Friday, January 20, 2012

Long Flight Ahead

For career reasons, I am relocating this spring to KFAM. That'a about a thousand-mile cross-country, longer than I've done in twenty years. The way I used to plan a flight like that was to buy the charts for the trip, lay them out on a floor, and then use a string which was cut to my maximum leg length to plan fuel stops.

But brother, have things changed. Runway Finder allows you to plot a great-circle course between airports. I used that to eyeball where the stops would be along my proposed route.

But then a friend told me about AirNav, which I have used for years to compare fuel prices and to get airport information. Ah, but how little I knew! AirNav has a flight planning feature where you can input a long flight like the one I have in mind. then you tell it your speed, fuel burn and your maximum comfortable range. It asks for minimum runway lengthy whether the runways need to be paved, do you need runway lights, IFR approaches, and other stuff. And then AirNav spits out a number of routes for you to consider.

I'm going to have to tinker some with it to avoid at least one Class B. And, at one point, I will be down on the floor with my string to look for things like big obstacles and places where funnily painted jets do strange things.

It should be an adventure of a sorts.

5 comments:

Frank Van Haste said...

Dear Steph:

My favorite on-line flight planner is FltPlan.com. I find their ETE's to be uncannily accurate.

Enjoy the anticipation,

Frank

(Previous comment deleted because I got the html syntax garbled.)

Stephanie Belser said...

Yabbut flight plan is a pay service. This is my first >2hr x/c in a decade. I usually just fly locally and for the $100 burgers. My longest flights have been a few to see Mom up in KLEB.

Heck, I have to find my GPS update cable. It's got to be somewheres.

Eck! said...

Ah yes, flight planning. Long ago and far away a CFI said, flight planning is about learning the route without walking it first. Some how
I found that any info and all info was good contribution to making the look down over new ground more familiar or at least less unfamiliar.

Been a while but old habits still work. With Loran gone and if the FED starts trimming VORs then P and DR may be come vogue again.

Make sure you highlight rivers, rails, roads and the occasional junk yard.

Eck!

aniemyer said...

If you're feeling really OCD, once you get your route figured out, you can lay it out on Google Earth, then "fly" the route from an approximate altitude.

Stephanie Belser said...

aniemyer, I didn't see how I could get GE to do that.