Teaching the nav log / computing courses and headings
Asked by: David Eberhardt 5138 views Flight Instructor
Over the years, I've tried various nav log products to use for flight planning cross country legs. Most seemed overly complicated and rather busy to use in flight.
I've simplified my process of planning as follows. Perhaps days (or even a week or two) before the flight, I measure my True Course (say 353 degrees) with a plotter, then add the westerly deviation of 15 degrees (I'm in Connecticut) to get my Magnetic Course (008 degrees). I'll use this mag course to chose an odd thousand altitude to file and fly; because of FAR 91.15.
It appears that the common nav logs have you take the true course and adjust for winds first, then add in the variation, etc, etc. It seems like this would mess up figuring out the correct magnetic course figure needed for VFR altitude selection would it not?
Weather forecast may decide if I go 3500 or 5500 etc.... Perhaps the day before or the day off, I then get my winds aloft info to figure out my wind correction angle which will determine my ultimate Magnetic Heading to fly using my directional gyro, to achive the mag course I planned.
I'm pretty sure I'm doing this right but it deosn't make the nav log very user friendly to me. Am I missing something?
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