Who does flight plans?

George Patterson wrote:

Matt Whiting wrote:


Why do you need dead/ded reckoning when you can see the ground?


I thought Dylan explained why very well.

I don't as he basically excluded the terrain which is the most
signficant determination of the ease and effectiveness of pilotage.


Matt

Matt Whiting wrote:

I don't as he basically excluded the terrain which is the most
signficant determination of the ease and effectiveness of pilotage.

No, he didn't. He simply said that dead reckoning is a good way to keep from
confusing one landmark with a similar one. That's "terrain." I can certainly
identify with his statement, having mistaken one bridge for another after flying
for an hour over a particularly featureless section of Maryland.

George Patterson
Why do men's hearts beat faster, knees get weak, throats become dry,
and they think irrationally when a woman wears leather clothing?
Because she smells like a new truck.

Why do you need dead/ded reckoning when you can see the ground?

Well, it depends how much of the ground you can see (i.e. altitude,
haze) and how much of the ground your chart portrays. Depending on
where you are, there may be a stretch where you can't really see
anything identifiable, and then in eight minutes you expect to see a
lake with a curve in it and a dam.

Well, you do but it's off to the left. No, that's not the right one -
that must be one that's not charted, because it's only been four minutes.

Jose
--
The price of freedom is... well... freedom.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

In article , Matt Whiting wrote:
Dead reckoning is an incredibly important complement to pilotage, and
it's how my in-built (i.e. in-brain) "GPS" gets much better accuracy.
Keep track of time since the last major waypoint or landmark, and it
stops you mis-identifying one ground feature for another, or one airport
for another. It forms a very important cross check when I'm doing
radioless navigation.

Why do you need dead/ded reckoning when you can see the ground?

As I said - dead reckoning (it's dead reckoning by the way, NOT ded
reckoning - deduced reckoning would be a tautology [0]) is used to
form a cross check. Cross checks are always useful, especially over
unfamiliar terrain or an area where several ground features (towns,
lakes etc.) all look very similar.

Dead reckoning does not necessarily mean going to the effort of
calculating precise time/distance calculations with your E6B, it can be
a simple estimation (and that makes the vast majority of my dead
reckoning calculations - either estimating when I'll pass a certain
feature, or cross checking that the ground feature I'm currently over is
what I think it is. In unfamiliar terrain, I like to have three things
confirming my position - the feature looks like it should on the map,
the current time tells me I should be in the vicinity of the feature
(i.e dead reckoning), and another feature I can see on the map appears
where I expect it to be looking out of the window.

As a consequence, I can say with all honesty I have NEVER been lost when
performing pure VFR navigation since being a student pilot. Keeping
track of time (i.e. the dead reckoning part) is how I've turned being
unsure of my position to positive of my position on several occasions.
It's not as if I've only done short cross countries - I've flown coast
to coast in the United States. I've flown a light plane (mostly my old
C140) in 26 states.

ATC (at least here) will occasionally ask you for an estimate, too. If
you've been keeping track of time all along and doing dead reckoning all
along you don't have to tell the controller 'standby' whilst you work it
out because you already know the number he wants.

[0] http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/enc..._reckoning.htm
--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
Dead reckoning is an incredibly important complement to pilotage

For the record (I was going to leave this alone, but this tangent spawned
such a tangle of new complaints)...

Here's the original exchange (the relevant part, anyway):

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Michael 182" wrote in message
...
Well then, by your reasoning you should be using ded-reckoning (or
however
that is spelled) as well.

How so? Dead-reckoning is not nearly as reliable as pilotage.

I'm not sure how the statement to which I replied was intended, but I read
it to mean that I should be using dead-reckoning rather than pilotage.

Upon re-reading, I see that it could mean that I should be using it WITH
pilotage. To which I have no disagreement. I would certainly not use
dead-reckoning as my sole source of navigation, unless that's all that was
available to me (ie in an emergency), but I agree with Dylan and others who
point out that as a cross-check it can be valuable.

