Navigation flight planning during training

On 2007-03-12 22:28:59 -0700, "Andrew Sarangan" said:

This question is directed at student pilots and flight instructors.

How many of you learn/teach cross country navigation using the
traditional methods using paper charts, protractors, E6B and
navigation logs?

I still teach them for several reasons. After all, we still teach
arithmetic to grade-school children despite the widespread use of
calculators.

The vast majority of aircraft are not yet equipped with GPS. Many do
not even have an electrical system. Yet, when we certify a pilot as
being able to fly, we certify that he is able to fly these kinds of
aircraft. We don't put a restriction in his logbook, "Working GPS only!"

Secondly, teaching the manual method can be an enormous help to the
student in gaining an understanding of automated methods. It is a lot
easier to work with a paper chart on the ground than it is with a GPS
in the air. I have some concern, too, that simply punching in the
destination into a machine and letting it do the flight plan breeds a
little too much complacency. Putting a little thought into your routing
can yield great rewards.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

destination into a machine and letting it do the flight plan breeds a
little too much complacency. Putting a little thought into your routing
can yield great rewards.

Yeah, true. I am still quite bad at doing it the old fashioned way
(even after passing a checkride) but I still take the trouble to do it
that way because it feels more rewarding. Besides, just using the GPS
makes it a bit like flying in a simulator. However I do find it hard
to do a diversion to an unknown airport and fold the chart to draw an
imaginary line, figure out a new heading, correct for wind etc. I tend
to cheat in that situation and get help from flight following or rely
on the GPS if I have one.

On 2007-03-13 15:18:30 -0700, said:



destination into a machine and letting it do the flight plan breeds a
little too much complacency. Putting a little thought into your routing
can yield great rewards.

Yeah, true. I am still quite bad at doing it the old fashioned way
(even after passing a checkride) but I still take the trouble to do it
that way because it feels more rewarding. Besides, just using the GPS
makes it a bit like flying in a simulator. However I do find it hard
to do a diversion to an unknown airport and fold the chart to draw an
imaginary line, figure out a new heading, correct for wind etc. I tend
to cheat in that situation and get help from flight following or rely
on the GPS if I have one.

Why do you do it that way? Too much time with head down in the cockpit.
I just look for a major feature near the airport (or on the way to it)
and turn toward it. I've got a pretty rough idea of how far it is.

How do you think examiners know if the candidate got it right? They
know that the diversion airport is that-a-way. At any time during the
flight, I know which airport I would divert to and what direction I
would turn to get there. Trying to figure it out when you already have
an emergency is too late.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

Andrew Sarangan wrote:
This question is directed at student pilots and flight instructors.

How many of you learn/teach cross country navigation using the
traditional methods using paper charts, protractors, E6B and
navigation logs?

During my training more than 10 years ago, xc planning was a fairly
elaborate process that involved filling lots of numbers in small
boxes. The flight was broken down into approximately 25 mile legs, and
each row had distance, true course, winds, temperature, variation,
wind correction angle, magnetic heading, time, fuel. Then we add up
the columns to get total time and fuel. We also compute the time
required to climb and descent. If we want to be more precise, we also
compute the fuel needed for taxi and run-up. Once airborne, we
religiously write down more numbers at each checkpoint and recompute
ground speed.

All fine, but I don't do any of these on a typical flight. I use an
online source such as skyvector.com to view the charts. Then I use an
online software to compute heading and time. That plus a paper chart
is pretty much all I need for a VFR flight.

I've been toying with the idea of taking a different approach to
teaching flight planning by skipping a lot of these things. I don't
see the purpose of doing things by hand when it is done much easier on
a computer. It feels like using a typewriter instead of a computer. In
addition, the less stuff you have in the cockpit, the simpler the
organization becomes. All these papers and pens flying around the
cockpit becomes an organizational nightmare.

So what are your thoughts on this? Is the ability to compute a flight
by hand really important? Are there important aspects I am
overlooking?


