Navigation

Having a desired course is great but how do you know that you are on that course. Or even where you are at all- there are no roadsigns in the sky. Navigation, my dear Watson, is how we know where we are. In the most simple terms we would pick a compass direction that we wanted to go in, point the plane in that direction and fly until we got to wherever we were going. There is a magnetic compass that you can see just over the instrument panel and a gyroscopic compass in the instrument panel. Navigation tends to be not so simple. The big bugaboo is the wind. The wind can push us all over the sky, speed our travel over the ground or seriously slow us down. In my part of the world, the prevailing wind tends to blow from west to east. This is all very important because in an airplane time equals fuel burn and we must have somewhere to land and refuel before we run out. Running out of fuel while flying is stupid pilot trick #1 and I have made a personal commitment to avoid performing this affirmation of stupidity. There are plenty of other stupid things for me to do. So, in our flight west, how hard the wind blows in our face will ultimately determine our speed over the ground and that will determine how far we get each day. We will seek out the altitude with the most favorable winds to minimize this issue but small airplanes can only go so high and this will limit our ability to maximize the winds at altitude. And yes the wind blows at different speeds and directions up high. Back to navigation- sometimes the wind blows across the plane at on angle or another and actually causes the plane to drift off course yet the compass heading will remain unchanged. The compass just knows a direction- it doesn't care if we are on course or not. The first navigational upgrade to the compass is the chart, a map of the ground from the sky's point of view. Charts allow us to pick landmarks that confirm where we are. The problem with charts is that sometimes everything looks the same from the air. One town will look a whole lot like another, which river is that, that must be hiway 123 and so on. Sometimes there are no discernible features that stand out for hours of flying. So along came radio navigation, where we fly from one station to another along a course by following a signal and that works fairly well but has limits for distance and is basically line-of-sight- terrain can block the signal. Well, just like in your car and cell phone we have GPS in the plane. You can see two of them in the picture of the instrument panel of 374. The unit in the center of things is a certified navigation and communications device and the one to the right is a battery back up unit that also has sirrius radio and weather. I plug in our course and the GPS draws a pretty pink line from point A to point B and so on, keeping track of time, speed, our next way point, information about the next airport, altitude, and on and on. GPS is absolutely the cat's ass for navigation. The ultimate answer to how will we navigate the 1900 nautical miles from Ithaca,NY to Ione,WA is with it all- eyes out the window, chart on our laps, VOR tuned to the next station and the GPS programmed from A to B. I'm thinking we will get there.

The Course of Course part 2

One other flight planning consideration of this trip was the lake crossings. While I no problem flying over water, I don't care to push my luck and so I looked for points of crossing the lakes with the shortest distance over water in mind. I also didn't care to file for a landing in Canada so I looked for the shortest path across the great white north. I try plan for no more than one hour of air time between airports on my course and I try to have multiple airports available to me between 3 and 4 hours of flight time for refueling options. With altitude and good leaning technique I can get 5 hours of flight time between fuel stops in 374, but I prefer the 3 to 4 hour scheduling. That's plenty of time between pee stops! Crunching all these criteria together got me the course you see here. The green blobs are the bad weather today. I have ordered up perfect CAVU weather for this trip. Day one should put us into eastern South Dakota. The terrain will not be a factor on day one, but the course adjustment to the north after Rapid City(KRAP), SD, day 2, is to account for rising terrain. The course into KMSO was selected as being comfortably handled in 374. Maintaining at least two thousand feet above ground level (AGL) becomes a big deal in the planning process with a normally aspirated gas engine. With the cool, dense morning air @ KMSO the flight over the Rockies should be no problem, and having the interstate below us makes for a bit of a safety net if needed. And with all that planning I still have to be prepared for the unexpected.

The Course of Course

Once the decision to go west was made, the question became exactly which way and when? First came the when. I picked the June date for a bunch of reasons. I am hoping that we will be flying after the spring thunderstorm season and before the heat of summer. This should make the flight smoother and get the most out of 374's ability. The chosen week in June is just before the official start of summer giving us nice long days for flying. Early June should also be before the big vacation rush making accommodations a little easier to secure. And this should all happen before the busy season at work gets rolling along. Taking the northern route across the country was an easy decision- its pretty much a straight shot west. I have a brother-in-law living in Ione, Washington whom I have never visited and with Ione having an airport and my brother-in-law owning a bar there I had my destination. The big considerations in planning the exact route for this flight were how far can we safely fly between fuel stops and bathroom breaks, how high can we fly, what do we want to see, where will we spend the night, pilot fatigue and what's out there to bump into? I talked to some mountain flying experts and some fellow pilots who live in the western states and they all agreed that when flying the northern route west I would do best in my plane to cross the Rockies at Missoula, Montana(KMSO) and to follow the road. I like to use the flight planning on the AOPA website- I find it easy to use and easy to edit. I like to fly from airport to airport on a long cross country flight, it increases the options and that can't be bad. It also makes for an easy double check of my navigation, gives me something to look forward to, and it never hurts to practice spotting airports. I knew that I wanted an early morning launch from KMSO to get over the Rockies, so that became the end-of-day 2 destination. I also knew that I didn't want to plan more than 8 hours a day in the air. I also wanted to fly over the lowest possible terrain for as long as possible. And as long as I was headed that way anyway, I thought it would be absolutely stunning to fly over Mount Rushmore. Talk about your photo opportunity.

true XC begins

So what the hell is "true XC" anyway? The FAA defines a XC (cross country) flight in 61.1(3)(ii)(B) as "that includes a point of landing that was at least a straight line distance of more than 50 nautical miles from the original point of departure:" Yep, I'm not thinking about that definition, but this trip will exceed that paltry standard on the very first leg. I'm talking about a true cross country as in across this country. Starting in New York state and ending in Washington state meets my definition of a true cross country flight.
OK so why a true XC flight? I wish I could tell you that I had some high and lofty goal in mind, some great noble cause to fly for, some deeply personal significant milestone to mark but I don't. This flight will happen because I can do it, because I have a deep burning desire to do it, because I don't want another year to slip by and have the deed undone, because I'm tired of reading about people making this trip in planes far less qualified than mine and having a great time doing it, because I need an adventure worth writing about. Because it is there.
This trip takes off on June 12th, weather permitting. Weather permitting because there is absolutely no point in flying across this beautiful country if I can't see all there is to see. Weather permitting because my one lone passenger, she who will spare me from the endless hours of solitary confinement in flight, my loving and oh so understanding wife is much more comfortable that way. And that is good enough for me.
In the next few weeks I'm going to try to take everyone thru the preparation that goes into a flight like this and then I'm going to post up the daily trials and tribulations of the flight itself. With plenty of pictures of course.

see ya.