Organizational Skills Required During Instrument Flight

I like the tip about using OBS #2 to hold altitude assignments! As
far as the flashlight goes, I have one that hangs around my neck on a
lanyard. I don't bother timing my approaches. With 2 GPS units and
associated situational awareness, timing is a waste of time.

--Dan



On Feb 18, 8:50 pm, "Andrew Sarangan" wrote:
On Feb 18, 9:33 pm, wrote:





What methods do you deploy? How many folks use a kneeboard? What
kind of timer (analog or digital stopwatch) do you use, and where do
you put it? Where do you keep the charts, approach plates, and
scratch paper? How many people write down every clearance, heading,
altitude and frequency change? How do you keep from dropping your pen
(or pencil)? Is it on a string? Where do you put in when not in
use? Velcro? Your pocket?

I've read the books, but I just wonder how people cope in real life.
Rod Machado talks about using a clipboard (with extra clips on the 3
other sides) in his excellent training manual. This seems like a good
idea to me.

Steve
PP ASEL
Instrument student

The fewer things you have with you in the cockpit, the simpler
everything becomes. Leave everything in your flight bag but somewhere
within reach, and grab only what you really need. In a training
environment our students are trained as if every flight is an
emergency, and to be prepared for the worst. Nothing wrong with that,
but you have to decide the correct balance of things to carry for each
flight to minimize clutter and workload.

I clip the weather and flight planning printouts to the kneeboard.
That also doubles as my scratch paper. Attaching a string is a good
idea, but I have never done it. I carry one pen for multiple things
(signing logbooks and such), so tying it to the clipboard would be
inconvenient.

My wrist watch serves as the timer if I ever need one. I don't bother
timing the approach unless the weather is near minimum. All my charts
stay in the bag, and I only rip out the pages I need. For the most
part, the NACO chart book stays in my flight bag (which could be
outdated), and I fly with individually printed approach charts.

I don't write everything down. Squawk codes and radio frequencies get
loaded into the stack right away as I am reading them back to the
controller. I only write down stuff that the controller starts with
"advice when ready to copy". If an instruction is too lengthy and I
happen to miss something, I can always ask it to be repeated. It
doesn't happen often enough to worry about hogging the frequency.

Don't forget the flashlight. I have yet to find a good way to keep it
from getting lost. It is too bulky to attach it to a string but it is
too small to keep from rolling off into a crevice.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -