"steve.t" wrote in message
oups.com...
If you have a general idea of the best altitude for your aircraft (fuel
economy wise), and you can pull power and lean until you are able to
keep the RPM in the green and maintain altitude, then all you need do
is turn so that the wind is behind you. Remember, the more angle of
attack, the more drag you will have. So you may need to keep more
power, say to 60%. I would guess in my PA28-180 that I would need to
cut power down to about 2000RPM (well above bottom of green). This
would probably put me down in the 4x% range, but with a large angle of
attack. However, if I brought the power up to 2200 and was at ~5000
MSL...

Note that at this point I have not referred to the POH. I'm doing this
sitting here by seat of pants outside the plane.

Without going into lots of physics, I would guess that this would give
you your best time in air and distance.

If you MUST deal with any kind of headwind, then you will have to run
with enough power to overcome the wind. And now you must start doing
some serious figuring as to what altitude gives you your best chance of
getting to where you need to go.

And in the situation you have just given, forget GPS and LORAN. Hope
you have an ADF, because you probably won't pickup VORs either.
Later,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument

Why would you forget GPS?