Real-life flight planning

My briefing strategy changed when AOPA launched their recent planner. Best
free planner out there.

For long multi-leg cross-country VFR or IFR from home: Plan less than 4 hour
legs out of a 5 hour tank. Use AOPA's planner and ADDS for planning the day
(or days) before. DUATS briefing (using AOPA's planner) to get a weather
update, NOTAMS, and to make it official the day of the flight.

With the planner, I start with the origin and destination and the rubber
band the route to nearby nav aids or airports along the way. The Nav Log
that it puts out is fine for me. I print it out forward and backward so I'm
ready for the trip home.

Long multi-leg cross-country VFR away from home: Plan less than 4 hour legs
out of a 5 hour tank. ADDS and DUATS briefing using a web site interface to
get a weather update, NOTAMS, and to make it official for planning and the
day of the flight. Might be replaced by using a weather station at an FBO.
My last choice is to do this over the phone.

I will plan out a route even if I am planning to fly direct using my
handheld GPS. It provides enroute time checks and a back up. It also gives
me a chance to validate the route against TFRs or other hazards. I don't
want to be flight planning in the air. It also provides some enroute points
to talk about with a briefer, if I end up doing it over the phone.

I agree with abbreviated planning for a familar route that is less than a
few hours. If it's a clear day and I'm going for a breakfast or lunch at a
nearby airport, I'll call for a briefing on the way to the airport. That is
the minimum I will do.

Anything more than an hour from home and I want to have a good idea about
weather and enroute checkpoints. Since winds aloft are so variable, I need
something to measure my progress. Maybe I'm trying to get there and back on
one tank of fuel. What starts out as a short little flight with no worries
could turn into a fuel crisis on the way home.

I subscribed to Aeroplanner for one month. Nice service but too expensive
for weekend flyers and too slow. The Cirrus interface for DUATS is also a
waste of time now that AOPA's planner is out. I haven't tried any other
fee-based planning services.
-------------------------------
Travis


"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.