HOUSTON TO PINCKNEYVILLE

Houston Hobby To Pinckneyville-Du Quoin
-- Planning a very long cross country: tips --

  In case it's helpful to anyone, here's a few things I found useful to do when planning a trip of substantial length. Disclaimer: Always check up with your instructor, and remember, you're the PIC so don't take my words as gospel! After all, I wrote this as a 250 hour VFR only private pilot ;-)

Route - HOU to PJY
An overview of my route, superimposed on the sectional index.

  I wanted to plan a VFR-direct route. Why VFR-direct instead of VOR to VOR? Well, firstly, I wanted to do pilotage/dead reckoning because of three things (1) it's fun, (2) it's fun and (3) it's a challenge. (OK that's only two things, but personal flying is supposed to be enjoyable) I really do enjoy the challenge of doing a good VFR-direct flight without using electronic navaids. It keeps you busy continuously, whereas using GPS or VOR to VOR can get a little bit tedious. I was also expecting to fly the club's 170, which doesn't have a lot in the way of nav gear. In the end I flew a Cheetah, but since the single VOR was flaky (only worked within 10 miles of the station) and the LORAN was decidedly non intuitive (so I just switched it off), it worked out exactly the same anyway!

  To plan something this long, you can't just slap your plotter down and be done, like most VFR cross countries. To add to the planning, the route was North-South, meaning both sides of the chart had to be used. As you can imagine, it would be very tedious trying to get a good straight line from Houston to Pinckneyville using sectionals alone. So I went to the Aviator Shop, and got a Low Altitude VFR/IFR planning chart. This covers the entire US, and the plotter will actually reach all the way from Houston to Pinckneyville on this. I drew my line on this chart, and transcribed it to the sectionals by using convenient lat/long coordinates on the chart boundaries. True; this might not be accurate to the half mile, but it's precise enough.

  What about great circle routes, I hear you cry? Well, on a Lambert Conformal Conic projection, a straight line is, as near as makes no odds, a great circle route. You only see the curve in the line if you are using a Mercator (or similar) projection. Of course, the Lambert projection does have some deviation from a true great circle route since it's still a flat representation of a spherical object, but it's good enough for even very long trips.

  Once my line was transcribed to the sectionals - the Houston, Memphis and St. Louis sectionals - I was ready to take the mileage. To make it easy, I made 20 mile tick marks all the way from Houston to PJY, putting the total miles at each tick mark. This would give me a good indicator of how far I'd gone as I followed the chart as I flew. It came out at 598 NM. Once this was done, I could go on to making my textual flight plan. I have my own format which I simply put on a small "reporters notepad". I find this much easier to use in flight than the A4-sized Jeppeson flight planning sheets. (The Jepp planning sheets are excellent for students as it makes you do all the calculations which helps you learn what's most important to keep track of during a flight).

  Another method that works if you're going East-West or if going North-South, buy twice the number of sectionals that you need, is one that John Johnson described during the hangar flying session on the Saturday night. You simply lay the sectionals out on the floor, and get them aligned. Then with the aid of an assistant where necessary, get a builder's chalk line and tighten it up, holding it at the origin and destination airports, then lift the line, and ...snap... you have an instant course line!

  I've found a good thing to do on a cross country is to select an "on course" point - a prominent landmark reasonably close to your origin at which you turn on course (if not already on course). Hopefully, you're in cruise configuration by this point, so this is where to start timing your checkpoints. I religiously use my timer since the basis of dead reckoning is timing and a compass heading. You can of course use any clock, but it's easier if you use a stopwatch - I use a West Bend kitchen timer (it has a little magnet to stick it to my yoke clip). A yoke clip is also a useful device to have on a cross country. I use the timer whether I'm VFR or doing a cross country VOR to VOR under the hood preparing my instrument rating (funnily enough, I found the electrical system "died" less frequently when I was doing this with my instructor on board during an IFR training session...and the moment he noticed I'd forgotten to set the timer rolling, the radios "died" ;-)


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