CC Flight Planning Questions

ByrdmanFL

ByrdmanFL

Filing Flight Plan
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Feb 25, 2019
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ByrdmanFL
I am about to wrap up my Gleim online ground school and been doing pretty good so far through the whole process. I have not started flying yet and this seems to be one of the sections that I think I would be better understood if I was already flying.

I am at the end where I am working on the cross country flight planning calculations and having a hell of a time getting the right answers working the manual computer. Some of problem is not covering it well in the learning material, other problems are the inaccuracy of the computer, and me never doing this before.

Anyone know of other resources available? I looked online and youtube, but the free stuff I found on MC, MH, CH, Wind Correction, Plotter use etc. are overviews and I'm looking for some really detailed info.

I know this stuff is pretty important because it seems to be using everything I have learned so far and showing the practical purpose of it all.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any help!

Byrdman
 
Just remember there are step-by-step instructions inscribed on the E6B. Follow them exactly.

What E6B are you using? Unfortunately I know that Gleim is a bit unusual because their instructions have you convert winds aloft to magnetic before computing the WCA and heading, whereas everyone else does the conversion after. Could that be it?

Calculating answers electronically might help you figure out what you're doing wrong, try www.e6bx.com/e6b
 
Thanks for the suggestion! I will try the electronic e6b
 
What you are working on is preparation for the written exam and, to a lesser extent, for your checkride. In real life you learn in a hurry that the winds that you used in your calculations are not even close to reality, so all of the ground speed and heading calculations you sweated over are irrelevant and you have to work with the conditions you are encountering. There is no one on the ground at your destination with a stopwatch checking on the accuracy of your ETA.

Bob
 
dmspilot said:
Just remember there are step-by-step instructions inscribed on the E6B. Follow them exactly.

What E6B are you using? Unfortunately I know that Gleim is a bit unusual because their instructions have you convert winds aloft to magnetic before computing the WCA and heading, whereas everyone else does the conversion after. Could that be it?

Calculating answers electronically might help you figure out what you're doing wrong, try www.e6bx.com/e6b
Click to expand...

Gleim is actually wrong in their instructions, as it should be true winds, but the error is quite small. And done correctly it could be either true or magnetic, as long as you don’t mix the two. Just make sure the wind and the course are either both true or both magnetic.

In reality the whole point of this is to make sure you understand the differences and terminology that is used for determining the correct heading. This is become much more emphasized with the advent of Electronic flight Books and computer that do all the work for us and it is entirely possible to fly a long time with out ever really understand concepts like Variation, Deviation, and even Wind Correction Angle.

Electronic E6B’s can be better for the written test simply because of the accuracy but in my experience they are often more complex and harder to learn than the Manual E6B.

Often many students just study the navigation questions until they know the common mistakes with each particular question.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
Thanks guys! Last night I played around with the electronic E6B and after watching about 6 youtube videos of different explainations, it is starting to make more sense. I worked a few questions last night and seemed to be getting real close to the right answer, so that is a good thing.

The minor errors were distance from airport to airport using the plotter, ie getting 62.5 vs 61 NM, and E6B minor errors like True airspeed and groundspeed being off by couple of Knots.
 
Remember this ain't rocket science.
What I'm trying to say is be as accurate as you can, but don't obsess over whether it's 61 or 62 miles.

Measuring distances from airport to airport and coming up with something that's 1-2 miles different from someone else's measurement is not a problem. If you know what you're doing, the correct answer on the test is close to what you have, all the others are far enough off that it should be clear which is the correct one.

On the E6B, one of the wheels is time in minutes, or hours and minutes, it all depends on where you put the decimal point. The other wheel is either miles, nautical or statute, or gallons.
Some things, like navigation and VOR's are not very understandable until you talk to an instructor, and/or get in the plane and do it, then it starts to make a lot more sense.

By the way, I've always known cross country expressed as XC, I had to read your post to figure out what CC meant.
 
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One note of caution: plotters typically have nautical miles on one side and statute miles on the other. Some of the questions on the written will have a wrong choice derived from using SMs when you should have used NMs. Be careful.
 
Half Fast said:
One note of caution: plotters typically have nautical miles on one side and statute miles on the other. Some of the questions on the written will have a wrong choice derived from using SMs when you should have used NMs. Be careful.
Click to expand...

Yeah, mine has sectional chart on one side and terminal area chart with the two scales, SM & NM, on each side. You would think it would not make a difference because scaled distance is set, but I learned the first few times I did get better accuracy using the right scale, lol
 
As mentioned the object of the knowledge test is to select the “most correct answer”. Nothing says they are going to have the exactly correct answer, and often they don’t.

Brian
 
ByrdmanFL said:
You would think it would not make a difference because scaled distance is set, but I learned the first few times I did get better accuracy using the right scale, lol
Click to expand...

For example...

There are questions that provide a sectional chart excerpt, tell you that you're flying from Podunk to Hicksville, and tell you the airspeed and wind data in knots, and then ask you to calculate time. If you work out ground speed in knots but measure distance in SM, you'll get the wrong time answer. And it's a good bet that one of the wrong choices will be the answer derived from SMs.
 
Half Fast said:
For example...

There are questions that provide a sectional chart excerpt, tell you that you're flying from Podunk to Hicksville, and tell you the airspeed and wind data in knots, and then ask you to calculate time. If you work out ground speed in knots but measure distance in SM, you'll get the wrong time answer. And it's a good bet that one of the wrong choices will be the answer derived from SMs.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that is what was concerning me the most, the wrong answers I was coming up with were one of the available answers on the practice exams.

Thanks for all the help everyone!
 
Probably a dumb question but, you are measuring airport to airport from the middle of the runway/airport right?
That is probably not the problem but it might make a difference.

I found the manual with my manual E6B to be very good, but I also (because Norwegian is my second language learned late in life and the textbooks were in technical Norwegian) bought a few extra books on certain areas, such as navigation. Between them and YouTube, and also Google searches I found a lot of good instruction.

Good luck!
 
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