x-country solo

since a lot of this thread is relating other "lost" stories....

coupla months ago i signed off a pilot to take his commercial
check-ride. he was concerned about the maneuvers (particularly
lazy-8's), but was doing a good job, so i signed him off. this
guy has ~2000 hours, ifr-rated, probably about 1500 of his 2000
are x/c, very experienced, and a good stick.

well, he busted his first checkride -- on _pilotage_. the d.e. had
him plan a x/c just like the private. well, between the time he
got his briefing & the time they actually departed, a front had
passed, with an attendant wind change (enough to swap ends
on the runway they were using.) he made a "guesstimate" of
the wind effect, and over-corrected. on his early checkpoint,
he confidently pointed out the town with the n/s highway on
the east side, the railroad track on the south side, and the
airport on the northeast side. the examiner said, "that's fine,
but that's not xxxx. sorry, you bust." (the pilot passed his
retest the following week.)

i include this to show that the phenomenon of identifying the
wrong airport is not unique to student pilots (although i guess
this guy was a commercial student). i should ammend that to
say "not unique to pre-private student pilots."

(i confess i had not checked his pilotage ability, because i have
known him for about a decade, and i know his abilities. who
would have thought he would screw up pilotage on a commercial
ride?)

hth --

g_a

"John T" wrote in message
ws.com...
"Corky Scott" wrote in
message

The glass doesn't always help. I was flying safety pilot for a
flying buddy
who was practicing an approach using a C172 with a moving map GPS
with
multi-function display (I think it was about a 4-inch screen) that
showed
the sectional graphic in addition to airspace and all the usual GPS
paraphernalia. I don't know how it could possibly do more to
improve
situational awareness without physically moving your finger across
the map.


The friend who I do most of my passenger flying with uses a GPS for
almost everything and when returning to our field we find it very
difficult to find the strip. Even when passing over the field it's
rather difficult to pick out from all the other green fields of the
same size that abound in the SE of Ireland. As an experiment, we
decided to use the large road from a very prominent village to locate
the field, we found it much more easily than with the GPS, in fact
we'll use it all the time now.
--
---
Cheers,
Jonathan Lowe.
/
don't bother me with insignificiant nonsence such as spelling,
I don't care if it spelt properly
/
Sometimes I fly and sometimes I just dream about it.
:-)






The approach we were on called for us to intercept the localizer
outbound
(in an easterly direction) from the north for a procedure turn (on
the north
side of the course). He passed through the localizer and
paralleled it
outbound (putting us south of the course). Then he started a turn
to the
right (putting us farther south of where he wanted to be). I
clarified his
intentions and he realized that he had lost situational awareness.

My point is that it *will* happen to all of us sooner or later and
no amount
of technology will prevent it. If it can happen to this CFII
friend of mine
using a large screen moving map with sectional imagery, it can
certainly
happen to my own 300-hour self.

Granted, we didn't actually enter the pattern at the wrong airport.
He did
at least have the correct localizer...

--
John T
http://tknowlogy.com/tknoFlyer
__________