Who does flight plans?

Michael 182 wrote:
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?

Michael

I used to calculate everything manually, and took pride in interpolating
wind / temperature data, and tweaking my climb and descent profiles to
get the total time enroute accurate to a minute or two. That became
boring, so I then concentrated on improving the speed with which I did
all the calculations.

Then my time became money, and I realized that doing it manually no
longer served any purpose (there's only so much you can learn from a
whiz-wheel, or calculating these things manually...particularly after a
few zillion times). Now I let the computers do it and I find that given
the right data, they're accurate to within 1 minute. I don't dig holes
with shovels anymore.

FYI, if you want to plan / file direct VFR, fine. But don't try that
IFR -- particularly in the northeast. It irritates the controllers, and
no surprise. The AIM specifies that you should file airways (sorry I
don't have the exact reference handy...but just read Don Brown's columns
on Avweb for more info). The entire ATC system (airspace boundaries,
etc.) are based on the airway system, and when you file direct, you
increase controller workload. Given the shortage of controllers, that's
just about the last thing you should do.

-Doug

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Doug Vetter, CFIMEIA

http://www.dvcfi.com
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