My assignment after Tuesday was to plan a flight from Kahului to Upolu, to be flown today. So, this morning I got out my chart and plotter and E6B and went to work: plotting courses, correcting for magnetic variation, getting weather info and adjusting headings for winds aloft, planning time en route along each leg and calculating fuel burn. Lots of little details to get right and pay attention to, so it was really fun.
The basic idea is really simple: To plan a flight, you first identify the legs you will be flying. These are straight line, 10 minute or so segments of your flight path with easily identified landmarks (or, checkpoints, in aviation speak) in between. With a current sectional and a ruler/plotter you measure the distances and plot the heading from each checkpoint to the next. That gives you the heading and distance from one checkpoint to the next, all the way across your route. That's it, in a nutshell. There are, of course, adjustments to be made for magnetic variation and compass deviation, but don't worry about it for the sake of discussion.
Once you have a weather briefing including winds aloft for the altitude you will be flying, you can calculate with the E6B your Wind Correction Angle and Expected Groundspeed. With the wind correction angle, you can maintain the ground track you want (which is the heading you want to travel). The groundspeed information is useful since it allows you to estimate time from one checkpoint to the next. Time in the air in an airplane is everything for 2 reasons: 1) you know how much fuel you have by multiplying fuel usage per hour by time flown and 2) you pay for the plane by the hour.
All of this information goes in a very well designed table of information that rides on a clipboard on your lap during the flight. At each checkpoint you can note the actual time between checkpoints compared to your estimate, and thus get an idea of how your flight is going. This would be especially important on a longer flight, or whenever you're getting 'low' on fuel. Low is a relative term, because of the disastrous consequence of running out of gas in an airplane, we don't get anywhere near 'low'. I plan to always have at least 45 minutes of fuel on board and will land to refill before fuel gets that low.
It's fun, there's a lot that goes into planning a flight and a great deal of satisfaction from seeing your flight go as planned.
When I got to the airport, Fletch and I reviewed my flight plan and called up flight service station in Honolulu to file the flight plan and get a weather briefing. We made a few adjustments to the plan for the updated winds aloft data and got the airplane preflighted for the trip (including the addition of a life raft in the fore section of the luggage compartment. I guess the channel between the Big Island and Maui is known for being kind of sharky, not somewhere you want to be treading water for a few hours while waiting for the Coast Guard to come get you.)
Flight plan filed and plane ready, we got some water bottles for the trip and taxied down the ever longer aisle of jets on the east ramp. The private jets just keep coming in! We got down to an area clear enough to turn the tail toward the fence and do our runup and turned around. During the mag check, the right mag sounded really, really rough. We leaned the mixture a little and ran up to 2300 rpm to try to burn away whatever carbon deposit on the spark plugs was causing the rough firing. It got worse. We did it again. It got even worse. So, we called off the flight and taxied back to the hangar to have the mechanic check out the plane.
It took an hour to pull off the cowling, let the engine cool and examine the plugs. One of the spark plugs was just completely shot. There was a giant wad of malformed metal (probably lead and carbon from burning fuel) on the spark terminal. This was better news than a bad magneto or burned out cable. Chuck got the plugs replaced (with the new plugs that are specced for that plane, dunno why they weren't in the plane all along) and she purred like a kitten.
Unfortunately, we had spent enough time dealing with the maintenance that we no longer had enough time to complete our planned XC flight before the next reservation for the plane...bummer. So, Fletch handed me a flight planning sheet and said, 'quick, plan a XC to Lanai'. So, I did it all over again...quickly.
Our route would be out of Kahului to Nakalele Point, at the far northern tip of the West Maui Mountains. From Nakalele Point we would cross the channel to Lanai and fly over the 1800' ridge to approach the airport from the southeast. From the Lanai airport we would fly to MacGregor Point where we could talk to Maui Approach and get clearance into the Class C airspace at Kahului and in line for landing. It took about 10 minutes to fill in the navigation log sheet and calculate all of my headings and times en route. Our preflight was pretty quick since we'd already done it, the runup went beautifully and I am hoping we don't have problems with the ignition system in 32 Lima with the new plugs.
