Who does flight plans?

George Patterson wrote:

Matt Whiting wrote:


Why do you need dead/ded reckoning when you can see the ground?


I thought Dylan explained why very well.

I don't as he basically excluded the terrain which is the most
signficant determination of the ease and effectiveness of pilotage.


Matt

And of course that's a way to increase the pleasure you take in the
trip. ..... The flight planning (and anticipation) are like having an extra hour free.

Damn right! I've spent many happy hours planning two trips to Alaska
(different routes), one around the perimeter of the lower 48, and two
to the Canadian Maritimes. It was almost as much fun as making the
flights.

I pay $75 an hour for the Cub.

WOW! That's awfully high for a Cub. I've beenpaying that for a
Warrior.

vince norris

Matt Whiting wrote:

I don't as he basically excluded the terrain which is the most
signficant determination of the ease and effectiveness of pilotage.

No, he didn't. He simply said that dead reckoning is a good way to keep from
confusing one landmark with a similar one. That's "terrain." I can certainly
identify with his statement, having mistaken one bridge for another after flying
for an hour over a particularly featureless section of Maryland.

George Patterson
Why do men's hearts beat faster, knees get weak, throats become dry,
and they think irrationally when a woman wears leather clothing?
Because she smells like a new truck.

Well Matt,I'd agree and disagree...
I'd agree that the area you fly in is some of the most distinctive in
the country, at least to these eyes. Though I don't think that applies
to a Western pilot flying there for the first time - it all looks the
same to the inexperienced eye...

Which is where I'd disagree that the terrain makes the difference.
Unknowingness, a state you've probably not been in for awhile, is *the*
difference.

Most of my time is in the same district. Starting in 1970 at Pgh's AGC,
buzzing around central NJ, then doing the the glider circuit from 82
to 97 starting at Sugarbush VT, Elmira, Danville NY, Blairstown NJ,
Middletown NY, Candlewood Lake CT, Solberg NJ, New Castle VA, Fairfield
PA, Chester NC, Mifflin PA, and practically every inch of the ridge
system from Wurtzboro NY to Lock Haven to Burnt Cabins to New Castle to
the Masanuttin (sp). I flew all of the above using pilotage and charts
and often at ridgetop height. Preparation and 'knowingness' made dead
reckon unnecessary (though I got lost anyway in the early days). So I
agree with your point, up to a point.

But I also went out to Hobbs NM, and Minden NV and Marfa TX, and Caddo
Mills TX, and Bozeman MT and Uvalde TX and Ionia MI and even Homestead
FL. At every site I had the chance to fly 5 to 10 cross countries in a
100 to 150 mile radius of the site. None of them are featureless
mid-western sites, at least to the locals. I was totally challenged to
follow my progress via pilotage - but I did have GPS so all my
observations are suspect.

But it really came into focus when I flew one of my last contests in
Mifflin PA. It attracted a bunch of guys from the left coast who were
flying in the NE for the first time. Their discomfort with both flying
and navigating the terrain was obvious and it effected their
performance enormously - for a couple of days anyway.

So, I would suggest that your familiarity with the 500 miles surrounding
northern PA makes pilotage a breeze, especially at 4000' or better.
But fly in the very distinctive terrain around Reno NV or Austin TX for
the first time, and you might find your pilotage skills totally
challenged, even at 10,000'. And you might discover why a little dead
reckoning for backup might prove an ego saver.

Mark Twain wrote about our enormous ability to remember the details of
our environment in "Life on the Mississippi". As I recall, he talked
about how a river captain's job depended on his recall of every snag,
shoal, turn, wreck, and current in the ever changing river - 100s of
miles worth of detail. "Knowingness' may be one of our core
competencies as humans. Good book and a good read for pilots.

Matt Whiting wrote:
Maule Driver wrote:

Matt Whiting wrote:
Dylan Smith wrote:
How so? Dead-reckoning is not nearly as reliable as pilotage.
It's basically a "poor man's intertial navigation system". With
pilotage, you know exactly where you are. All dead-reckoning does
is give you a rough guess as to where you think you might be.

Dead reckoning is an incredibly important complement to pilotage, and
it's how my in-built (i.e. in-brain) "GPS" gets much better accuracy.
Keep track of time since the last major waypoint or landmark, and it
stops you mis-identifying one ground feature for another, or one
airport
for another. It forms a very important cross check when I'm doing
radioless navigation.

Why do you need dead/ded reckoning when you can see the ground?

Don't take this wrong way but that's seems like a question from
someone who hasn't really done a lot of pilotage in unknown territory
without backup. Watch the landscape and ignore time and distance, and
you will get stung. Even a rough calc will help keep you out of trouble.

Don't take this the wrong way, but talking without thinking can lead to
saying things that don't make sense. I've been flying since 1978 and
use pilotage on almost all flights, including most IFR flights that
aren't in IMC. The biggest determinant of success, other than having
basic map reading skills, is the terrain, not the "unknownness" of the
territory.

Lesson 1 in pilotage is see the feature, then find it on the map
.... and after you master that along with lessons 2,3,etc
Lesson 10 is complement your pilotage with some rough dead reckoning
or you will end up relearning lesson 1 the hard way.

Does that make any sense?

