Welcome to PilotStack.  If this is your first time here, you might be wondering how we came up with our name and what we mean when we say “What’s In Your Stack?”  Well, let’s start with a definition for “stack.” In the context of its usage here, the word describes a unique set of applications, techniques, tools, or skill-sets that when aggregated create a complete platform capable of enabling performance of a process or facilitating completion of a specific objective.   Thus, in an office environment an enterprise stack might refer to the spreadsheet and word processing software, voicemail, and internet tools such as email and a web browser applications that are needed in order to perform basic business functions. A hammer, tape measure, speed square and saw may be considered the basic stack a carpenter needs in order to frame a house.  And in computing, a solution stack can refer to the set of software subsystems or components needed to create a complete platform such that no additional software is needed to support the applications that are said to “run on” or “run on top of” the stack.

PilotStack refers to all of the skills, knowledge, techniques, and understandings that every pilot seeks to integrate into a personalized solution-set that helps them to accomplish their primary mission.  Your stack will invariably share many of the same aspects as those of every other pilot, but will also be highly unique and will evolve as an expression of the particular type of flying you do. The stack used by one crop duster pilot will be different than that developed by another; the stack utilized by a military aviator will vary significantly from that used by an airline transport pilot in her day-to-day professional flying, and the stack used by an aircraft owner whose primary mission is VFR day flying will be vastly different from the one employed in the flying classroom of the professional CFI.

Regardless of the type of flying you do, your stack shares something in common with that of every other pilot: it’s designed to provide you with all of the critical tools you need in order to consistently operate at a high level of confidence, efficiency and safety in today’s complex airspace environment.  And that’s our primary goal here at PilotStack: To provide a free, entertaining, and well-organized online destination where every pilot, regardless of their skill-level or base of experience, can easily access our original content as well carefully curated and organized premium aviation resources from across the Internet in order to build their own personalized stack of the skills, techniques, knowledge sets and tools.  We hope you enjoy what you find here, and we look forward to hearing about “What’s In Your Stack!”