks, Inc. website, spent 25 years being paid to fly planes- as a flight instructor and a corporate airline pilot- and clearly enjoyed them immensely. For a mere $12.50 (£8.00 approx.) you can get the benefit of his many years of aviation experience and a great deal more besides.

The CD contains a whopping 952 pages of aviation-related material in PDF format. which are easy to find your way around thanks to the index system. The content of the CD actually includes the entire aviation section of Hal's website, which has been growing steadily over the last few years, and a further 500 pages! While not all of it directly concerns flight simulation, the 200 pages devoted to FS tutorials are worth the asking price on their own, and cover in-depth almost any subject you care to mention- in-depth explanations of cockpit instruments, the nature of stalls, charts, flight planning, navigation, radio communications, every kind of approach- and that really is just scratching the surface of what's available.

If you've ever been baffled by VOR-DME approaches and runway markings, or are having trouble perfecting your landings, you're in good hands. Everything is presented in a manner that's easy to read and understand, and the amount of information available is staggering.

Almost 200 pages are devoted to Cessna's 421B, a plane which Hal knows inside out; the complete owner's manual and the FAA manual may not be the sort of thing you want to read from cover to cover, but such items aren't particularly easy to come by, unless you happen to be the lucky owner of the real thing, but dipping into them is rewarding for those who crave technical details.

Tales from Hal's flying days are included (how can you possibly fail to be interested in a memoir entitled Elvis, John Denver and Me?) along with sales brochures, press advertisements and aircraft specifications.

The Stoenworks Aviation CD provides education and entertainment in equal measure- a real bargain.

At a glance: A vast information resource and at an unbeatable price."

Joe M. Besser

(CD given a rating of "4" out of a possible "5".)

Quoted by permission from PC Pilot Magazine.