Fantastic Thanks. The demistifies all of this somewhat. Ok. So. E6B and your Protractor and chart is all used initially for the planning phase. The flight log is then updated with real times enroute and fuel burn data throughout the flight and you really would not work on WCA and GS calcs in VFR Midflight right?
Once in the air though, the winds are anyonebody's guess right? Simply change your altitude and winds are probably going to change again right? So in these cases what do you find is the best way to come up with Ground Speed? You need that to navigate right (assuming your GPS is toast)? So what do you do now midflight between points to confirm windspeed and direction?
@cvearl Great questions! It's actually not anybody's guess. There are a couple of ways to calculate and monitor your groundspeed while in flight. The first and easiest way is to just time how long it takes you to get from one waypoint to another along your route. Now, this video was pretty simplified as it just counted the origin and departure airports. In actuality, you would identify several landmarks along your route to use as waypoints and keep track on a navigation log.
@cvearl If you know how far it is between 2 points and you know how long it took you to get from one to the other, then you can use the speed = distance/time equation to figure out what your groundspeed. The other way to calculate your supposed groundspeed is to get an updated winds aloft reading from flight service. You can contact them through the local RCO frequency while in the air, or you can typically reach them on 122.200mHz. Really though, you just want to keep track of how long it...
@cvearl ...is taking you to get from one waypoint to the next and extrapolate on that for your entire route so you know whether or not you need to update your Flight Plan's ETA time so Civil Air Patrol doesn't come looking for you. Also, more importantly, you need to figure out whether or not you're still going to have enough gas to make it to your destination with the required reserves.
Aside from perhaps using E6B in calcing fuel burn and endurance data specific to your current flight and conditions I mean.
cvearl 1 year ago
Fantastic Thanks. The demistifies all of this somewhat. Ok. So. E6B and your Protractor and chart is all used initially for the planning phase. The flight log is then updated with real times enroute and fuel burn data throughout the flight and you really would not work on WCA and GS calcs in VFR Midflight right?
cvearl 1 year ago
Great stuff. Thanks for this. :)
Once in the air though, the winds are anyonebody's guess right? Simply change your altitude and winds are probably going to change again right? So in these cases what do you find is the best way to come up with Ground Speed? You need that to navigate right (assuming your GPS is toast)? So what do you do now midflight between points to confirm windspeed and direction?
cvearl 1 year ago
@cvearl Great questions! It's actually not anybody's guess. There are a couple of ways to calculate and monitor your groundspeed while in flight. The first and easiest way is to just time how long it takes you to get from one waypoint to another along your route. Now, this video was pretty simplified as it just counted the origin and departure airports. In actuality, you would identify several landmarks along your route to use as waypoints and keep track on a navigation log.
captain1269 1 year ago
@cvearl If you know how far it is between 2 points and you know how long it took you to get from one to the other, then you can use the speed = distance/time equation to figure out what your groundspeed. The other way to calculate your supposed groundspeed is to get an updated winds aloft reading from flight service. You can contact them through the local RCO frequency while in the air, or you can typically reach them on 122.200mHz. Really though, you just want to keep track of how long it...
captain1269 1 year ago
@cvearl ...is taking you to get from one waypoint to the next and extrapolate on that for your entire route so you know whether or not you need to update your Flight Plan's ETA time so Civil Air Patrol doesn't come looking for you. Also, more importantly, you need to figure out whether or not you're still going to have enough gas to make it to your destination with the required reserves.
captain1269 1 year ago