The number one reason - the students will have no idea how to do it and
what is involved in planninng a flight. Show them all of it. Besides,
what do you think the examiner is going to say if they can;t figure out
how to do any of that stuff and the student says, "Oh I just use a
computer for that. My instructor says paper and pencils and those
things are useless these days." ?

Thanks for all the discussion on this topic. Regardless of your
personal opinion on the subject, this is a topic of high relevance due
to the rapid changes in technology taking place in the way we fly.

One additional comment I would like to add is that, we should not
equate computer usage with lack of understanding of the basics.
Automation has the potential to allow us to focus on the important
tasks and let the computer take care of the mundane tasks. I once had
a student many years ago who computed all headings with great
precision, by hand using an E6B, only to find that he had reversed all
headings by 180 degress. He was all caught up in the details of the
computation that he forgot to see the big picture. With automation
that is less likely to happen. However, if it is not taught properly,
it can also be harmful.

There was an article in a recent aviation magazine (I can't remember
the magazine title) where they compared students who learned to fly in
glass cockpitsat Embry Riddle vs the traditional instruments, and the
conclusion was that students who learned in the glass environment were
just as good as or even better than the previous generation.

So obviously a discussion on modernizing training methods is something
that need to be taken seriously.








On Mar 13, 10:40 am, Tim wrote:
Andrew Sarangan wrote:
This question is directed at student pilots and flight instructors.

How many of you learn/teach cross country navigation using the
traditional methods using paper charts, protractors, E6B and
navigation logs?

During my training more than 10 years ago, xc planning was a fairly
elaborate process that involved filling lots of numbers in small
boxes. The flight was broken down into approximately 25 mile legs, and
each row had distance, true course, winds, temperature, variation,
wind correction angle, magnetic heading, time, fuel. Then we add up
the columns to get total time and fuel. We also compute the time
required to climb and descent. If we want to be more precise, we also
compute the fuel needed for taxi and run-up. Once airborne, we
religiously write down more numbers at each checkpoint and recompute
ground speed.

All fine, but I don't do any of these on a typical flight. I use an
online source such as skyvector.com to view the charts. Then I use an
online software to compute heading and time. That plus a paper chart
is pretty much all I need for a VFR flight.

I've been toying with the idea of taking a different approach to
teaching flight planning by skipping a lot of these things. I don't
see the purpose of doing things by hand when it is done much easier on
a computer. It feels like using a typewriter instead of a computer. In
addition, the less stuff you have in the cockpit, the simpler the
organization becomes. All these papers and pens flying around the
cockpit becomes an organizational nightmare.

So what are your thoughts on this? Is the ability to compute a flight
by hand really important? Are there important aspects I am
overlooking?

The number one reason - the students will have no idea how to do it and
what is involved in planninng a flight. Show them all of it. Besides,
what do you think the examiner is going to say if they can;t figure out
how to do any of that stuff and the student says, "Oh I just use a
computer for that. My instructor says paper and pencils and those
things are useless these days." ?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Andrew Sarangan wrote:
Thanks for all the discussion on this topic. Regardless of your
personal opinion on the subject, this is a topic of high relevance due
to the rapid changes in technology taking place in the way we fly.

I agree it is a subject that is very relevent.


One additional comment I would like to add is that, we should not
equate computer usage with lack of understanding of the basics.
Automation has the potential to allow us to focus on the important
tasks and let the computer take care of the mundane tasks.

I think you would find that in order to know the student had a full grasp of
the fundamentals you would end up teaching them the "old" way. Automation is
great. Computers are great, hell they allow us to have this conversation.
But just like I still need to be able to ask a local fellow flyer a question
from time to time there will be times when computers and the internet aren't
going to be available to the pilot.


I once had
a student many years ago who computed all headings with great
precision, by hand using an E6B, only to find that he had reversed all
headings by 180 degress. He was all caught up in the details of the
computation that he forgot to see the big picture. With automation
that is less likely to happen. However, if it is not taught properly,
it can also be harmful.


