Chapter 26, “En Route Navigation,” of the new fourth edition of The Pilot’s Manual: Ground School focuses on how to go about the business being an effective pilot/navigator with minimum interruption of safely flying the airplane. The components of successful pilot/navigation are:
We tend to think of piloting an airplane as a physical skill, but there is much more to it. The pilot must assemble information, interpret data, assess its importance, make decisions, act, communicate, correct and continually reasses. Over time, all of this contributes to fatigue. Today on the Learn to
…It is a pilot’s responsibility prior to every flight to calculate time, speed, distance, and fuel required for that particular flight. As a pilot, you will have access to onboard systems, and tools like the CX-2 Flight Computer or E6-B that can assist in these types of calculations
…The fundamentals of visual navigation include two main methods as discussed in Monday’s post, pilotage and dead reckoning, each of which should be used in conjunction with the other. Whether flying by means of visual navigation or even by reference to instruments like a VOR it is possible to
…Plotting a course? Today we’re learning about magnetic variation, with help from Bob Gardner’s The Complete Private Pilot textbook.
For flight planning purposes you must recognize that although the lines of latitude and longitude on charts are neatly perpendicular and relate to the True North Pole there is nothing
…A VFR Sectional Aeronautical Chart is a pictorial representation of a portion of the Earth’s surface upon which lines and symbols in a variety of colors represent features and/or details that can be seen on the Earth’s surface. Contour lines, shaded relief, color tints, obstruction symbols, and maximum elevation figures
…Coordinated Universal Time, Universal Time Coordinated, Greenwich Mean Time, Zulu Time—I am sure you have heard these terms at some point in your flight training, but what is all of it? To keep it simple these are essentially one in the same: time corrected for seasonal variations in the earth’s rotation
…Understanding the imaginary grid we’ve laid out around and across our planet is key in flight planning and ultimately your safety. Today, we’ll review some of the basics with help from the FAA textbook Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge.
The equator is an
…
