If the weather is marginal, we will pick IFR routes
over more hospitable terrain based on the information from the sectionals.

For cross-country flights into unfamilar areas, there is nothing as
good as a sectional charts for planning. We spread 'em out on the
dining room table, and have at 'em. And for transcontinental flights,
WACs are great, too.

But I'm talking about primary navigation in the plane. I don't konw
*anyone* (well, okay, I know Bob Noel) who routinely just hops in the
plane with a compass and a map, and goes off in search of the wild
bacon-cheeseburger.

In the summer, of course, we'll see all sorts of guys flying open
cockpit biplanes, navigating solely by ded reckoning and pilotage.
But they're usually flying in the local area, where they know every
tree stump and water tower for 80 miles. If you look inside the
cockpits of the ones who are coming any great distance -- en route to
Oshkosh from out west, for example -- almost all of them have portable
GPS receivers on the yoke.

And that's only proper. Why would you NOT use the best tool in the
toolbox?

During our flights, we use both IFR enroute maps and the
sectionals and of course the Lowrance Airmap 1000. It's nice to have
an overview of terrain below and ahead. This is something that the
small GPS screen can not provide.

The 496 displays terrain quite nicely. I haven't upgraded the
software in our 2000c to do so, but it has the same capability. (Of
course, most of our "terrain" worries are towers, here in the
Midwest...)

We also use the sectionals to find
AWOS frequencies along the route for weather monitoring.

When Mary is copilot, she still uses them for that, too. When I'm the
non-flying pilot, I've learned to scroll ahead (on the 496) to the
next reporting station, and look at the METAR. If it's more than a
few minutes old, a button push gives me the AWOS frequency, and I'll
listen to it.

As I said, we always keep fresh sectionals in the visor-pouch,
literally inches away. But whereas we used to have to tape the map
seams, so they wouldn't tear out, we now wrap gifts in them while
they're still pristine.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"