The exact same thing could easily happen in a flight planning program or
even worse. He types in the wrong airport code and flys the plan without
catching it.


There was an article in a recent aviation magazine (I can't remember
the magazine title) where they compared students who learned to fly in
glass cockpitsat Embry Riddle vs the traditional instruments, and the
conclusion was that students who learned in the glass environment were
just as good as or even better than the previous generation.



I'm sure they did. I also wouldn't be surprised if those trained in glass
didn't transition easier to steam.


So obviously a discussion on modernizing training methods is something
that need to be taken seriously.


The problem is there are lots of different flight planning programs and
services out there. Which one are you going to teach. All the ones I've used
seem to be designed so that someone who understands the "old" way can figure
them out. The flip side of that is that if you teach someone via a specific
program are they going to be able to understand the operation of another
program or even the same one after a major revision?

One additional comment I would like to add is that, we should not
equate computer usage with lack of understanding of the basics.

True, but it is possible (easy in fact) to use the computer without the
slightest understanding of what it is doing. It is less possible to
successfully plan a flight with pencil and paper and no understanding.

where they compared students who learned to fly in
glass cockpitsat Embry Riddle vs the traditional instruments

The methodology of the study and exactly what is being measured is
important to interpret the results.

btw, I have almost a thousand hours and still fill in the little boxes
by hand.

Jose
--
Humans are pack animals. Above all things, they have a deep need to
follow something, be it a leader, a creed, or a mob. Whosoever fully
understands this holds the world in his hands.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

When I took my Commercial ride last year, I showed my DE a flight plan from
DUATS. Had all the waypoints, winds, magnetic variation stuff, ground
speeds, etc. He then proceeded to ask, "How did the computer come up with
all that? What does each of those things mean?" I basically had to
demonstrate the first couple legs with a plotter & E6B to show I understood
the "traditional" stuff going on behind the scenes.


"Tim" wrote in message
...
Andrew Sarangan wrote:
This question is directed at student pilots and flight instructors.

How many of you learn/teach cross country navigation using the
traditional methods using paper charts, protractors, E6B and
navigation logs?
[snip]

So what are your thoughts on this? Is the ability to compute a flight
by hand really important? Are there important aspects I am
overlooking?


The number one reason - the students will have no idea how to do it and
what is involved in planninng a flight. Show them all of it. Besides,
what do you think the examiner is going to say if they can;t figure out
how to do any of that stuff and the student says, "Oh I just use a
computer for that. My instructor says paper and pencils and those
things are useless these days." ?

When I was a student, we laboriously filled out flight logs and worked out
each leg with an E6B. What stupidity.

Obviously, the modern way (and a perfectly reasonable way) is to let a
computer crunch the numbers for you. But, you still should be able to do
an entire flight plan with nothing more than a chart, a plotter, and an E6B
in under 5 minutes.

Measure the total overall distance of your route. In these days of
GPS-direct, that usually means a single straight line. If you're flying
VOR to VOR, it's really easy to just add up the distances marked on an IFR
en-route chart.

Next, get a magnetic course. You could do this with a plotter, or just
look at a VOR rose and make a reasonable guess (if you get it to within 10
degrees, you're fine).

Next, look at the winds aloft forecasts along your route of flight and
planned altitude. Take a WAG at an average speed and direction. Do NOT do
any math. Just average them in your head. If you spend more than 30
seconds on this, you're working too hard.

Now, work one single E6B wind triangle problem to come up with an average
GS for the whole flight. Flip the E6B over and work one single
time-speed-distance problem to come up with a ETE.

That's it, you're done. Lots of guessing and rough averaging, but that's
really all the problem deserves.

Andrew Sarangan wrote:


So what are your thoughts on this? Is the ability to compute a flight
by hand really important? Are there important aspects I am
overlooking?

Let me add one other thing to my post. I do think you ought to spend some
time and show the students how to use the newer technology. Maybe have them
do one manually and then have them do one via computer. Then spend some time
explaining the differences in the outcomes.