Ethan Paschkes

14 · student glider pilot · New York

I make apps.
Mostly about planes.

I'm 14 and I fly gliders. Three of my apps are on the App Store. One lets you fly the plane going over your head right now. One is the logbook I wanted when I started flying. One tells you what that $24 pasta actually costs to make.

Get Apex Sky The apps
Ethan Paschkes on a balcony by the sea, an airliner passing overhead
You can solo a glider at 14. Years before you can drive.

The apps

On the App Store · my main one

Apex Sky

Spot real planes. Then fly.

Real planes, flying right now, over where you are, in 3D. Tap one and it goes in your hangar. Then you fly it. The airports are real too, runways, taxiways and gates from FAA data. Works with no signal so you can play it on an actual flight.

This one is 300,000 lines of code and has a Discord full of testers who break it faster than I can fix it. Been on the App Store since August.

  • 151 aircraft
  • Real airports
  • Flight school
  • Works offline
  • Cesium globe
App Store Tester Discord

On the App Store · for glider pilots

Updraft: Glider Training

Learn to fly. Log every hour.

Put your phone on the coaming and press record. It finds your launch and landing by itself off the barometer and GPS, then you replay the flight over real terrain and it goes in your logbook. Everything is saved on the phone because there is no signal at an airfield and a logbook that loses flights is useless.

Made this because real flight computers cost hundreds to thousands of dollars and I'm a student.

  • Works offline
  • IGC files
  • Drills
  • Free to record
App Store Support

On the App Store · not about planes

FairFare

Know what your food really costs.

Take a photo of your food and it prints you a receipt. Every ingredient with an estimated supermarket price, the recipe, and a grocery list. It asks you questions before it guesses. There is also a buffet mode that tells you if your plate beat the entry price.

  • One photo
  • Reads menus and checks
  • Buffet mode
App Store

How I actually build

01

I use AI to write the code.

Not going to pretend otherwise. I decide what gets built, I test it, and when it breaks I figure out why. 1,093 numbered bugs in the log so far. The ones that got fixed for real were the ones I measured first instead of guessing.

02

Test it where it will be used.

An airfield has no bars. A plane has no wifi. So the apps have to work offline, and I test them in the glider and on real flights, not just on my desk.

03

Ship it, then listen.

Apex Sky has been updated almost every week since launch. Most of what changed came from testers on the Discord hitting stuff I never would have found. If you find a bug, tell me, I read all of them.

Up next

StudyScroll

Insta but for studying. A feed of quick questions from your actual classes, for the time you would have spent scrolling. Working on it now. @studyscroll.learn

About

I'm Ethan. 14, New York, student glider pilot. I started making apps because the stuff I wanted didn't exist, or cost more than a 14 year old can pay.

Apex Sky came out in August 2026. FairFare and Updraft after that. I run the tester Discord, read every crash report, and entered Apex Sky in the Congressional App Challenge.

When I'm not on the laptop I'm at the airfield.

A recorded glider flight replayed over real terrain in Updraft
One of my flights, replayed in Updraft.

Say hi

Bugs, ideas, a plane you caught, or gliders. DM me.