All that was left was to actually fly the course. I had my watch's stopwatch feature on and timed each leg. My first leg I was within 1 minute of my estimated time on course. The other legs weren't that far off either, i think I hit each checkpoint within 2-3 minutes and got a good introduction to the principals of flying the chart and the terrain and dead reckoning navigation.
The only bummer about it was I had crappy landings at Lanai and back at Kahului. I'm not sure what went wrong but I know it was me getting behind the airplane. I think to a certain extent, I just had my head all tied up with checkpoints and time en route and headings we'd fly and was constantly thinking about the next step in eh flight...all the way down to the ground. Unfortunately, I forgot to fly the airplane and wound up getting sideways in Lanai and landing with a lot of side loading. Bad for the airplane, worse for the pilot's ego. The worst part was that my CFI was with me. Doh! My last 4 hours have been by myself, with perfect landings one after another...first time I fly with Fletch after my solo flights and my landings suck. Humiliating. Oh well, more practice and we'll be fine. I think another factor was landing at a brand new airport and just being a little unprepared. I think another factor might have been the distraction of another pilot in the plane, talking the whole way through the approach and just knowing that I was 'performing' for my CFI. Whatever it was, I will take control of the airplane and just fly the thing to a landing whatever is going on in the cockpit, on the ground or in my head next time. No more crappy landings while another pilot is watching!
On the way back across the channel to Maui, Fletch put covers over my DG and artificial horizon, guess that's a simulated vacuum system failure. So, I just flew the leg with the magnetic compass. Fortunately we were on a east/west leg...less compass error. Apparently (I haven't seen this yet) the compass can be inaccurate on north/south headings. My time on course for this 19 minute leg was off by about 2 minutes: we got to MacGregor Point 2 minutes early and by then were safe in the hands of Maui Approach.
Maui Approach gave us clearance inbound and directed us to follow yet another Gulfstream in for long final, runway 2. At the mill they called us off 2 and sent us to right traffic, runway 5, which was just fine. I had a pretty good long final in to runway 5 and an OK landing, but I floated a little long in ground effect and didn't exactly stay on the centerline. It was better than Lanai by a long margin, but still not a landing I'm proud of.
Too bad. There's a big low pressure area moving in from the Northwest that's going to bring lots of rain through next week. The forecast is basically for no flying weather until after New Years. It's so bad, they're already calling for flooding in flood prone areas. Looks like I may have done my last flying of 2003 today.
1.2 dual XC
2 landings
Sounds like you had a pretty full lesson, so don't sweat the landings much. I think everyone's first XC is about the same - it usually seems at the time like way too much information and stuff going on, and it can be overwhelming to the expense of basic flight skills. Like everything else, you'll see the patterns and settle into a "routine" (for want of a better word). Especially with having your flight plan change at the last minute, you lose the opportunity to really study the part of the sectionals and your visual checkpoints ahead of time. So how did you do with your checkpoint selection? I never can see power lines in time, and railroads can be hard to spot if they've been allowed to grow over. Highways and bodies of water are the best ones during the day, although I imagine your geography is a little easier that Ohio's sprawling farm fields...
Posted by: Scott McCrory at December 27, 2003 05:36 PMI've always been one to get back on the horse...
Checkpoint selection was pretty simple. In fact, VFR navigation here is pretty simple. All of the islands are easily identifiable and small enough that you can pretty much always keep track of your position if you can see the ground.
I'm working on a graphic depiction of my flight that I should have up soon...I'll try to send you a link but check back soon just in case I forget.
I'm almost wishing I were able to learn this somewhere like Kansas where it would be a little more challenging. I was talking to a friend at a party this afternoon about my progress and he told me to make sure to enjoy the navigation planning lessons now, because after 4 or 5 more flights I'll have been everywhere and seen everything and it won't be a factor anymore. He suggested I save my flight plans and just rework the wind info since I'll be flying the same routes over and over again.
Oh well...ups and downs, like everything.
Posted by: John Corry at December 27, 2003 08:05 PM