Technology is Incredible...

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

Yes propellers make noise. But I tell you what. Next time you are in the
states you are more than welcome to come to my hanger which is about 100
yards away from the hanger of Murphy Oil Corp. They have a few Citation biz
jets and a Falcon jet.

There will be several prop airplanes around as well. You can stand there and
tell me which you think is louder.

You have to compare like to like. Compare the jets to
propeller-driven aircraft with similar thrust profiles and maximum
speeds.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

I still do. The fun of VFR flying, especially low level cross country
flying, is visual navigation. The damned GPS takes all the fun out of
it.

I have friends who think the same. To them, there's nothing more fun
than flying simply by following a road, or taking up a heading and
timing it with a clock.

I guess as a brain exercise this kind of thing is good, but as for it
being "fun" straining to see the next landmark emerging from the murk,
I don't get it. I'd much rather load my destination in my GPS, and
divert as desired to look at stuff en route, without the burden of
trying to figure out precisely where I am (and where I now must go) in
3-dimensional space.

To some, I suppose, that makes me lazy. But I don't like to do
accounting on a ledger anymore, either.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

My first real cross country was from Lock Haven to Vancouver in 1966. I
delivered a new Super Cub and had a total of 43 hrs and a brand new private
pilot's certificate.

I did have all the charts, but didn't spend ANY time drawing lines on them.
I do remember looking down from the DC-8 going across the country that it
all of a sudden looked like a kind of long way.

Karl
"Curator" N185KG


"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ps.com...
It didn't take days to plan - indeed, planning took about as long as
reviewing the charts and drawing a line

Okay, so maybe "days" was a bit of an exaggeration. However, for my
first "real" cross-country flight ("all the way" from Wisconsin to
Missouri in a rental Cherokee 140, back in '95, for our tenth wedding
anniversary) I do recall having all the charts out on the dining room
table for days before the flight, studying them for best routing, and
looking for good, identifiable landmarks. VORs were, for me, entirely
secondary to pilotage in getting to Branson -- I wanted uniquely-shaped
lakes and rivers!

As for the navigation being "part of the fun", I guess I got over that
a long time ago. Now, I just want to enjoy the flight as safely as
possible, and get there expeditiously. For us, that means GPS direct.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On 1 Nov 2006 07:43:53 -0800, "Jay Honeck" wrote:

I still do. The fun of VFR flying, especially low level cross country
flying, is visual navigation. The damned GPS takes all the fun out of
it.

I have friends who think the same. To them, there's nothing more fun
than flying simply by following a road, or taking up a heading and
timing it with a clock.

I guess as a brain exercise this kind of thing is good, but as for it
being "fun" straining to see the next landmark emerging from the murk,
I don't get it. I'd much rather load my destination in my GPS, and
divert as desired to look at stuff en route, without the burden of
trying to figure out precisely where I am (and where I now must go) in
3-dimensional space.

Part of the problem is your being a flatlander. Pilotage in the Pacific
Northwest, where one navigates by islands, bays, rivers, and volcanos, is a lot
easier. To get to Seattle, all you really have to do is find Mount Rainier:

http://www.wanttaja.com/sunrise.JPG (It's the big bump on the right.) When you
get there, turn north-northwest and fly for ~60 miles.

Though in the case shown in the photo, you'd be back-tracking... :-)

Ron Wanttaja

Jay Honeck wrote:

To some, I suppose, that makes me lazy.

I don't think you're lazy at all.

I like to occasionally completely plan a VFR flight "student-style" with
lines and waypoints (complete with VOR radial crossings w/ DME) on the
chart, e6b & POH calculations, a written step-by-step sheet with ETE/ATA
stuff, all just for fun.

On the other hand, most of the time, I'll generate a VFR navigation plan
with the AOPA or DUATS planner with radio-nav waypoints, and fly it by
GPS w/ VOR/DME backups.

But I don't like to do
accounting on a ledger anymore, either.

That's the way I do mine. Well, ok that insane tax stuff I leave to
TurboTax but the rest is pencil and paper.

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Gig 601XL Builder writes:

Yes propellers make noise. But I tell you what. Next time you are in the
states you are more than welcome to come to my hanger which is about 100
yards away from the hanger of Murphy Oil Corp. They have a few Citation
biz
jets and a Falcon jet.

There will be several prop airplanes around as well. You can stand there
and
tell me which you think is louder.

You have to compare like to like. Compare the jets to
propeller-driven aircraft with similar thrust profiles and maximum
speeds.


That's going to be damn hard to do there aren't to many prop planes with the
same thrust and max speed as your average jet.

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

That's going to be damn hard to do there aren't to many prop planes with the
same thrust and max speed as your average jet.

NASA has done it, but as I've said, the noise level is so high that it
isn't practical (passengers and crew might well suffer hearing damage
from the noise).

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Jay Honeck wrote:
Yep, Loran was the first "great leap forward". The plane I learned
to fly in had a Flybuddy Loran, and it was always a comfort knowing it
was there to double check my position, if needed.

But it was still nothing but a fancy "pointer". Moving map GPS
changed everything about situational awareness, IMHO.

I've flown across country with my Northstar M1A LORAN... It is great...
I've had a handheld GPS beside it and it agreed to 1/10th of a nm on the
distance to whatever I had for my destination / waypoint... When they
completed the mid-continent chain, it truly made it an acceptable
aviation navigational device... These days, I still use it, but I'm
likely to either have a handheld PDA with GPS running PocketFMS or a
laptop with a non-aviation GPS feeding coordinates to Delorme
StreetAtlas... Of course, if I would write a virtual serial driver that
converted the output from the Northstar to NMEA 0183 GPS data, I could
use the LORAN to drive the Delorme StreetAtlas moving map... Hell, I
might even be able to run PocketFMS on the laptop and thereby have a
1024x768 aviation moving map...

Gig 601XL Builder wrote:
The only time I really used it was on my solo
x-c and the practice was set it for the first
airport, fly there do my three landings at that
towered airport, land over at the edge of the
runway set the next airport, fly and repeat for
the homeward flight.

My LORAN has quite a bit more features -- that I never use, of course...
From what I understand, you can set routes that consist of multiple
identifiers (airports, intersections, VORs, etc)... I have never even
bothered to try out this feature... My personal flying style is just to
be interested in wherever my next destination might be and upon arrival
there, use the "direct-to" feature to set it to go to my next destination...

The main thing I noticed was the lack of a CDI I would have preferred a
Nav/Com at the time. A nice uncertified 496 would have been great.

My LORAN does have a CDI-type indicator built into it... Basically a
vertical bar on the screen that indicates your desired course and
another vertical var that indicates your current position in relation to
the desired course... I find it interesting to fly the LORAN CDI
indicator and use StreetAtlas to draw lines between my source and
destination airports and then log my GPS data for plotting over this
after the flight... I get to see all the deviations that I make either
from distraction, weather, traffic, or because I saw something
interesting that I wanted to check out... On trips, I'll take this and
add it to my electronic log book of the flights...