On Mar 13, 12:28 am, "Andrew Sarangan" wrote:
So what are your thoughts on this? Is the ability to compute a flight
by hand really important? Are there important aspects I am
overlooking?

I think there is one important aspect you are overlooking. The
diversion.

My favorite DE (I send him my students whenever I can, and have taken
several checkrides with him myself) probably fails more private
applicants on the diversion than on anything else (and he has a pretty
low failure rate - those of us who know him know better than to send
someone who is weak in some area to him in the hope that this area
might be missed - he has an uncommon knack for finding the weak area
in the strongest candidate) and there is a method to his madness.

If a student's turns around a point are egg-shaped, so what? When
will he do those again, and will it really matter if they don't look
good? If his steep turn loses a little more than the permitted 100
ft, or the angle of bank isn't held to 45 +/- 5, so what? When will
he do one again? Will it matter that he loses 200 ft?

A student who can't do a decent diversion will fail, and needs to
fail. Diversions are a fact of life. Headwinds sap your reserves and
cause you to land short. Weather unexpectedly changes and forces you
to alter course. Airports close unexpectedly. Flight restrictions
pop up. Mechanical problems that don't immediately force you to land
but make remaining in the air for hours inadvisable will happen.
Diversions are not a matter of if - just when and how.

So what is a diversion? It's an impromptu flight plan, made on short
(or no) notice, without access to all the lovely computers, maybe
without access to anything electronic at all.

Back in the dark ages, when I learned to fly, our skill at quick and
accurate flight planning was tested. I was told by my instructor that
when I showed up for the checkride, I would be given a destination and
told to plan the flight while the examiner waited - in 30 minutes.
That would include checkpoints, course, headings, runway requirements,
fuel - everything. I thought this impossible, but I was determined
and I practiced and I discovered that it really wasn't impossible -
once you really understood what you were doing and why. This directly
translated to being able to efficiently plan a diversion.

Is there any real value to planning a flight manually on the ground?
Not really. I can't think of the last time I did it. But all the
elements involved still have value. In your typical 100 kt spam can,
flying in just the lower 48, you can easily find yourself flying a
heading that's 45 degrees wrong (and never getting to your diversion
point) if you ignore things like magnetic variation and winds aloft,
and they happen to add instead of cancel. Go somewhere like West
Texas, and fuel becomes important (airports are no longer a few
minutes apart). And what if the weather is closing in below you, and
you have to climb to get over some clouds or terrain? All of a sudden
climb fuel becomes important.

I really can't see much that you can leave out of the typical manually
planned VFR flight without jeopardizing the ability of the student to
handle the diversion. It's all very well to say that we use
approximations in the diversion - we do. But you need to understand
what it is you are approximating.

Michael