Who does flight plans?

"Michael 182" wrote in message
...
I'm kind of curious - does anyone with more than 100 hours do a flight
plan,
with winds and all, before they fly cross country? Most of my planning is
of
the fuel stop, or occasionally detour for weather variety - but it is rare
for me to include more than one or two waypoints in my "plan", and I
almost
never file an airway, even when I file ifr. Maybe it's because I live in
the
west. A typical flight plan will be Longmont - Amarillo - Austin, or if
the
winds are good, Longmont - Austin. What do others do?

I plan in AOPA flight planner, and since I got my IFR rating I always file
IFR when I'm going somewhere far (i.e. more than 50 miles or so). I usually
don't bother on filing VFR flight plans, as I always have a tough time
talking to FSS to open it, and then I might forget to close it.
The flight planner does the winds, and I try to fly on airways if they don't
take me too much out of the way (if they do, I'll just do direct on the
GPS); in that way if the GPS has a problem it would be less of a hazzle.
I don't select visual checkpoints or plan for landing areas beforehand, but
while I'm flying I am taking a look at the VFR charts, looking for airports
(if VMC) and in general always try to know exactly where I'm at in the VFR
chart. I'll look for emergency landing spots ocasionally as well. I should
do that a little more often.

Fuel is usually not a problem for me. I also keep it at 1.5 hours reserve,
and my last crosscountries have not required fuel stops (I don't go that far
and I got 6 hours of fuel)