Student pilot hazing aka nav log

[ArrowFlyer86]

IMHO the short answer is no, you don't really need to manually compute everything by hand in a nav log (and I felt the same way during training). Once you're a PPL you probably won't do that b/c it's painful+time consuming, and I'm not aware of any advantage to doing it by hand over using FF which will give you the same information. Same thing with computing W&B by hand when you can load in your plane specs to FF and it'll spit out a visualization for you.

BUT! There is definitely value in doing it by hand to start so that you have an understanding/appreciation of what Garmin/Foreflight are doing. Kind of like how it's valuable to how to do math on paper before you're given a calculator. Knowing how to use a calculator is no guarantee that you understand the actual fundamentals of how it works and what goes into it.

Plus as @dfw11411 said above - after you do it enough times by hand you'll realize that the $200 a year for Foreflight (or any other EFB) is money well spent

 

[Clip4]

So I am doing my cross country flight tomorrow. I have to fill out the two page nav log, weather log, W&B worksheet etc. I dont mind doing this for my training purposes but is it really necessary to fill out all those papers before every flight with what we have at our disposal with garmin, foreflight, etc?

How many do actually do this after getting their PPL?

When you get to the practical test and can’t explain this stuff you will figure it out.

 

[Jo Gowing]

I’m curious how you will fulfill PA.VI.A.K5 of the ACS, having never done a nav log. If there are DPEs out there allowing that to be done 100% by foreflight, boy are they doing everyone a disservice. Personally, I don’t consider using a gps to calculate or navigate a route to be pilotage or dead reckoning. It’s gps navigation.

PA.VI.A.K5 of the ACS? Translation, please.

As far as pilotage goes, I'm pretty good. I learned to read a paper map when I was a kid (I can even fold them back up correctly, too. ) I need more practice on the dead-reckoning. I'm not good at keeping track of the time. And weight and balance is just basic engineering statics. I struggle a little with an E6B -- they don't make sense to my engineering brain -- but I can use a normal calculator and do wind corrections. I still haven't got all the columns on the nav log figured out, but I showed what I had done for my long XC to my instructor today, and his only question was "how'd you choose the altitude?". I've had eight different CFI's, and I think some of the information has gotten lost in transitions.

 

[MauleSkinner]

PA.VI.A.K5 of the ACS? Translation, please.

The testing standards (please be familiar with them for your checkride.)

 

[Salty]

The fact that you don't know what the ACS is means your instructors suck, or you aren't paying attention. No offense intended.

 

[Half Fast]

I struggle a little with an E6B -- they don't make sense to my engineering brain

No offense, but what sort of engineering did you study? The wind side of an E6B is simple vector addition, and the calculator side is just a circular slide rule. Pretty basic for an engineer, or so it seems to me.

 

[MauleSkinner]

No offense, but what sort of engineering did you study? The wind side of an E6B is simple vector addition, and the calculator side is just a circular slide rule. Pretty basic for an engineer, or so it seems to me.

Sounds like a EE…Excuse Engineering.

 

[Justin M]

Wow!

Might I ask, an Engineer?

I’m really tempted to tell you I graduated with a degree in philosophy ( which is technically true) but i was a comp sci double major until an administrative error required a change 25 years after my last class.

 

[Half Fast]

Sounds like a EE…Excuse Engineering.

Now, now. I’ll have you know I’ve been putting the EE into GEEK since 1984.

 

[Kenny Taylor]

I’m really tempted to tell you I graduated with a degree in philosophy ( which is technically true) but i was a comp sci double major until an administrative error required a change 25 years after my last class.

Double majored in Comp Sci and Philosophy? Mind blown..

 

[MauleSkinner]

I’m really tempted to tell you I graduated with a degree in philosophy ( which is technically true) but i was a comp sci double major until an administrative error required a change 25 years after my last class.

The college decided the combination wasn’t ethical?

 

[danhagan]

When I haze my students I tell the to go to the MX hangar and get a bucket of steam. But for PPL they learn and do the Nav log manually.

When they return without the "steam" ... tell them, well get me the left handed screw driver then so we can wrap this up

 

[Half Fast]

When they return without the "steam" ... tell them, well get me the left handed screw driver then so we can wrap this up

Make it a bucket of prop wash, just to keep it aviation related.

 

[MauleSkinner]

A few feet of flight line.

 

[Half Fast]

A few feet of flight line.

Or a coil of flight line.

 

[robin ardoin]

Metric Crescent wrench and some muffler bearings.

 

[Jo Gowing]

No offense, but what sort of engineering did you study? The wind side of an E6B is simple vector addition, and the calculator side is just a circular slide rule. Pretty basic for an engineer, or so it seems to me.

