Navigation Logs

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Gmanattack

Filing Flight Plan
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Jul 21, 2012
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Gmanattack
I have started cross country flying and have learned filing out a navigation log, using the whiz wheel, etc. I find it incredibly enjoyable being able to navigate VFR with dead reckoning, timing from point to point, realizing when you've gone off course, correcting, etc. It makes the flight time fly by (pun intended) but I wonder how many pilots continue to do this after they get their license?

I heard two pilots talking at my airport and one was saying to the other how glad he was that he doesn't have to do all that and can just use the GPS direct function.

Just curious on what the pulse is out there on this topic.
 
:popcorn:

Personally I use a combination of ForeFlight an online resources to do my planning, filing, etc. Surely the direct to or flight plan buttons are used by those of us that have that equipment. No matter I still keep track of where I am and like to tune in a VOR along the way to keep track and do some cross referencing.
 
Gmanattack said:
I have started cross country flying and have learned filing out a navigation log, using the whiz wheel, etc. I find it incredibly enjoyable being able to navigate VFR with dead reckoning, timing from point to point, realizing when you've gone off course, correcting, etc. It makes the flight time fly by (pun intended) but I wonder how many pilots continue to do this after they get their license?

I heard two pilots talking at my airport and one was saying to the other how glad he was that he doesn't have to do all that and can just use the GPS direct function.

Just curious on what the pulse is out there on this topic.
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It's good to hear someone still enjoys real pilotage and navigation :yes:


I still do my nav logs by hand for any very long or tricky x-countries.
 
I just move my finger along the chart as I go and mark waypoints / time as I cross them. No log.
 
I still check my fuel/ time against what I planned at least on 2 waypoints most every flight...doesn't matter if in jet or Cessna 150
 
I like to print a paper navlog and track along with Foreflight. I also like to fly along airways and keep the VORs tuned in VFR, and without any other option, of course IFR.
 
Thanks for the comments everyone! I haven't spent a lot of time with ForeFlight yet. I'll have to start getting familiar with that.
 
I use paper nav logs, charts, my watch, the window, and E6B for timing. Just like in the olden days.

Then I use the Direct-To to make sure I'm doing it right and didn't forget to carry the one.

For me, half the fun of an XC is the navigation.
 
I still use paper charts for all my cross country flights. I fly at least once a month using deadreckoning alone, otherwise it's a combination of both. You never know when those fancy electronic devices will let you down. Paper charts work without fail.

Doug
 
I'm a real fan of GPS. But then it's all rugged mountains around here, with a lot of restricted (usually military) airspace thrown in. Hardly any cross countries would be "direct". I use current sectionals & internet flight planners. I will print a navigation log, fill in some desired altitudes, and then use these to compare actual versus estimated fuel consumption. If the plan is to be somewhere in a hurry, then it could be flight at higher altitudes with oxygen if required.............and "direct". For these cross countries, all of the plan does get entered into the GPS, which also works well for later flights. I use a Garmin 696.

L.Adamson
 
douglas393 said:
I still use paper charts for all my cross country flights. I fly at least once a month using deadreckoning alone, otherwise it's a combination of both. You never know when those fancy electronic devices will let you down. Paper charts work without fail.
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Out of six aviation GPS's since 1993............I did have a few minute failure back around 1994. They may be fancy alright...............but with a good installation, and especially antenna system, they're extremely dependable. FWIW-----------I do keep a lot of tabs with a lot of pilots regarding dependability. An airline pilot friend of mine, does remember a short GPS failure in their Boeing 737, about 11 years ago. Another friend who pilots a 737-800 in which the GPS is the main navigation system, reports the same. Paper charts can never do what these devices can.....period!!!

L.Adamson
 
You are going to be thrust forward into the 21st century after getting your license. Dead reckoning pilotage is not going to be required because you are always going to have a magenta line to follow on a simple hand held GPS devise which will probably be mounted to your instrument panel.

Take a look in the cockpit of any bizjet and you're very likely to see a Garmin 496 velcroed onto the glareshield.

But old fashioned pilotage won't die, you'll be mysteriously enamored to it. You'll never throw that wiz-wheel away although you'll eventually stop carrying it with you on every flight and for a long time you'll keep your thumb positioned on that old beat up sectional that is technically illegal to even be aboard the aircraft.

But progress is, ultimately, progress and you'll be able to click on an icon and instantly know where all of the coutless temporarily restricted airspaces are

ain't that great
 
Silvaire said:
Take a look in the cockpit of any bizjet and you're very likely to see a Garmin 496 velcroed onto the glareshield.
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And the same for any old WWII bomber , and Connie that I've seen
 
In my amateur flying, it is often critical to know if headwinds are too strong, because Cherokee is not fast enough to brute-force winds. This is what the navigation log is mostly for, in my case.
 
I use an online flight planning program such as that offered by AOPA. Others include DUAT, CSC DUATS, etc.

I use their flight plans, planned ground speed, ETA etc to monitor and compare against actual inflight data to determine if I am ahead or behind, upper winds aloft changes etc, impacts fuel remaining at destination. The flight plans also give me the next headings.