The only reason I interpreted the original statement differently is that it
didn't seem all that controversial an assertion if interpreted to mean
dead-reckoning should be used with other forms of navigation, and I assumed
it was intended to be controversial (that is, I didn't get the impression
Michael was writing something he expected me to agree with).

If I correctly inferred it was supposed to be controversial, but incorrectly
interpreted the meaning, well...that's the kind of irony we all live for,
right?

Pete

Peter Duniho wrote:

How so? Dead-reckoning is not nearly as reliable as pilotage....

To send us off on another tangent, and one that I haven't seen mentioned
in this thread before, it's "ded-reckoning", not "dead-reckoning". The
"ded" stands for "deduced", not whatever "dead" might stand for other
than the obvious.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled navigation argument.

--
Marc J. Zeitlin
http://marc.zeitlin.home.comcast.net/
http://www.cozybuilders.org/
Copyright (c) 2005

"Marc J. Zeitlin" wrote in message
...
To send us off on another tangent, and one that I haven't seen mentioned
in this thread before, it's "ded-reckoning", not "dead-reckoning".

Baloney. Please see Google for the vast discussion on that particular topic
right here in this newsgroup.

Ignoring the fact that "deduced reckoning" is a perfectly redundant phrase,
there is ample evidence that "ded reckoning" is elitist after-the-fact
revisionist history-making, and that it's been "dead reckoning" all along.

If and when you have incontrovertible evidence that the correct deriviation
is "deduced reckoning", feel free to make such a correction. Until then,
you're just creating unjustified smugness for yourself.

Pete

Peter Duniho wrote:

If and when you have incontrovertible evidence that the correct
deriviation is "deduced reckoning", feel free to make such a
correction. Until then, you're just creating unjustified smugness for
yourself.

So let's assume that you're right (and after reading some web
references, I'm inclined to believe that you are). Somehow, Dylan Smith
managed to point out the same thing in a civilized way, without being
insulting. While I usually tend to agree with your pronouncements
around here, I can certainly see why many folks can't stand you and
think that you're a complete (well, maybe not complete) dickhead.

I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong - are you?

--
Marc J. Zeitlin
http://marc.zeitlin.home.comcast.net/
http://www.cozybuilders.org/
Copyright (c) 2005

"Maybe not complete"?

Patrick
student SPL
aircraft structural mech

"Marc J. Zeitlin" wrote in message
...
I can certainly see why many folks can't stand you and
think that you're a complete (well, maybe not complete) dickhead.

"Marc J. Zeitlin" wrote in message
...
[...]
I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong - are you?

Sure. I'm not perfect. I have admitted to being wrong several times here,
the rare instances it happened.

My post was less-than-kind simply because your post was as well. I realize
Usenet is the perfect forum for petty nit-picking, but that doesn't make it
okay. Whether it's ded or dead, it was clear that everyone involved knew
what we were talking about. Your post had no point, other than to (falsely,
as it happens) claim some superior knowledge. It contributed nothing to the
discussion, and was no more useful than a post the purpose of which was
solely to correct a spelling or grammar error.

Those kinds of posts **** me off. If it were actually important to correct
spelling or grammar errors here on Usenet, each thread would be half
messages about spelling and grammar. Clearly it's not important, but still
every now and then, some smug "I know something you don't" person comes
along and posts nothing but a correction to spelling or grammar.

And by the way, as person who works very hard to ensure his posts are as
free of spelling and grammatical errors as possible, I feel I have the right
to assert that such errors really aren't all that important. I do the work
because it's important TO ME, not because I think it's a critical need in
the newsgroup.

Such posts are, whether worded nicely or not, simply belittling. They imply
that the person or people to whom they refer are somehow ignorant or
otherwise less-worthy of consideration, based on no greater evidence than a
simple spelling or grammatical error.

It's irritating enough when they are correct, but when they actually aren't,
it's even more annoying. Annoyances beget rude posts. Even more so when
that's the first contribution a person has made in a month.

I should probably be following the old adage, "if you have nothing good to
say, say nothing at all". But that cuts both ways. You should have thought
about that yourself before posting your message.

Pete