Mechanical engineering from a decent school. But vector math is so easy, why complicate it with a whiz wheel? Maybe it's just the model that I have. It has too many things on it. Kinda like those pocket knives that have 100 tools. Cute but worthless.

 

[Jo Gowing]

The testing standards (please be familiar with them for your checkride.)
View attachment 111639

I've had 8 different instructors, and I guess each one assumed that I'd already seen that stuff. Now I have, and it's a bit overwhelming.

 

[RyanShort1]

No one.

False. I still sometimes do one when I want to go pure pilotage VFR in my 6 pack Luscombe. Wouldn't want to be solely dependent on my "smart" phone.

 

[Tantalum]

I was just curious if it is something everyone does after getting the ppl. Sounds like some do and others don't.

I might be the outlier here but I often fly at near max gross so a proper weight and balance is always part of my preflight planning. I've also had my iPad randomly quit and shut down, overheat, and become unresponsive. To that point I always print out the nav log and W&B worksheets from foreflight.. this gives me at least a hard copy of the route and paper to write on and should anything happen including the mystical 'ramp check' I'll have reasonable proof that I've done my due diligence.. especially when me and my pax look like a clown car getting out of a plane



PS - was well under max gross, even with a full cooler and tons of water.

PPS - always pad your passengers weights by 10 lb. (A) most people like to underestimate this and (B) nobody flies naked and without a phone or wallet headset bottle of water etc...

 

[MauleSkinner]

I've had 8 different instructors, and I guess each one assumed that I'd already seen that stuff. Now I have, and it's a bit overwhelming.

Make sure your instructor reviews it with you…preferably in small chunks appropriate to the day’s lesson.

 

[geezer]

Some of us live in a world where:

Elementary school students are allowed to use hand held calculators to do their math problems.

Chemistry students use Google search to find the formula for the problem they are doing.

Trigonometry students do the problem with a scientific calculator with all the formulas and function values in them.

Physics students use calculators that even graph the equation so you can visualize the relationship of the data you input.

So why shouldn't they expect electronic devises to do all the thinking for them?

Their modern instructors are from similar training.

40 years ago, my teen age son thought my WW 2 E6B that had flown in combat, and survived, was very cool, and easier to use than his straight slide rule.

He did my nav planning for some of my fights so he would know how when he started flying.

He had no problem when he took his written, or oral, he knew how it all worked.

When the Garmin Glass XXXX froze up, there was no issue, the flight continued on steam guages, not a cell phone.

I do believe in backups with max capability, I bought the first IFR certified hand held GPS the year it came on the market.

A partner bought a hand held NAV Com, and we shared our "toys", for just in case the electric system of the plane quit. That has happened to me.

I have been an instructor in a different field, and my students often asked questions that I did not know the answer to. I found the answer within 24 hours.

You new students need to ask your instructors to teach you these fundamental skills. If they do not know them, they need to study over night, and come back to the next lesson with the skills.

 

[ahmad]

Did my 1st night dual cross country flight last night. Had my nav log and calculations. I was off course by a couple miles my caught it and corrected it. My briefing had me thinking it would be a bit turbulent and bumpy and surprisingly ended up being super smooth and great flight. Did a full stop landing at KALN. Once we departed KALN my instructor says take me to 3LF. What? Yes, you heard me. take me to 3LF at night. Fumbled around to find where the heck 3LF is on the chart. Found it and headed towards it. I am thinking he just wants me to see if I can get us there. Well, 5 miles out I asked if we were landing. He says yes. Crap I gotta dive and lose 3000 ft. lol. So did a right 360 and landed. Taxi back and headed home. At home winds were from 190 at 7. Runway 15 would be preferred but he says lets land on runway 23 since it much longer and we can practice crosswinds. Cool sounds good. He sets up the ILS just to show me what others do when landing runway 23. He was about to start explaining the ILS and glideslope when I was already flying it(I have done it on my simulator 100s of times). Not to brag but I nailed it from 4 miles out all the way down to the runway. Speed was good, glide slope good, everything was good. It was very interesting because looking at the runway my eyes tells me the runway is to the right but instruments are telling me to keep my left heading to stay centered because of the crosswinds.

We landed an he tells me I am not like his other students.

Doing my 1st long cross country solo flight later this week. Flying is amazing.

