Narrative:

I had just arrived at 10;000 ft and was cleared to 15;000 ft by new york center. I inserted 150 in the altitude select window and was sure I had also hit 'altitude sel' on the mode selector; but apparently not. I had just purchased a new ipad with a moving map chart and was using it for the first time that night. During climbout; I was distracted by the brightness of the ipad display; it was so bright that it was interfering with my cockpit scan. But to adjust it requires closing the program and going to the settings page. It only took a minute or so to do it; but we were climbing at 3;000 fpm or better. When I looked up I saw that the autopilot had not intercepted the selected altitude and the aircraft was passing through 15;500 ft. I took immediate corrective action and descended back to 15;000 ft. But after I leveled off; the center controller told me that he showed that I was as high as 16;000 ft. What can I say; it was my responsibility to monitor the autopilot; to confirm altitude intercept and I had not done so. While clearly no excuse; I was distracted by the brightness issue on the ipad and had evidently neglected to hit the altitude sel button. Thankfully; my TCAS showed no traffic in the area at the time. But the lesson learned is one taught in basic flight instruction. Fly the airplane first; worry about an instrument glitch later. In more than forty years of flying I have never been cited for a violation. I hope this isn't the first time.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A CE-550 pilot distracted in a climb while attempting to reset the brightness display on his moving map equipped hand held computer flew through his cleared altitude. Reporter cited his apparent failure to activate the Altitude Select [Capture] function on the autopilot after entering the cleared altitude in the altitude select window.

Narrative: I had just arrived at 10;000 FT and was cleared to 15;000 FT by New York Center. I inserted 150 in the altitude select window and was sure I had also hit 'ALT SEL' on the mode selector; but apparently not. I had just purchased a new iPad with a moving map chart and was using it for the first time that night. During climbout; I was distracted by the brightness of the iPad display; it was so bright that it was interfering with my cockpit scan. But to adjust it requires closing the program and going to the settings page. It only took a minute or so to do it; but we were climbing at 3;000 fpm or better. When I looked up I saw that the autopilot had not intercepted the selected altitude and the aircraft was passing through 15;500 FT. I took immediate corrective action and descended back to 15;000 FT. But after I leveled off; the Center controller told me that he showed that I was as high as 16;000 FT. What can I say; it was my responsibility to monitor the autopilot; to confirm altitude intercept and I had not done so. While clearly no excuse; I was distracted by the brightness issue on the iPad and had evidently neglected to hit the ALT SEL button. Thankfully; my TCAS showed no traffic in the area at the time. But the lesson learned is one taught in basic flight instruction. Fly the airplane first; worry about an instrument glitch later. In more than forty years of flying I have never been cited for a violation. I hope this isn't the first time.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.