Flight Lesson:10-07-09

Snaggletooth

Snaggletooth

Line Up and Wait
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Dustin
We had to cancel my XC Flight to KELA due to weather, but we did make a Flight to KBYY to train Pilotage and Radio Navigation. If the weather allows us to, we plan the XC to KELA for next Thursday. Ok, on to today's story...

We got to the airport and went over the METAR's, TAF's, and Surface Observations. Planed our route, and talked about the check points we needed to look for.

So we took off of One Seven, and turned to a heading of 244. But the strong south wind, blew us off course a bit and I got "lost." :blush: lol
So we made a turned and flew over the town of Bay City, and knowing that KBYY is about 5 miles east of Bay City we turned due east once we got over the town and easily found KBYY (well, I was the only one lost. lol.) Turns out I looked dead at the Airport but did not see it. So we landed at KBYY and got a bite to eat then took off and did two T&G's then departed the pattern and headed back to KLBX. While heading back to KLBX I stayed dead on course. All my landings were pretty good, despite the winds at 15kt G21kts.

Total hours: 23.3 (and I have now filled my second page in my Log Book.
 
The 4 C's are now the 5 C's:

Climb, Conserve, Communicate, Confess, Comply

Inflation is affecting everything...

Of course I like the eastern Colorado lost procedure much better: remember the mountains are west :D
 
I don't think you needed the "C"s quite yet... you at least correctly ID'd that town and could proceed from there. Had you not had that to work with, then you'd want to climb to see more, slow down to conserve your fuel, then maybe call ATC if you have circled a bit and still can't locate a landmark you can identify on the chart. I don't know why, but some pilots still run out of fuel wandering around because they're embarrassed to ask for a radar fix or other assistance.

Good job, at any rate- I think getting "unlost" is an underrated skill. It's common to focus on never getting lost, which is a fairly unrealistic goal... got to keep those orienteering muscles limbered up, for when the plan changes on the fly or you wind up off-track. It doesn't end when you are done marking the chart and filling out the nav log before the flight.
On long stretches, I often get that exercise by looking at the chart and thinking about diverting... what can I see right now that I could use as a visual waypoint for a new heading?, etc.

Another VFR nav tip: think not only of the waypoints you want to fly straight towards, but what lies on either side of your course. When ticking off time-check or heading-change waypoints, it pays to use something off to one side, rather than something right on the course line.
More often than not, by the time you're close enough to make a positive ID on a landmark or small airport, the darn thing is under the nose!
 
Thanks for all the tips!!

I go in to the Bay City Airport once a week for Civil Air Patrol meetings, and I know the area of Bay City pretty well. As it turned out, I looked dead at the Airport the first time but failed to recognised the big Blue Buildings with White roofs out in the middle of all the baron fields. lol When turning east while over Bay City it was right off the nose and it dawned on me that I looked dead at it the first time I flew past the airport.
 
Its amazing how many times I have flown directly over an enroute airport before realizing that I had done that without even knowing it...a big lesson learned that time seems to be compressed when you are tooling along at 110kts...you do get someplace alot faster than you realize at first. As far as the 'C's go...my CFI got that into my head pretty quickly and on more than one cross country dual, took the plane, had me close my eyes and gave it back to me after a few minutes off course and told me to get back to the course as best I could using pilotage only. Talk about learning how to organize my time, priorities, (fly the plane first) and chart my location with landmarks, climb, conserve, communicate, confess, comply. Once he even spun the HI around and waited for me to realize it was set incorrectly...we actually had a good laugh about that one..another lesson learned however!!
 
I'll be sure and start memorizing the C's so when we go over them I'll have them down.

But the HI is one thing we were always checking En Route, so i'll be sure to watch for that trick. lol
 
I wouldn't get hung up too much on memorizing the 4,5, 6, 8 or however many C's it's up to now. The main thing you need to know is how to get in contact with either ATC or FSS if you get into a jam. You also need to know how to operate the transponder, because if you do get lost, you'll probably get passed off to a radar controller at some point and they will want you to put in a discrete code and/or activate the ident function. It's certainly not hard to do, but you'd be surprised at how many student pilots can't tell you how to do it even though they can recite those C's like a Sunday school kid recites the Lord's prayer.

Memorizing all those C's doesn't do you much good if you don't know what frequency to put into your radio. 122.0 works just about everywhere so long as you have enough altitude to get into the coverage area. You can also get the center frequencies by looking in your green book under an airport that you think you're near.
 
I agree with you...thats why I appreciate that my CFI made the situations 'really' happen during my training and that the object was to apply what I had learned rather than memorize lists, etc.
 
MikePapa said:
I wouldn't get hung up too much on memorizing the 4,5, 6, 8 or however many C's it's up to now. The main thing you need to know is how to get in contact with either ATC or FSS if you get into a jam. You also need to know how to operate the transponder, because if you do get lost, you'll probably get passed off to a radar controller at some point and they will want you to put in a discrete code and/or activate the ident function. It's certainly not hard to do, but you'd be surprised at how many student pilots can't tell you how to do it even though they can recite those C's like a Sunday school kid recites the Lord's prayer.

Memorizing all those C's doesn't do you much good if you don't know what frequency to put into your radio. 122.0 works just about everywhere so long as you have enough altitude to get into the coverage area. You can also get the center frequencies by looking in your green book under an airport that you think you're near.
Click to expand...

It hadnt occured to me that some students wouldnt know how to operate a transponder. Im flying out of an aero club an an afb so its pretty routine, it didnt click the first time i read your post that some may not know how lol.
 
DutchessFlier said:
Its amazing how many times I have flown directly over an enroute airport before realizing that I had done that without even knowing it...a big lesson learned that time seems to be compressed when you are tooling along at 110kts...you do get someplace alot faster than you realize at first. As far as the 'C's go...my CFI got that into my head pretty quickly and on more than one cross country dual, took the plane, had me close my eyes and gave it back to me after a few minutes off course and told me to get back to the course as best I could using pilotage only. Talk about learning how to organize my time, priorities, (fly the plane first) and chart my location with landmarks, climb, conserve, communicate, confess, comply. Once he even spun the HI around and waited for me to realize it was set incorrectly...we actually had a good laugh about that one..another lesson learned however!!
Click to expand...

I also think that "getting unlost" should be in the PPL syllabus (and probably the PTS). And although it seems that many CFIs insist that all pre-PPL checkride flying should be done sans GPS, I think another useful exercise would be to have the student navigate to a nearby but unfamiliar area using the GPS and "fail" the GPS part way there. IMO, given the ubiquetous presence of GPS in airplanes, this is the most likely scenario for getting lost in the first place.
 
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