It makes sense of the terrain is all about the same (some areas of the
midwest), but not for where I live. I live in northern PA and flying
mostly in PA, NY, and other states within 500 or so miles of here. I've
never been in an area, other than the urban areas around Philly, NYC,
BWI, etc., where pilotage wasn't rather easy if you are paying attention
at all. We have lots of mountains, valleys, roads, railroads, lakes,
rivers, towers, etc. that make pilotage quite easy without dead
reckoning. Sure, I use it when I need it, but that is very rare where I
fly.

Maule Driver wrote:


But it really came into focus when I flew one of my last contests in
Mifflin PA. It attracted a bunch of guys from the left coast who were
flying in the NE for the first time. Their discomfort with both flying
and navigating the terrain was obvious and it effected their
performance enormously - for a couple of days anyway.

I never have discomfort navigating, but I often have discomfort when
looking for an emergency landing site and finding absolutely nothing
hospitable, especially from west of N38 to nearly ERI! The thought of
full stalling into the trees has just never given me great comfort. :-)

Matt

Why do you need dead/ded reckoning when you can see the ground?

Well, it depends how much of the ground you can see (i.e. altitude,
haze) and how much of the ground your chart portrays. Depending on
where you are, there may be a stretch where you can't really see
anything identifiable, and then in eight minutes you expect to see a
lake with a curve in it and a dam.

Well, you do but it's off to the left. No, that's not the right one -
that must be one that's not charted, because it's only been four minutes.

Jose
--
The price of freedom is... well... freedom.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
Dead reckoning is an incredibly important complement to pilotage

For the record (I was going to leave this alone, but this tangent spawned
such a tangle of new complaints)...

Here's the original exchange (the relevant part, anyway):

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Michael 182" wrote in message
...
Well then, by your reasoning you should be using ded-reckoning (or
however
that is spelled) as well.

How so? Dead-reckoning is not nearly as reliable as pilotage.

I'm not sure how the statement to which I replied was intended, but I read
it to mean that I should be using dead-reckoning rather than pilotage.

Upon re-reading, I see that it could mean that I should be using it WITH
pilotage. To which I have no disagreement. I would certainly not use
dead-reckoning as my sole source of navigation, unless that's all that was
available to me (ie in an emergency), but I agree with Dylan and others who
point out that as a cross-check it can be valuable.

The only reason I interpreted the original statement differently is that it
didn't seem all that controversial an assertion if interpreted to mean
dead-reckoning should be used with other forms of navigation, and I assumed
it was intended to be controversial (that is, I didn't get the impression
Michael was writing something he expected me to agree with).

If I correctly inferred it was supposed to be controversial, but incorrectly
interpreted the meaning, well...that's the kind of irony we all live for,
right?

Pete

Peter Duniho wrote:

How so? Dead-reckoning is not nearly as reliable as pilotage....

To send us off on another tangent, and one that I haven't seen mentioned
in this thread before, it's "ded-reckoning", not "dead-reckoning". The
"ded" stands for "deduced", not whatever "dead" might stand for other
than the obvious.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled navigation argument.

--
Marc J. Zeitlin
http://marc.zeitlin.home.comcast.net/
http://www.cozybuilders.org/
Copyright (c) 2005

"Marc J. Zeitlin" wrote in message
...
To send us off on another tangent, and one that I haven't seen mentioned
in this thread before, it's "ded-reckoning", not "dead-reckoning".

Baloney. Please see Google for the vast discussion on that particular topic
right here in this newsgroup.

Ignoring the fact that "deduced reckoning" is a perfectly redundant phrase,
there is ample evidence that "ded reckoning" is elitist after-the-fact
revisionist history-making, and that it's been "dead reckoning" all along.

If and when you have incontrovertible evidence that the correct deriviation
is "deduced reckoning", feel free to make such a correction. Until then,
you're just creating unjustified smugness for yourself.

Pete

In article , Matt Whiting wrote:
Dead reckoning is an incredibly important complement to pilotage, and
it's how my in-built (i.e. in-brain) "GPS" gets much better accuracy.
Keep track of time since the last major waypoint or landmark, and it
stops you mis-identifying one ground feature for another, or one airport
for another. It forms a very important cross check when I'm doing
radioless navigation.

Why do you need dead/ded reckoning when you can see the ground?

As I said - dead reckoning (it's dead reckoning by the way, NOT ded
reckoning - deduced reckoning would be a tautology [0]) is used to
form a cross check. Cross checks are always useful, especially over
unfamiliar terrain or an area where several ground features (towns,
lakes etc.) all look very similar.

Dead reckoning does not necessarily mean going to the effort of
calculating precise time/distance calculations with your E6B, it can be
a simple estimation (and that makes the vast majority of my dead
reckoning calculations - either estimating when I'll pass a certain
feature, or cross checking that the ground feature I'm currently over is
what I think it is. In unfamiliar terrain, I like to have three things
confirming my position - the feature looks like it should on the map,
the current time tells me I should be in the vicinity of the feature
(i.e dead reckoning), and another feature I can see on the map appears
where I expect it to be looking out of the window.

As a consequence, I can say with all honesty I have NEVER been lost when
performing pure VFR navigation since being a student pilot. Keeping
track of time (i.e. the dead reckoning part) is how I've turned being
unsure of my position to positive of my position on several occasions.
It's not as if I've only done short cross countries - I've flown coast
to coast in the United States. I've flown a light plane (mostly my old
C140) in 26 states.

ATC (at least here) will occasionally ask you for an estimate, too. If
you've been keeping track of time all along and doing dead reckoning all
along you don't have to tell the controller 'standby' whilst you work it
out because you already know the number he wants.

[0] http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/enc..._reckoning.htm
--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"