AviationBanter - View Single Post - Organizational Skills Required During Instrument Flight

**Roy Smith** · February 19th 07, 03:46 AM posted to rec.aviation.student,rec.aviation.ifr

wrote:
What methods do you deploy? How many folks use a kneeboard? What
kind of timer (analog or digital stopwatch) do you use, and where do
you put it? Where do you keep the charts, approach plates, and
scratch paper? How many people write down every clearance, heading,
altitude and frequency change? How do you keep from dropping your pen
(or pencil)? Is it on a string? Where do you put in when not in
use? Velcro? Your pocket?

In real life, I use the other seat as my desk. If somebody is sitting on
my desk, they get to hold charts, hand me things, etc. If I'm flying solo,
my flight bag goes on the seat with everything I need in it. That
generally means sectional or en-route chart, one or more book of approach
plates (I use the bound NOS books), and a small spiral notebook which I use
for copying clearances, and as a rough logbook. You can never have enough
pens, and at night, you can never have enough flashlights (I'm partial to
the 2-AA MiniMaglight.

The kneeboard thing might make sense in a single-seat fighter, but I don't
fly single-seat fighters.

I used to have nice little Radio Shack timers that I would velcro to the
yoke. Now, I suppose I've gotten lazy and/or spoiled, but I've got
count-down timers built into the GPS I use, but most of the time I don't
even use a timer, since the GPS tells you when you're at the MAP, and draws
you a picture of every hold and procedure turn that you can just follow the
purple line. If I really do want to time a minute, I usually find the
easiest thing to do is glance at my watch, and just keep going until the
same number of seconds is showing in the display as the first time. Does
any of that meet some PTS-inspired concept of best practices? I have no
idea, but it's what I do in real life and it seems to work.

Charts (be they a sectional or an en-route) tend to get wedged into a
corner of the windshield.

I write down my initial clearance, and any re-routes I get in the air.
Assigned headings just get dialed right into the heading bug (whether I'm
using the AP or not). For altitude assignements, I'll generally just turn
the #2 OBS to it (i.e. for "climb and maintain 5000", I'll twist the OBS to
050).