Didn't know that you guys verify your position visually
with cues from lakes, buildings, light patterns... no kidding?

If we know the airport, that's the way we do it. You do too. When
you're driving in a familiar area, how do you navigate? You remember
the red building on the corner, the curve in the road, the place where
they did some construction not quite right... A lot of us (private
pilots) fly =completely= visually, using cues from lakes and light
patterns (and correlating them with the charts), and not using GPS or
gizmos at all.

but won't flying into an unfamiliar
airport ensure that you check and double-check everything?

Well, yes, sort of. At any airport, familiar or not, we check
everything (even familiar ones can change radio frequencies or close
runways). It's just that with the familiar airports, we get more
chances to do that, from more sources (like having been there just
yesterday). Personally I have a form I fill out with pertinent airport
information (frequencies, runway orientations, FBOs) and at the bigger
ones, I pull out a taxi chart too. It's a bit embarrasing to key the
mike and say "N3423 Juliet on the forty five for runway... um.. er, sort
of the northbound one". I just look down and see that the choices are
8/26 and 17/35, so the "sort of northbound one" would be 35. After
landing, I'll need to know where to taxi to, and one FBO can be MUCH
more expensive than the other one. Ask me how I found out! Much better
to know which one you want, and where it is. (and if you think I'll
remember after a five hour flight, well, my choir director would say
"elephants have memories, people have pencils". He was right.

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
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