Aviator90 Episode 26

[music]

Man: [0:31] Welcome to another episode of Aviator90 from Angle of
Attack. The last five episodes I gave you guys some improvisational
insight into what goes on in a pilot’s head. Now we are going to do
some actual flying, but first like any good pilot you need to have
some sort of a plan. Or do you? To a certain extent you must have a
plan but planning doesn’t have to be as difficult or as involved as
you may think. Sometimes a plan can simply consist of a certain
amount of fuel you know you have and a direction that you want to
go and that’s it.
[1:09] In the last episode I talked a bit about the free spirit.
Now there is something to be said for a pilot who can top off his
tanks, know roughly the time and distance to his destination, and
just go. In this video we will go over some pros and cons of some
flight planning, talk about what is involved, and why you should or
shouldn’t flight plan. Yes I did just say that it’s possible not to
flight plan.

[1:36] First let’s go through the pros and cons. Pretend for a
moment that we have a perfect flight plan. All the corrections are
done, perfect performance calculations and so on. This flight plan
is planned down to each and every foot and every tenth of a gallon
of fuel.

[1:54] The cons of a method like this would be it takes a really
long time to come up with a flight plan like this. The weather,
winds, and performance are more often than not different than the
reports and what the manual says. Focusing on the numbers too much
will get you as an aviator fixated on flying a perfect flight,
which actually doesn’t exist.

[2:23] ATC can completely change your plan at anytime. There could
be an unexpected turn of events that tosses your whole plan aside
or you get lost. Whether you get lost trying to find your waypoints
or what, you got lost and now your whole plan literally flew out
the window. So what now?

[2:44] All right so now for the pros. I honestly don’t think there
are many. You will know all the variables of flight assuming the
weather and your plan can actually be followed. Not much will be a
surprise and that is actually always a good thing. Chances of
getting lost are pretty slim and you finally put use to your
pencils, pens, and your wiz will. You can now see where I’m going.

[3:08] In most cases, especially VFR, fair weather flying, detailed
perfect plans are completely pointless. Now with that said, you
should educate yourself on certain aspects of your flight. We will
learn about those throughout the next five sections, but there’s
something you need to realize as an aviator. There is a time to get
in the airplane and go. Too much planning is completely useless to
your flight and will end up being tossed aside anyway.

[3:39] So here at Angle of Attack for this Aviator90 stuff, we
believe in the get in and go mentality. It’s a little more complex
than just that. So here is what we do need to plan for when flying
somewhere in summary and this is generally always the case.

[3:57] One – Weather. You need to know if the weather during your
departure and route and destination will be fairly clear. You also
need to have an idea of what the winds are doing.

[4:10] Two – General Direction of Flight. Navigational aids you’ll
be using or a log of visual waypoints you’ll use.

[4:19] Three – Performance. You’ll need to be familiar with each
airport and what will be required for takeoff and landing
performance. Too short of a runway and you won’t be able to get off
in time. If the area is too hot, humid, or high in altitude the
aircraft will also get degraded performance. Anyway you need to
know what you can and cannot do.

[4:43] Four – Fuel Planning. You need to know what you can do with
the fuel you have. The most important number we’re looking for is
your endurance or how long you can stay in the air. With fuel
planning it’s always smart to also have a reserve of fuel. For me I
actually consider my reserve time to be unburnable. In other words,
I will never burn that fuel from my tanks on purpose. It’s very
important to have that safety buffer with fuel.

[5:13] And then it’s time to get in and go.

[5:17] There are other things to consider along the way but, if you
know what the weather, the route, navigation, performance, how long
you can fly on the amount of fuel you have, and other bits here and
there, you are good to go. Too much planning keeps you on the
ground when you could be in the air.

[5:34] So during these flight planning episodes we are going to go
from one extreme almost to the other. We won’t plan a perfect
flight plan, but we will just get in and go at some point. It
should be a ton of fun so be excited about that.

[5:48] All right so we’re done with this episode but in the
following episodes we will talk in more detail about weather,
navigation, performance, fuel planning, and flight plans.

[5:59] I’ll see you next time when we’ll talk about weather. Until
then, throttle on.

Transcription by CastingWords