03.Jul.2018 - Reflections on 2 cross-country flights
My intention is to fly Tuesday doing maneuvers and Thursday doing various cross-country flights with the intent to hit every non-towered airport withing one tank of gas (out and back). So far, I have done one 'Tuesday' flight and 2 'Thursday' flights; weather cancelled one Thursday so I just bumped it to the next Tuesday.
The XC flights are to be done using pilotage and dead reckoning with an iPad running ForeFlight and the 162's Garmin G300 running as backups. I was intending to do fully manual planning but that is just a royal PITA and ForeFlight can do the math for me soooo...the plan is to let a computer do the boring stuff and then use the map with a timer in the cockpit. Maps are being printed from screenshots in FF so I can get a better/bigger picture of the landmarks.
TL;DR - pilotage is hard especially since FF's nav log isn't really configured for using on a lapboard and it tosses in Top Of Climb and Top Of Descent points which don't show up on the map...The first two XC flights were kinda/sorta OK but the reality is that if I hadn't had the iPad/G300...I mighta burned some extra fuel finding the airports.
I'm going to try something a bit different on Thursday for my first longish XC (45 minute legs instead of 20) and just use a marked up map from FF to list times, frequencies, altitudes, headings, and runways. I'll let you know how it goes.
Also, even with FF/G300, actually finding airports on hazy days is not the easiest thing in the world. My first leg today I thought I had the airport in sight, then looked left and realized it was just off my wing and my landing plan was...how you say?...wrong? Luckily the airspace wasn't terribly busy so no harm done. I'm hoping that bit gets easier over time.
Other observations.
My intention is to fly Tuesday doing maneuvers and Thursday doing various cross-country flights with the intent to hit every non-towered airport withing one tank of gas (out and back). So far, I have done one 'Tuesday' flight and 2 'Thursday' flights; weather cancelled one Thursday so I just bumped it to the next Tuesday.
The XC flights are to be done using pilotage and dead reckoning with an iPad running ForeFlight and the 162's Garmin G300 running as backups. I was intending to do fully manual planning but that is just a royal PITA and ForeFlight can do the math for me soooo...the plan is to let a computer do the boring stuff and then use the map with a timer in the cockpit. Maps are being printed from screenshots in FF so I can get a better/bigger picture of the landmarks.
TL;DR - pilotage is hard especially since FF's nav log isn't really configured for using on a lapboard and it tosses in Top Of Climb and Top Of Descent points which don't show up on the map...The first two XC flights were kinda/sorta OK but the reality is that if I hadn't had the iPad/G300...I mighta burned some extra fuel finding the airports.
I'm going to try something a bit different on Thursday for my first longish XC (45 minute legs instead of 20) and just use a marked up map from FF to list times, frequencies, altitudes, headings, and runways. I'll let you know how it goes.
Also, even with FF/G300, actually finding airports on hazy days is not the easiest thing in the world. My first leg today I thought I had the airport in sight, then looked left and realized it was just off my wing and my landing plan was...how you say?...wrong? Luckily the airspace wasn't terribly busy so no harm done. I'm hoping that bit gets easier over time.
Other observations.
- People who fly loooooove to talk. Today the plane was rented for 2 hours with a 1.5 hour max flight time planned. Toss in people talking in Gainesville before I took off, people talking on the radio at my first landing, plus busy patterns...I burned just over 2 hours of time doing the flight. I may have to book the plane for a bit longer than expected just to cover these contingencies!
- Coming into Cartersville/KVPC, there is a massive electrical generation plant with two of the huge cooling towers. I would have expected some 'restricted' airspace but nope...just a simple 'multiple tall things' icon labeled as 'stacks'. I was looking for something like 'power station' on the map and couldn't figure out why I couldn't find them. Now I know!
- My path from VPC to GVL took me a few miles from the Mode C veil around ATL. I generally give a wide berth to ATL's Mode C but wanted to try it just to see how it went. Trying to figure out pilotage while near Mode C/Bravo airspace...not a good idea. A few minutes looking down can lead to course deviations that dump you into Bravo...good to know.
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