I used to do wonderful flight-plans when I was a student, with
waypoints every few miles, and winds aloft, and ground speeds,
and fuel consumption, and times to the nearest minute, and so on.
It's a useful skill, because it crops up on the FAA written tests.

Since getting my PPL, I haven't done it once (well, except for my
Instrument written). I use DUATS all the time.

-- winds aloft forecasts are, as you note, pretty much useless
-- my plane can fly for 6.3 hours with full tanks. The longest
I've done is about 4.5, and I was VERY glad to land
-- if I'm in VMC, I do check my route by pilotage regardless of
my principal navigation means (which is GPS), but I just figure
it out as I go with the sectional on my lap - actually that's one
of the most enjoyable bits of xc flying, for me

John

"Paul Folbrecht" wrote in message
ink.net...
Being newly licenced (yesterday), I've started thinking about the type
of VFR flight-planning I'll do in the real, post-student world, and what
tools I'll use.

As a student, of course, I did everything by hand, and meticulously, and
eschewed GPS navigation as well. Some of my observations from my brief
XC experience thus far:

1) Winds aloft forecasts are never right- usually not close.

2) There's no need to produce a nav log, etc. with checkpoints when the
route is familiar.

So, for a route that is now familiar to me- say, Timmmerman (MWC) to
Appleton (ATW) (about 75nm), of course I get a briefing, and check the
winds aloft, but I'm not going to produce a nav log. I'm going to fly
by pilotage with my GPS to back me up and with a VOR receiver to back
that up. And, of course, if I encounter particularly unexpected
weather, I'm going to turn back.

For new routes, I am going to produce a nav log, knowing full well that
my heading will not likely match the precomputed values due to differing
winds aloft. No matter. But, of course, for such flights, I'm not
going to be doing things the old-fashioned way anymore. I want some
good software to make it easy.

So, I think I have two questions: 1) Does this make sense? and 2) What's
the best flight-planning software out there? I've used AOPA's tool and
I like it, but I don't really know what's out there (and yeah I can do a
google search but then you don't know if you're hearing about the latest
& greatest). I do have a Palm 5 device so PC software that has a Palm
component too would be a plus.

~Paul

P.S. Hope this isn't too much of a "newbie" post for this forum.
Thought it was more appropriate here than over at .student.