General Navigating Techniques

 

-  Planning Your Flight

-  Getting Oriented

-  Practice Flights

-  Return To INDEX

                                                         Planning Your Flight

 

Unless one enjoys chaos and failure, planning a flight before takeoff is an essential part of the whole flying experience.  There are things we should know and do beforehand in order to achieve as much enjoyment and success from a flight as we possibly can...and that's what it's all about, Alfie!

 

Needless to say, LewisAire missions include a variety of flight situations and scenarios; we fly to and from airports with and without navigation aids; we fly from within our region to places outside the area; we fly from places outside our area back into the region...and so on.  The first question that comes to mind is, "So how do I find the direction to Wuckamuck Pond?"  If we had aviation maps (called "Sectional" maps), this is s snap...lay the map on a table, align a ruler between the two airports, and read the compass-rose to get your heading (Course).  Unfortunately, most of us have no such maps, but we're not entirely without resources.

 

One, we have the Regional Map on the Kneeboard; this map was not created to exact scaling, and doesn't include a handy compass-rose at every airport...but it does include grid-lines for primary compass headings (North, South, East, and West).  From this map alone, we can get a pretty good idea of the general heading (bearing) between two airports.  Remember, this is bush-flying; sometimes we have to settle for "pretty close" and use our piloting skills to compensate for the lack of precise information.

 

Two, there is the map in Flight Simulator, easily accessible from any cockpit.  Be careful with this one, though: Whereas our own Regional Map is properly oriented for North-South-East-West, the Flight Simulator map is not!  The grid-lines on the FS map simply show latitude and longitude, without regard to compass or bearing orientation, and this can be highly confusing.   For example: Glancing at the Flight Simulator map implies that Smithers (CYYD) is almost dead West of us (270 degrees), but in reality, Smithers is actually Southwest of us at 248 degrees...nearly a 30-degree difference from the visual effect!

 

Three...Use the Heading-Distance Calculator on the Kneeboard of each LewisAire aircraft.

 

SO...onward to some practical answers to practical problems...

If the destination airport is within our region, use the Nav-Aid Chart on the Kneeboard to determine whether or not the airports has navigational radios, and if so, jot them down.

 

If the destination airport is out of our region, go to the Flight Simulator map and move to the destination area.  The example below is an expanded map-view of the Calgary (CYYC) airport area, and you see that CYYC offers three NDB stations, a VOR station, and three ILS runways. Placing your Mouse on any Nav-Aid will show you cursory information, but I recommend double-clicking on it, which shows you all of the information, such as runways and runway-headings, etc.  Be sure to WRITE DOWN the information you're going to need for your flight.

                                                                          Getting Oriented

 

Flying a straight-line to an airport without consideration to distance, runway heading, or altitude, and then scrambling to get down on the runway by hook or by crook, is called "hot-dogging"...a practice that's really nothing more than playing with airplanes, and you'll note in other sections of this training material that it's highly discouraged around here, especially in Multiplayer flying. Which means that we should try our best to arrive at our destination in a flight configuration that allows a smooth approach and landing, as much and as often as possible.  

 

How do we do that?  Well, we begin with a little basic pre-planning, which involves deciding which runway we'll land on at our destination; generally the Active Runway.  Active runways are established for a variety of reasons, one of which is terrain limitations.  Wilburville is a good example of this, with that mountain at the 330-degree end if the airport, so our Active is Runway 15 (155-degrees).  Active runway information can be found in Airport Information on the Kneeboard, or as taken from the Flight Simulator map. 

 

The picture below shows the proper (and improper) way to approach a destination airport.  The actual distance you want to be outbound from the airport, before turning onto Final Approach, will depend primarily on the aircraft, weather, and what kind of landing (ILS, VFR, etc). 

I'm 60 miles away from the airport; where the heck is 15-miles outbound from the Active?

Well, if you're a very smart, you can work the math for finding all sides of a triangle, or...you can use the little chart below as a guideline.  The calculations aren't extremely precise, but they don't need to be because we don't need that kind of precision.  When I mentioned 20 miles above, I don't mean "exactly 20 miles, no more or less"...I mean use common sense to work with the buggy strapped onto your butt!  Common sense tells us that it's gonna take some time to get big/heavy/fast bird slowed down and settled down, and we know from experience that 20 miles or so should be adequate.  Conversely, there's no need to go out 20 miles to bring the Aviat in comfortably.

Reading The Chart Below:  The left column (Distance From Airport) means how far away on our primary heading, from departure.  "Degree Shift" means how much I adjust my primary heading.  The values in blue show miles from the Active runway, at a point where I would begin my turn to Final approach.

Example:  Using the diagram above and the chart below:  I'm on a 270-degree heading straight at the airport, and I'm 50 miles away.  If I turn right 15 degrees (to a heading of 285 degrees) I will be about 14 miles from the end of the Active runway when I turn onto Final approach.