 

[MauleSkinner]

Did my 1st night dual cross country flight last night. Had my nav log and calculations. I was off course by a couple miles my caught it and corrected it. My briefing had me thinking it would be a bit turbulent and bumpy and surprisingly ended up being super smooth and great flight. Did a full stop landing at KALN. Once we departed KALN my instructor says take me to 3LF. What? Yes, you heard me. take me to 3LF at night. Fumbled around to find where the heck 3LF is on the chart. Found it and headed towards it. I am thinking he just wants me to see if I can get us there. Well, 5 miles out I asked if we were landing. He says yes. Crap I gotta dive and lose 3000 ft. lol. So did a right 360 and landed. Taxi back and headed home. At home winds were from 190 at 7. Runway 15 would be preferred but he says lets land on runway 23 since it much longer and we can practice crosswinds. Cool sounds good. He sets up the ILS just to show me what others do when landing runway 23. He was about to start explaining the ILS and glideslope when I was already flying it(I have done it on my simulator 100s of times). Not to brag but I nailed it from 4 miles out all the way down to the runway. Speed was good, glide slope good, everything was good. It was very interesting because looking at the runway my eyes tells me the runway is to the right but instruments are telling me to keep my left heading to stay centered because of the crosswinds.

We landed an he tells me I am not like his other students.

Doing my 1st long cross country solo flight later this week. Flying is amazing.

Did you check NOTAMS before landing at 3LF?

 

[Ryan F.]

So I am doing my cross country flight tomorrow. I have to fill out the two page nav log, weather log, W&B worksheet etc. I dont mind doing this for my training purposes but is it really necessary to fill out all those papers before every flight with what we have at our disposal with garmin, foreflight, etc?

How many do actually do this after getting their PPL?

To answer your question directly - very few.

To answer the question which seems to be implied, i.e. what is the point of doing this for a private pilot pilot practical test, I have a perspective here which might be interesting to some (including you... )

An electronic nav log is perfectly suitable for the purposes of Tasks I.D. Cross-Country Flight Planning and all of the appropriate Knowledge and Skill elements of VI.A. Pilotage and Dead Reckoning.

That's right, you can show up with an electronic flight plan "auto generated" by ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot. Absolutely no technical issue with that.

But, I don't recommend it, and I've seen it linked to more than a few situations which led to Notices of Disapproval for the applicant.

If you show up with an auto-generated flight plan, by default I'll need to ask you questions about how you computed the WCA, ground speed, fuel burn, etc. You'd get these questions with a hand-generated paper nav-log as well, but you're demonstrating knowledge by preparing an accurate navigation log, and as a result I may only look for issues which require "digging" after reviewing your flight log.

Furthermore, you'll know any answers to questions such as "how is this computed, or how did you come up with this TAS" because you'll have actually done so for the nav log in question. You won't need to reverse engineer the result or work a sample problem.

Here's a couple of examples which come to mind:

• Applicant presents a nav log which looks correct on one half (winds, leg distance, magnetic variation, WCA, etc.) but the other half (ground speed, fuel burn, fuel remaining) is completely off. Turns out he hand calculated the legs but let ForeFlight do the work on the fuel burn and ground speed, resulting in an illogical burn and ground speed for the winds of the day. (He calculated it by hand the night before with a tailwind, then ForeFlight updated the weather and the winds were no longer the same.). This sort of discrepancy is obvious to a pilot examiner.
• Applicant brings in a nav log generated by ForeFlight. To evaluate Task I.D, she is presented with a scenario in which the winds are from the north rather than the south, and asked to compute a new WCA. She uses a manual E6-B but after multiple attempts continues to get a wind correction angle which would result in a wrong-way crab. This places the applicant's knowledge and application of basic navigation skills in doubt.
• Applicant presents a Garmin Pilot generated navigation log for an airplane which is different from the one being used on the practical test. Cannot determine why the performance numbers don't match the POH but concludes "the computer must be right."

In general, when you bring an electronic nav log there's a good chance that you're going to deal with additional evaluator-presented scenarios. One way or another, the applicant must demonstrate this knowledge and apply it; might as well base it on the hand-calculated navigation log you bring with you to the practical test.

 

[chemgeek]

B.G. (Before Garmin, and EFBs) I always filled out a paper flight log with estimated segment flight times, and carried paper approach charts (either separately printed or the whole paper NOAA books). The flight log tells you if you are ahead of or behind your estimated fuel endurance and required reserves. Now a lot of that can be automated with EFBs, but I still monitor the flight log for fuel status. Knowing how to plan and manage a flight that doesn't wind up as a fuel exhaustion incident is a very important skill that too many pilots still manage to foul up.

 

[MauleSkinner]

Keep in mind that the purpose of a nav log is slightly different pre-checkride than post-checkride.