Not all aircraft I fly have GPS, sometimes pilotage or VOR navigation is needed. I have an iPad now with ForeFlight, but I noticed after a long day the battery level was getting low. Turned it off, no gps, dig out the paper chart and the flight plan. Save the battery for arriving at the destination.

Be flexible, need to know how to do it the old way before gps, stay proficient. Electronics fail.
 
Doing a navlog manually is a lot of work, but it's kind of fun. The part about it that I don't like is that it's only really accurate at the time you write it up. As soon as a new winds aloft forecast comes out, it changes. If the winds aloft isn't accurate, it changes. If you get vectored or get altitude assignments when you transition airspace, it changes.

I can fill out a detailed navlog and I get good results in the air if nothing changes, but what I'm bad at is doing dead reckoning on the fly. I'd like to be able to go up without a navlog and still fly point-to-point with precision, gathering information and adjusting as I go. That's the skill I'd really like to have.

I need to figure out a better workflow for doing all that work in the air. For me, it's a lot to manage while in the process of flying an airplane.
 
I always will make a navigation log with checkpoints measured and times calculated. Once I'm flying, I don't always have my times checked off for each checkpoint but I'll just verify one or two checkpoints to see if I'm ahead or behind schedule and to see if the winds aloft are helping or hurting. Mainly I do this to check fuel burn to gurantee I don't run out.

One thing I will say is I have flown to many of the same airports since getting my PPL so I pretty much just use the same Checkpoints each time. This significantly cuts down on the amount of time flight planning takes.
 
bqmassey said:
Doing a navlog manually is a lot of work, but it's kind of fun. The part about it that I don't like is that it's only really accurate at the time you write it up. As soon as a new winds aloft forecast comes out, it changes. If the winds aloft isn't accurate, it changes. If you get vectored or get altitude assignments when you transition airspace, it changes.

I can fill out a detailed navlog and I get good results in the air if nothing changes, but what I'm bad at is doing dead reckoning on the fly. I'd like to be able to go up without a navlog and still fly point-to-point with precision, gathering information and adjusting as I go. That's the skill I'd really like to have.

I need to figure out a better workflow for doing all that work in the air. For me, it's a lot to manage while in the process of flying an airplane.
Click to expand...

The compromise I reached pretty quickly after my first solo XCs was to only completely fill in the part of the log that deals with course changes; or the "planning side", as i think of it. That allows me to see if the trip will work given the pre-flight wind and ceiling information, and shows true course and estimated wind-corrected heading. But it will probably not hold up as the flight progresses, so the waypoint-to-waypoint side stays blank except for waypoint names and distances. That way I can just jot down the real-world, real-time mag headings, groundspeeds, etc. Without a nav log, you might still want to write these things down anyway. A nav log gives you nice neat boxes to write everything, in a useful order.

In the end, though, as long as you always know where you are and how much fuel you have left you are good to go for VFR navigation.
Workflow is as follows: look outside. Find something you can ID on the chart. Use the chart to determine the distance from that point to another landmark, preferably on or near your intended course. If you have a "5nm fingertip", that's usually a good enough ruler. Note the time you pass the first landmark. Using either a heading off the chart or just pilotage, head towards the next. Find your wind-corrected heading as you go, and write it down (in case you need to circle or change heading briefly for some reason). Note the time you pass the next waypoint, and apply the elapsed time to your remaining fuel (based on known burn), then apply the average groundspeed between those two waypoints to your time remaining to the next waypoint or your destination. That's about all there is to it.
 
Once upon a time, I wrote an Excel spreadsheet that did all of the calculation work (including TAS). It was easy to modify for new wind forecasts on the ground, but not easy in the air.

After getting the license, a LOT of people treat a GPS by following the magenta line. While this is somewhat questionable for an IFR certified GPS (because, despite being very detailed, it is not always 100% correct, particularly for obstructions and small-scale terrain), it's a wild misuse of a handheld. The real power of a handheld is as an instant replanner. But it is no replacement for real navigation; they can give you wildly wrong answers without warning.

GPS does not work in the mountains very well. You simply don't follow straight lines. Pilotage may be your only option there -- particularly "I Follow Roads." Even ded reckoning gives you trouble, as the wind is likely to be variable in high terrain.
 
Depends on what kind of flying I'm doing. Most of it lately has been taking friends and family for a joy ride within 50 miles or so of home. For most of that I don't really need a chart or VOR. Just look out the window and go where I want to go. I already know where the Class B, C, and D airports are.

On the other hand, I know people who could probably get lost doing even that without a GPS - scary.
 
MAKG1 said:
GPS does not work in the mountains very well. You simply don't follow straight lines. Pilotage may be your only option there -- particularly "I Follow Roads." Even ded reckoning gives you trouble, as the wind is likely to be variable in high terrain.
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Yeah I agree, I happen to do a lot of the IFR (I Follow Roads) pilotage when ever I go up. Mainly anything under 100nm I fly like this.
 
I don't fill out VFR nav logs, but 99% of the time I never approach fuel reserves. I simply see no value in it on a three hour or less flight. It doesn't help with my navigation, I always know and track where the F I am.

