If you’re an AvGeek, I’ve got two seriously cool gadgets you’re going to want in your home. I have both and while one is definitely geared more toward aviation enthusiasts, the other has been a huge hit with my entire family.
The FlightWall
I first saw an ad for The FlightWall on Facebook. I normally don’t click on Facebook ads but this one looked way too intriguing not to. Sure enough, I’m glad I did.
The FlightWall is basically a live flight tracker for your home. Instead of pulling out your phone and opening a flight-tracking app every time you hear or see a plane overhead (something I always do!), the display shows you which aircraft are flying nearby, where they’re coming from, where they’re going and other flight information in real time. For an AvGeek, it’s pretty darn cool.
I have The FlightWall Mini ($175; full disclosure: the company sent me one after I reached out and asked if I could test it). It was quick and easy to set up. You can hang it on the wall, use the included stand or just place it on a table or shelf, which is what we’ve done in our living room.
Once it’s connected, you set your location and choose what type of tracking you want. There are two main options: Area Tracking and Specific Flight Tracking.
With Area Tracking, you choose a radius from one to 12 miles and select which types of aircraft you want to see, including commercial aircraft, small jets, light aircraft, helicopters and “other,” which is aircraft that hasn’t yet been classified. Whatever that means.
You can also choose whether you want the airline’s logo displayed. I obviously do. There’s an option to show flights with unknown routes, which I toggled off because, really, who cares about those? If I’m going to stare at an airplane flying over my house, I want to know where it came from and where it’s going.
You can also set altitude filters from 0 to 50,000 feet and speed filters from 49 mph to 749 mph. I don’t bother with either because I want to see pretty much everything.
The other option is Specific Flight Tracking, which is great when a loved one is traveling. Enter their flight and The FlightWall displays everything you need to know, including where the plane is flying at that moment, when it departed and when it’s expected to land. I love it.
My kids really like it but I think once I go away and the kids can watch Dad’s flight make its way across the country or around the world, they’ll appreciate it even more. My sisters, on the other hand, are definitely not aviation geeks. Their reaction was basically: Why do you care where all these planes are going?
I care. A lot. Maybe it’s because I used to be afraid to fly and after finally overcoming that fear, I went in the complete opposite direction and became obsessed with aviation.
Years ago, I used to play volleyball all the time with friends in Manhattan Beach, not far from LAX. If I spotted a widebody taking off, I would literally stop the game. “Check it out! There’s Air Tahiti Nui going to Papeete!” Or Fiji Airways heading to Nadi. Singapore Airlines to Tokyo. An Emirates A380 to Dubai. My friends would usually just say, “Thanks,” and then call me Rain Man.
So yeah, The FlightWall was made for people like me … and maybe you or someone you know. At under $200, it’s a VERY cool gift for anyone who’s into aviation.
Vestaboard Note
Now, there’s another gadget my wife recently received that she, my kids and even my sisters absolutely love: the Vestaboard Note ($1,099; the company sent us one to test). This is easily one of the most fun things we have in our house.
Instead of a typical digital screen, Vestaboard Note uses thousands of mechanical spinning flaps to create messages up to 45 characters long. The design and that unmistakable clickety-clack sound were inspired by the old split-flap departure boards once found in train stations and airports, including the famous board at Gare du Nord in Paris.
In fact, the creator came up with the idea because he thought it would be fun to build something similar so he could send messages to his kids while he traveled. I love that idea and we’ve found ourselves using ours all the time.
We leave messages for our kids to discover when they come downstairs in the morning, like “Happy First Day of School!” We put up a quote of the day or use it for important parental announcements like, “It’s bedtime!”
Everyone gets such a kick out of it. One of my son’s friends recently came over and didn’t want to leave after we let him create his own messages. Messages can also be scheduled in advance, which opens up all kinds of possibilities for birthdays, holidays, reminders, countdowns or just surprising someone with a funny message.
And then there’s the best part: watching a new message appear. The flaps start spinning and clicking until, one character at a time, the message comes to life. Even after you’ve seen it dozens of times, it’s difficult not to stop and watch. My kids run right up to it and try to see who can figure out the message first.
The Vestaboard Note isn’t specifically an aviation product but anyone who loves those classic airport and train station departure boards is going to appreciate it. And unlike The FlightWall, which is admittedly a pretty niche product for people like me who want to know where every airplane in the sky is headed, Vestaboard has turned out to be something our whole family enjoys.
Think of it as a family message board meets kinetic art, with a little bit of old-school travel nostalgia thrown in. Both products are conversation starters, both are fun to watch and both bring a little bit of the magic of travel into your home. But if you’re an AvGeek? Good luck resisting The FlightWall.
