Daisy Chain Flight Planning?

jnmeade

jnmeade

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Jim Meade
I am in a situation where I'd like to fly to half a dozen or more airports, doing a T&G at each and continuing on.
Can anyone suggest or remind me of a flight planning program that will do that fairly easily? It doesn't need to be too precise, but incorporating an approach and departure at typical times and fuel burns would seem appropriate. (I suppose I can plot each airport as a waypoint and go from A through B through C, etc., but that doesn't include the other time involved in the T&G.) Swagging the approach-departure times is possible but planning it might be a little more accurate/consistent.
TIA
 
Fltplan.com will do it, but not as one flight plan I don't think. If you want to get more or less accurate times with climbs and descents taken into account, you'll need to enter each leg as a separate flight. It won't calculate the times for a stop & go at waypoints, unless there's some feature I haven't found yet.
 
Personally I'd use SkyVector, and plug in a somewhat slower expected airspeed to allow for the approaches and winds.
 
It seems to me that in looking for this kind of precision with what you have planned is similar to the old saying of "measuring with a micrometer and cutting with an axe". In other words, there are so many uncontrollable and unknown factors here that anything above doing what @RotorDude suggests is just an academic exercise. For instance, how long and how much fuel does it take to do a touch-and-go? I have no idea, but it's not the same as adding a landing and a takeoff together. Takeoff, climbout, descent and landing are the areas that contain the biggest WAGs in flight planning for any airplane. Wind changes, exact throttle position changes, airspeed changes, etc. You're multiplying those unavoidable errors by 6.

Just keep it simple and have a good flight!
 
Too much reliance on software. Use a paper chart, plot it out. You know how long it takes you to descend from cruise to land, add that to your times. Same for takeoffs. Got distance and numbers and fuel estimates? Great. Now consider the weather impact. All done?

Now check with software.

In the air, write down times when it's safe to do so...

When you finish, compare your plan to the software plan to actual time and fuel. Software always assumes perfect and exact data for the airplane and weather. Some software will take weather into account.
 
Paper? Didn't you RTOT? (Ravioli runs away for a while)
 
Apparently no one is aware of a program that accomplishes the task I asked about. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
 
The best flight planning software that takes into account weather, aircraft characteristics, fuel consumption for take-off, climb, cruise, descent and landing with T&Gs, is between your ears.

[warning, snide comment follows]

Obviously that's too much effort for you.

[end snide comment]
 
jnmeade said:
Apparently no one is aware of a program that accomplishes the task I asked about. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
Click to expand...

That's not what they're saying. I think it's more of a you won't have access to the software that does it. We have tactical planning software at work that allows for climb, descent, and approach segments to be inserted in a flight plan based on a performance model loaded for the aircraft in question. The software is called PFPS and its moving map companion FalconView. Now updated to the JMPS ("Jumps") suite upgrade in AF lingo. You can climb, descend, shoot approaches, calculate reserves, wind the plan, adjust inflight fuel changes (aka air refueling), account for changes in gross weight and TAS (aka I just lost a ton of weight by bombing the **** out of something),et al.... for waypoint after waypoint after waypoint to your heart's content. Let's just say I didn't crank out a KBAD-PGUA non-stop flight plan by hand. And I'll leave it at that in the interest of OPSEC.

So the software exists. I'm pretty sure airline dispatch departments have commercial software that accomplishes the same tasks. The good news is you can still accomplish 90% solution of what you seek by merely assigning an average value to the descent-to-touchdown segment of your flight, and an approximate climbout-to-altitude value to the climbouts, and stick that value for every airport you intend to touch n go at. The cruise legs would be calculated normally. It should get you a fairly usable number. Additionally, with post-flight data to compare you could come up with an average value you can use on subsequent flights in order to further simplify and accelerate the flight planning process for yourself and your specific airplane. Why re-measure every time when you can make a mold once, type of thing.
 
Why not run it as four separate flight plans? It may not be perfect due to taxi fuel, but it will be darn close.
 
This is a good question and I am sorry but I don't have an answer for you. I have been wondering the same thing for a while now but have not found any webpage of app that allows that.
If you find anything, please do post back to let us know, I am curious.
In the meantime, I agree that you are stuck planning your trip flight by flight. It's not that much work, c'mon, it should be fun to plan a cool trip.
Most importantly: ENJOY the flight!
 
Kritchlow said:
Why not run it as four separate flight plans? It may not be perfect due to taxi fuel, but it will be darn close.
Click to expand...

Not only that, but AIM 6.2.6(g) strongly suggests doing so.

Bob Gardner
 
bobmrg said:
Not only that, but AIM 6.2.6(g) strongly suggests doing so.

Bob Gardner
Click to expand...

Bob, I flew many of these missions over the last two days and some of the airports were about 10 minutes apart and all were in good weather and in populated areas frequently traveled. I'm not sure FSS would have enjoyed all those flight plans and I know I would not have. I appreciate that in some cases your suggestion has great value.
 
jnmeade said:
Bob, I flew many of these missions over the last two days and some of the airports were about 10 minutes apart and all were in good weather and in populated areas frequently traveled. I'm not sure FSS would have enjoyed all those flight plans and I know I would not have. I appreciate that in some cases your suggestion has great value.
Click to expand...
Not speaking for Bob, but when I suggested four flight plans I was talking from a planning standpoint, not a filing standpoint.

As far as filing goes, that's simple. Just put the airport in as a fix on your flight plan. If the software won't take it put in lat/long or radial/dme. Add a few minutes for the touch and go and you will be close.
 
murphey said:
The best flight planning software that takes into account weather, aircraft characteristics, fuel consumption for take-off, climb, cruise, descent and landing with T&Gs, is between your ears.

[warning, snide comment follows]

Obviously that's too much effort for you.

[end snide comment]
Click to expand...

It's all right to be snide. It doesn't bother me. But as a general observation, let me observe that it's unlikely that anyone on this board knows what is too much effort for me, nor whether the value of the effort is worth it to me when it may not be to someone else. Mine was a simple question which only takes a simple answer, which seems to be that the software is available but not practicable. That is all I asked and all I needed to know, so it was a worthwhile discussion. I just spent two days exercising the application I asked about and it would have been nice to have a simple program to help planning, but I made it work, albeit not as smoothly as I'd have liked. I'll keep my eye out for this kind of program and if I find one I'll try it out and pass it on. I appreciate everyone's input.
 
Kritchlow said:
Not speaking for Bob, but when I suggested four flight plans I was talking from a planning standpoint, not a filing standpoint.

As far as filing goes, that's simple. Just put the airport in as a fix on your flight plan. If the software won't take it put in lat/long or radial/dme. Add a few minutes for the touch and go and you will be close.
Click to expand...
Bob's comments came from the Search And Rescue part of the AIM and I took them in that context. Maybe I was in error.
 
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