Southwest isn't plotting waypoints every five miles and recomputing with their E6B's either. (For that matter I doubt they are manually completing IFR nav logs outside of their EFIS).
 
My cross country fuel planning consists of 2 key steps. #1 figure out how far I am flying, and whether or not that distance is within the realm of possibility given my planned fuel load. #2 once I get airborne and leveled off at altitude, I pull up the destination waypoint on the old INS, check FPAS, and make sure that it shows me landing there with a decent fuel reserve, plus about 1000 extra pounds on top of that since it doesn't factor in approach fuel in its calculations. If it looks good, I continue. If it doesn't, I make an early decision to make a pit stop somewhere else. I made tons of jet logs in flight training (both civilian and military) and I can't think of a time when I ever spent much time referencing one. IMHO, jet (or nav) logs are just a glorified way of sanity checking that you can reasonably get to your destination with the amount of gas you have. Developing a sense of how far you can get with a certain amount of fuel (or alternately how long you can loiter) is a key skill to have.
 
denverpilot said:
I like to print a paper navlog and track along with Foreflight. I also like to fly along airways and keep the VORs tuned in VFR, and without any other option, of course IFR.
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This. I'm planning my flights using VORs and pilotage and confirming with Foreflight. I find that, while getting comfortable with intercepting and tracking radials, having Foreflight open while I'm messing with the OBS and the DG really helps me nail down corrections.
 
I actually prefer not to follow airways when I'm flying VFR. If there is an airway that goes direct from where I am going to where I need to be that's a different story but I don't go out of my way to follow an airway. I do this mainly for traffic avoidance. Most people these days follow airways using GPS which is extremely precise, so you end up with a whole bunch of aircraft flying perfectly one behind the other. Back when people used Nav and ADF everyone would be a bit left or right of course, if one aircraft would catch up to the other and nether pilot would notice then chances are the aircraft would just pass. With GPS your going to crash right into the guy. Because of this I try not to follow airways unless I need to.
 
I also love the mental exercise and precision of preparing a good nav log and flying it.

But.

I have not done one in, probably, five years. I do print the ones FltPlan.com prepares, and have it for reference. I also still like to do a little following on the sectional, which my wife mocks. When I remind her of the time we had to kill ship's power for smoke and navigate by DR and chart, she points out that this was before we had a portable GPS.
 
Paper chart, E6b and wristwatch. Never seen a GPS. Never needed one.
 
Matthew said:
I use paper nav logs, charts, my watch, the window, and E6B for timing. Just like in the olden days.

Then I use the Direct-To to make sure I'm doing it right and didn't forget to carry the one.

For me, half the fun of an XC is the navigation.
Click to expand...

:yeahthat:
For me using my eyes for navigation is one of the joys of flying.
 
Apache123 said:
:yeahthat:
For me using my eyes for navigation is one of the joys of flying.
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at $6/gallon, if the joy ever existed, it's gone. Autopilot flying a perfectly straight line per the gps, saves gas.
 
Gmanattack said:
I have started cross country flying and have learned filing out a navigation log, using the whiz wheel, etc. I find it incredibly enjoyable being able to navigate VFR with dead reckoning, timing from point to point, realizing when you've gone off course, correcting, etc. It makes the flight time fly by (pun intended) but I wonder how many pilots continue to do this after they get their license?

I heard two pilots talking at my airport and one was saying to the other how glad he was that he doesn't have to do all that and can just use the GPS direct function.

Just curious on what the pulse is out there on this topic.
Click to expand...

I went back to this (well I had a stopwatch anyway) on my longest cross country when fuel was an issue. Otherwise, no, I don't use that anymore.
 
JHW said:
at $6/gallon, if the joy ever existed, it's gone. Autopilot flying a perfectly straight line per the gps, saves gas.
Click to expand...

Perfectly straight lines are also quite bad at dodging airspace, terrain or obstructions.

GPS's have their use, but they are not pilots.

A straight line is only guaranteed to be the shortest distance with uniform winds. Which don't exist in real life.
 
I use fltplan.com to plan and print out my nav log. I don't use the nav log much other than to see winds aloft and select altitudes. I back it all up with foreflight. Now a'days I don't even print out the nav log. Foreflight has an app that downloads the days nav logs.

Foreflight for enroute charts and watching my airplane move across the country and Jepps TC for shooting approaches.
 
JHW said:
at $6/gallon, if the joy ever existed, it's gone. Autopilot flying a perfectly straight line per the gps, saves gas.
Click to expand...

At $6/gal I still fly just for the fun of it. I don't know if there's a single flight I could make that would be cheaper/easier riding an airline or driving in my car.

I enjoy navigating in general. On Colorado trail hikes I'm the one with the map, in DayZ (apocalypse survival simulator) my sole job is to navigate via map and compass, going to climbing crags with only a description and poor pictures of the various routes we want to try I'm the one in the group who tries to pick out where they most likely are by the rock formations.

I find my ipad usually sits in the back seat with CloudAhoy running. Everything else is the ol' eyeball.

I fly for hobby, so if I couldn't enjoy it why would I do it? =D
 
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