Do you have to do a "manual" Navigation Log for the PPL Practical Test?

onezuludelta said:
Exactly, playing with maps is FUN. It's much easier for me to explore with paper rather than electronic, because you don't have to zoom in and out. I used to have sectionals on my bedroom wall (welcome to my bedroom, pretty impressive, right LADIES?) long before I started flight training. And I recently rediscovered my passion for perusing paper maps when planning my UK honeymoon. We slapped a huge UK map on the wall and it was SO much easier to plan instead of pinching and zooming because you've got the big and small picture both available to you simultaneously without having to do anything.

Although, when bored at work, I MAY whip out Foreflight and pinch, scroll, and zoom to my little heart's content. Don't tell anyone.
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Hehe.

Some 10 years ago, I tried to make a point to our scientists that special use airspace made for significant obstacles if we want to control heading. So I hung WACs of the whole west coast on the wall outside my office. The point was made rather quickly, but I soon found people using them to plan road trips. They are still there.
 
You need to know how to do a navigation log, I would try to plan as straight a course as possible for your check ride. It will decrease the chance of making a silly math error, it is much faster to calculate the night/morning when the heading is same and you will be diverted before you get past your 3rd check point anyway.

I would also buy either the Garmin or Foreflight App for the iPad mini or whatever gps system you plan on using in the cockpit after you get your ticket and start learning how to use it. In reading your posts, most likely you will never use a paper navigation log again, so why not start learning something that you will use. Unless you are the type of person who has all the square root tables memorized, (I bet you use the square root button on the calculator) I would learn toward your strengths.

The modern gps systems are much more precise and up to date than you will ever be on pencil and paper.

I would also program in the Weight and Balance feature in the ForeFlight App, or buy a stand alone iPhone app like "Aviation W&B" you will use it more often then the pen and paper method (not that you do not know how to do the weight and balance method by hand) but you will use the app more often because it is easily available, if only because it is quicker, faster and more accurate.

Remember, you do not want to be the first person using a new system, but you do not want to be the last one using the old system
 
ahypnoz said:
Remember, you do not want to be the first person using a new system, but you do not want to be the last one using the old system
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Why on earth not?

I still multiply and divide by hand, even though I've owned calculators for 30 years.

Foreflight will occasionally get things wrong, and you have to be capable of spotting them. Most recently, it plotted and calculated my IFR clearance incorrectly because it included a TEC route and Foreflight couldn't handle two V airways without an intersection between. It's easily fixed, but you have to know it's wrong. It has much more common problems with standard instrument departures.

I've never understood this attitude that all things old are useless. Speaking as a technologist, sometimes the best solutions are low tech.

As for the "much more precise" thing, try giving Foreflight a 10,000 foot climb and compare it's time, distance, and fuel to climb to the POH.
 
FYI - this is another example of the FAA being way behind the times. In this era, arguing "What if the computer breaks" is dumb. If the computer breaks, the pilot can use one of like 8 other devices nearby to do the exact same thing (phone, tablet, laptop, GPS, etc. etc.).

This falls into the "curmudgeon factor" that is keeping pilots away from getting their certs and quitting. There's no reason to require anyone to use 1950s technology to complete something when there are MANY better solutions with multiple redundancies available.

But hey - it sure feels more elite to say that everyone should use a sectional, a plotter, and a pencil to fly around the world.
 
SkyHog said:
FYI - this is another example of the FAA being way behind the times. In this era, arguing "What if the computer breaks" is dumb. If the computer breaks, the pilot can use one of like 8 other devices nearby to do the exact same thing (phone, tablet, laptop, GPS, etc. etc.).

This falls into the "curmudgeon factor" that is keeping pilots away from getting their certs and quitting. There's no reason to require anyone to use 1950s technology to complete something when there are MANY better solutions with multiple redundancies available.

But hey - it sure feels more elite to say that everyone should use a sectional, a plotter, and a pencil to fly around the world.
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If your primary copy of Foreflight gives you the wrong answer, what makes you think your other copies of Foreflight won't give you the same wrong answer?

I find that quite a lot of pilots think they understand redundancy, but don't. Same thing with complexity.
 
MAKG1 said:
If your primary copy of Foreflight gives you the wrong answer, what makes you think your other copies of Foreflight won't give you the same wrong answer?

I find that quite a lot of pilots think they understand redundancy, but don't. Same thing with complexity.
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It is MUCH more likely that a person using a plotter and a pencil will make a mistake than a computer program. The redundancy exists when you have multiple sources to get the info. Sure, if the computer happened to make mathematical errors, I suppose that you'd get the same response from multiple sources, but come on, compared to making a transpositional error, how likely is that to happen?

For what its worth, an abacus is more reliable than a calculator too, because it doesn't have a processor that could suddenly decide that 2+4 = 90 if it got wet.
 
ahypnoz said:
Remember, you do not want to be the first person using a new system, but you do not want to be the last one using the old system
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Hey I resemble that! Nothing wrong with the 'old systems' and using them. Or new updated latest and greatest. But for flight training it's the old stuff one needs.
 