Pre-checkride you’re learning how to use it and demonstrate your knowledge. Lots of checkpoints and lots of calculations are appropriate.

Post-checkride you’re using it to plan and monitor a flight. Checkpoints an hour apart (and so only a couple of of calculations per trip) are reasonable.

 

[Redneckpilot]

I agree with those who have opined that manual flight planning, especially during training, is an invaluable skill.

A nice by-product of completing the nav log and sectional is it gives you an opportunity to really learn the area. You will capture all those tall towers, rivers, power line right-of-ways, and other landmarks in the back of your mind. These are the kind of things that may bring you home if things go bad someday. In other words it teaches you how to truly navigate.

Resist the urge to succumb to the “Direct-to” mentality.
Any monkey can push a button, but fewer and fewer can truly navigate.

 

[ateamer]

A few feet of flight line.

An A&P at the FBO where I did PP training sent the new shop helper to the receptionist to have her order six feet of Fallopian Tube.

 

[dbahn]

One thing you'll realize from doing a manual flight log is that the electronic options now are far more accurate than extrapolations from winds aloft, magnetic variation and other factors, plus it's constantly updated as conditions change during the flight. Ultimately you almost always save time and fuel by using them.

 

[Palmpilot]

Mechanical engineering from a decent school. But vector math is so easy, why complicate it with a whiz wheel? Maybe it's just the model that I have. It has too many things on it. Kinda like those pocket knives that have 100 tools. Cute but worthless.

I don't think I've ever seen an E6B that left any of that out.

 

[robin ardoin]

Resist the urge to succumb to the “Direct-to” mentality.
Any monkey can push a button, but fewer and fewer can truly navigate.

So true. For years I navigated offshore with compass, Loran C (only two Time Distance led display) and a paper graph bottom recorder and found wrecks/reefs and our way back to the pass at the end of the weekend. In the GPS era I can’t count the fools I’ve encountered on the VHF that were lost 40+ miles offshore because they either couldn’t figure out how to operate their nav equipment or the GPS went TU. I think they considered the compass a hood ornament.

 

[Pinecone]

Someone did a data analysis of long distance cruisers running aground. The vast majority had SatNav systems installed, back when only a few boats had them. Think about it.....

 

[ahmad]

So true. For years I navigated offshore with compass, Loran C (only two Time Distance led display) and a paper graph bottom recorder and found wrecks/reefs and our way back to the pass at the end of the weekend. In the GPS era I can’t count the fools I’ve encountered on the VHF that were lost 40+ miles offshore because they either couldn’t figure out how to operate their nav equipment or the GPS went TU. I think they considered the compass a hood ornament.

That's hilarious. You win.

 

[murphey]

Some of us live in a world where:

Elementary school students are allowed to use hand held calculators to do their math problems.

Chemistry students use Google search to find the formula for the problem they are doing.

Trigonometry students do the problem with a scientific calculator with all the formulas and function values in them.

Physics students use calculators that even graph the equation so you can visualize the relationship of the data you input.

So why shouldn't they expect electronic devises to do all the thinking for them?

Their modern instructors are from similar training.

40 years ago, my teen age son thought my WW 2 E6B that had flown in combat, and survived, was very cool, and easier to use than his straight slide rule.

He did my nav planning for some of my fights so he would know how when he started flying.

He had no problem when he took his written, or oral, he knew how it all worked.

When the Garmin Glass XXXX froze up, there was no issue, the flight continued on steam guages, not a cell phone.

I do believe in backups with max capability, I bought the first IFR certified hand held GPS the year it came on the market.

A partner bought a hand held NAV Com, and we shared our "toys", for just in case the electric system of the plane quit. That has happened to me.

I have been an instructor in a different field, and my students often asked questions that I did not know the answer to. I found the answer within 24 hours.

You new students need to ask your instructors to teach you these fundamental skills. If they do not know them, they need to study over night, and come back to the next lesson with the skills.

I’m teaching first year computer science. As for the MOD function…no one under 50 (40?) knows what long division is. And far too many believe that integers and real numbers cannot be negative.

 

[nauga]

I’m teaching first year computer science. As for the MOD function…no one under 50 (40?) knows what long division is. And far too many believe that integers and real numbers cannot be negative.

Is this a competitive admission program, and is this a 'weeder' class? My recent experience with CS graduates tends towards the other end of the spectrum, but it's clearly skewed and I won't judge everyone by that. Several of them are excellent pilots, too

Nauga,
who is not built to code

 

[Clip4]

The other issue is the CFI endorsing the cross country is required to certify the students XC planning is correct. At the larger flight schools a signed copy of that planning is placed in the student folder.