VFR Navigation

L.Adamson said:
Fine,

You do it your way, and I'll do it my way. I use GPS, I use XM weather. I like to know what's going on hundreds of miles ahead weather wise. I like keeping better track of actual fuel useage, thanks to the GPS being tied to my fuel monitor. I prefer in flight presentations of TFRs and exact boundaries all of the military airspaces that cover the mountain west. I like knowing where emergency airstrips are located within just a few seconds. Just last year, a TFR for a forest fire popped up, and actually changed shape during the flight. It's done through XM weather.

I'm not going to pretend to be someone...........that say's, "I don't need that stuff!" I'm just going to be one, who knows a lot more that you do, as I cross the country..... in real time, without having to make numerous calls to an FSS....or have my charts scattered about. Most likely, the trip was already programmed into the GPS (including the reverse course), and charts are folded and ready to follow along.

A side note: I remember watching a Richard Collins presentation for the Garmin 1000 & Sportys. He has close to 20,000 flight hrs, has wrote numerous aviation books, as well as plenty of articles, and training tapes. At the end, he made the comment that some pilots still prefer the old way of charts, pencils, and rulers. He said, "let them do that if they want". But personally, he had no plans to go back to those methods. That was 2005.

I just seen a recent interview, in which he was asked if he felt pilots were safer with "glass". He said "no".............except for two important items, which were electronic terrain depicition & traffic alerts. I can go along with that. It's that TERRAIN function, that I keep harping about here. If you have it, chances are you might live to tell about it, when it all goes to hell in just a few seconds.

L.Adamson
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Why do you need any of that VFR CAVU? And you seriously need an XM display to show you where a forest fire is when VFR? I would just avoid the smoke since it's not good for the engine anyway. I have all of that in my aircraft, but I don't *need* it. If you need it, you need to get some remedial training.
 
denverpilot said:
And I hate to say it, but I've met some pilots with well more than 100 hours who haven't learned to read weather data...
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Why bother if you're going anyway? :popcorn:

Seriously I look at the type of system and what it's likely to produce for ceilings and make a go/no go decision. From there once it's a go I just look at the clouds and steer by what I see and find my way through. For tactical concerns outside of an onboard radar there is only the window to give you information. I flew IFR just long enough with a functioning radar that I know that most the clouds I'm around I don't want to be in without one, ground base radar is too old for tactical decision making, and that includes ATC telling you about severe clouds. ATC and XM both wanted me to turn 90 R once into a big black cell that the XM was painting right in front of me, where clear light skies were. Had I been IMC, I would have turned. Luckily I was underneath and I clarified the weather situation and he turned an aircraft behind me to follow my path.

Weather is dynamic, it will be what it will be regardless the predictions.
 
Yesterday after work I took a short flight to an airport 51NM away for a little bit of the XC time that I need.

Before I left to come back home I calculated my Magnetic Heading but also reversed the route on my IPad Foreflight and then put a checklist over the IPad.

I took off and turned to the MH and flew it as accurately as I could keeping the DG updated against the compass. I got about halfway home and it appeared that I was further away from an airport in sight than I thought I should be so I picked up the checklist and cheated. I was exactly on my blue route line.

I put the checklist back on the IPad and tried to ignore the familiar surroundings and instead just fly the heading. I ended up just flying straight over my home field crossing midfield to enter a downwind.

An old retired airline pilot who used to run the FBO where I flew 20 years ago once said that his favorite navigation was to just pick a heading and fly it. Even for a rookie like me it can work out pretty well.

Of course if it had been 250NM instead of 51, especially in unfamiliar country, I think I would have been paying closer attention to the chart.
 
EdFred said:
Why do you need any of that VFR CAVU? And you seriously need an XM display to show you where a forest fire is when VFR? I would just avoid the smoke since it's not good for the engine anyway. I have all of that in my aircraft, but I don't *need* it. If you need it, you need to get some remedial training.
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Sometimes, I get the feeling, that some of you with over 10,000+ postings, have nothing better to do, then come up with unflattering conclusions as I've highlighted above. We don't need cell phones either.
Are they a bit more convenient? Do you mind if I reprint this "qualified answer", elsewhere? It reminds me of an instructor who said that I have no business flying.....if I'm not setting my OBSs before every flight. Or the guy from Wyoming who said to stay out of his airspace, if I wasn't using VORs instead of a terrain database GPS.

BTW---- didn't need the GPS to see smoke. TFRs were set up for fire fighting aircraft, that were quite a distance from the smoke. One took the shape of a large parallelogram

Something else.... if you can't see an advantage of using XM weather for a long mountainous "VFR" cross country, then fine. It's your loss. Do get over the remedial training stuff, though. I'm much too old, to hear off the wall answers such as that. Did I say I need it? Of course I didn't. Don't add your words to my thoughts, to come up with the conclusions that you would "prefer" to write about. Are most of your 10,000+ postings of the same content & conclusions?

L.Adamson
 
Another question that shouldn't require a new thread. I was flying around my local airport today and overflew a private airfield (i think its a military airfield but really its just a landing strip-W94) at about 2000. Out of curiosity, i went onto airnav and checked it out to see what it said about this airfield. That is where i read "PILOTS SHOULD MAINT AT LEAST 3000 FT ABV THE ARPT ELEV WITHIN 5 NM." It has no designated airspace around it (its class G to 1200AGL). Am i legally doing anything wrong? I should have checked before hand but my instructor never seemed to worry about it. Thanks.
 
EdFred said:
I'll play nice and give you a H dominating Colorado and another dominating over Tennessee. :D
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Heh. 10 minutes is all I need to throw the bag in, get the plane out of the hangar, and do a reasonably good pre-flight. Maybe 15 since I have to shuffle the truck into the hangar and button it up.

Fastest I've ever done it in with taxi time from hangar to airborne is about 25 though.

I kinda like messing around in my hangar. And nobody's paying me to keep a schedule. ;)
 
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