First time looking at this thread and read on a few of the posts, but I'm not sure what the big deal is here. The Practical Test is a test of knowledge and skill. Despite the word "practical," it does not have to reflect how one flies in normal day-to-day conditions. One of the things we are expected to know and be tested on is how to look out a window and use a clock and a map to see if we have enough fuel to make it the rest of the way. There have been reports by CFIs and DPEs who have asked "what would you do if" question with answers indicating the pilot would have no idea how to navigate to that big mountain sitting on the horizon next to the city with the tall buildings.

That's not limited to the world of GPS and iPads. For my instrument checkride more than 20 years ago, my flight plan was prepared by the old text-based DUATS. And some years ago I did a rental checkout for a pilot who just couldn't see the very obvious intersection of an interstate highway and a major crossing road without tuning in two VORs.

It's not about accuracy in navigation. It's not about paper vs plastic. It's about using tools and understanding what those tools are doing.

Personally, I'm a electronics user. Aside from modern panel units, I fly with an EFB with an electronic backup. My paper consists of a notepad (I find it easier to write on than a tablet) and sticky notes in case of an AI or DG failure. Got rid of paper charts about 3 years ago. Before then, before even online tools were widely available, I wrote an Excel spreadsheet that included a national airport and navaid database so I didn't have to do the calculations manually. I only pull out an E6B to refresh myself when it's time to teach cross countries.

For teaching, I don't really care. As soon as a student wants to start using an EFB, I'm happy to start. But even then, a paper sectional is a better "classroom" than a tablet unless you are projecting the information in a way that allows writing and drawing on it for illustration. And a manual E6B wind triangle and navlog in the traditional format allows focus on the steps the electronics take to come up with the magnetic heading shown on the EFB and why following the magenta 265°DTK requires a heading of 255° and why your 110 KT 172 is getting an 80 KT GS in cruise.

Picking up a sectional and printing out a navlog for use on the checkride (toss them away after you pass) may or may not be necessary, but what a small price to pay, especially since, even without playing the "everything including the toilet in the airplane just stopped working" card, "Explain where these numbers come from" or "how would a change in the winds aloft affect these numbers" would be an absolutely proper question. One I think would be best explained to an examiner with circles and pointing on a piece of paper than, "From ForeFlight" or "I'll have to re-do the flight plan."
 
Curmudgeon haha...that's what we call all the old grumpy guys at my RC flying field...they love flying circles with their warbirds
 
SkyHog said:
It is MUCH more likely that a person using a plotter and a pencil will make a mistake than a computer program. The redundancy exists when you have multiple sources to get the info. Sure, if the computer happened to make mathematical errors, I suppose that you'd get the same response from multiple sources, but come on, compared to making a transpositional error, how likely is that to happen?

For what its worth, an abacus is more reliable than a calculator too, because it doesn't have a processor that could suddenly decide that 2+4 = 90 if it got wet.
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I'll say it again. Many pilots think they understand redundancy, but don't.

A mathematical error is hardly the most likely one.
 
Garbage in, garbage out, whether you are doing it manually or electronically. But given reasonable inputs, I think someone is much more likely to make a manual mathematical error than it is for the flight planning program to have an error. In any case the point of understanding flight planning is so that it becomes fairly obvious when the output is not plausible, no matter what method you use.
 
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MAKG1 said:
I'll say it again. Many pilots think they understand redundancy, but don't.

A mathematical error is hardly the most likely one.
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What is the most likely error that flight planning software would make that a human is not much more likely to make?
 
Is this even an argument we have to have? It seems like every fuel starvation incident I read about can be blamed on a COMPLETE LACK of planning, not on a paper vs. electronic problem.

Understand the calculations, DO THEM, make sure they make sense, build in a safety margin, and go flying.
 
SkyHog said:
What is the most likely error that flight planning software would make that a human is not much more likely to make?
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Missing essential feature.

Like VNAV for the case of Foreflight.

Arithmetic errors are exceedingly rare. There are occasionally loss of precision errors, but that's not a huge deal unless you're using it to the exclusion of real avionics.
 
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I did for mine and will also have to do the same for my instrument rating checkride. Not that big a deal. Just use skyvector online to check your data and for helping verify calculations. I took a photo of the rental aircraft compass card and weight and balance data and plugged into my spreadsheet formula. Easy peasy.
 
You need to know how to do the process by hand. Why? So you know what to do if the automation dies. So you have an idea if you goofed in your button pushing. And that happens. It happened to me on my IR ride. I recognized the problem and dealt with it, to my satisfaction and to the DPE's satisfaction.

Will you do it by hand after your PP check ride? Probably not. But, you will still have demonstrated your understanding of the process. I did it by hand for my PP ride, I let DUATS do the work for my IR ride. DPE was fine with that.

Let me give you another example of where I feel knowing how to do something by hand is important. My specialty in engineering for the past 40 years had been electromagnetic compatibility. When new people were getting trained in the labs where I worked they learned how the automation worked. Not the basics behind it. A favorite question of mine when auditing them is "What do you do if you need to make a measurement "NOW" and the control computer just died?" Do you know how to run the test? Do you know how to take the reading from your receiver or spectrum analyzer and convert it to the field strength? Do you know that the automation is doing this correctly? Unless you do, you don't know if the toys are telling the truth.

Or, in the words of James T. Kirk, "You've got to know how things work on a starship!"
 
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