Mxsmanic wrote:

How do you know when you are exactly overflying a specific spot on the ground?
It's it just a matter of knowing your particular aircraft, or are there tricks
that can help to determine this? I know you can look off the tip of your wing
to see if you're abeam something (such as a runway), but how can you tell when
you're right over something? I presume there's no way to look straight down
from most aircraft, and it seems like the view over the nose is often several
miles away.


Crossing mid-field, you guess. If you tell everyone that you're going
to cross mid-field at 2000' and you're off a bit, they don't shoot you
down. You're just telling everybody where (in general) you are so that
they know where to look.

If I really need to know if I'm directly over something, I take into
account the wind and my velocity and start dropping golf balls and watch
where they land. Of course, by the time they hit the ground, I've
probably moved a couple hundred feet or so which then requires more golf
balls. It's a never-ending battle.

If you are trying to find yourself, use the VORs and triangulate
yourself on the sectional. This won't tell you exactly where you are,
but it'll tell you pretty close to where you were when you took the angles.