Preparing for a coast-to-coast trip in the summer of 2015.
June 2015-
Eleven years ago, in the debut of Left Coast Pilot, I wrote about my experiences flying from California to West Virginia. I’m planning to do that trip again later this year, at my wife’s request—which makes it an appropriate time to review how previous trips went.
Back in 1999, I took a three-week vacation and spent it flying N5142L, a 1967 PA-28-180, from Modesto, Calif. to Parkersburg, W.V. (my parents’ hometown) and back, taking a southerly route over New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. In 2003, I made the same trip—but this time took a more northerly route with a stop to attend AirVenture.
Both times, I started my flight planning over a month before departure. For that first trip back East, I had to send away for a trip kit of paper charts—I got World Aeronautical Charts (WACs) and IFR Enroute charts for the entire route (plus extras to cover possible diversions) and either Sectional or Terminal Area Charts for every place I expected to land, plus approach plates.
The charts alone filled one of my bags, and a ritual at each overnight stop was sorting through them to find the charts I’d need for the next leg. One major problem was that all of my IFR charts expired during the trip, so I would check in at FBOs and pilot shops along the way, buying new charts when I could find them.
In 2003, I had a slightly more sophisticated setup. I was flying a 1973 PA-28R-200, and I’d just bought a Motion Computing M1200 Tablet PC, which was sort of an early version of what Microsoft now sells as the Surface tablet. I had Jeppesen’s JeppView and FliteMap software installed on the tablet, which gave me an electronic database containing the equivalent of all the paper charts I carried back in 1999.
I was just a bit nervous, though, at the idea of betting the farm on something electronic—so about one week before leaving I bought a backup by subscribing to chart atlases from Air Chart Systems. I got the IFR and WAC chart atlases—IFR Enroute and area charts and a combination of WAC charts, plus partial Sectionals and Terminal Area Charts for Class C and B airspace, in two big spiral binders. Moving from one chart to the next was a little confusing at first—but with practice I got the hang of it.
And boy, did I practice! After laying out the route, I practiced every leg and the primary instrument approach to each stop using Microsoft Flight Simulator. FliteMap was a big help with this. It has flight planning options that let you specify the maximum terrain or MEA along your route. (That’s important when us Left Coast guys head east—there’s a minor obstacle called the Rocky Mountains!)
I also selected alternates. My strategy for this was to look for an airport with an instrument approach within 70 nm (30 minutes’ flying time in N16460) to the west of my intended destination. Usually, if you can’t make the airport you’re planning, it’s due to weather or winds. In case of weather, I could turn around and head back to (presumably) better weather where I was coming from; if the issue was wind, I’d have an option half an hour earlier on my planned route.
Practicing in Flight Simulator let me visualize the route in great detail and get a feel for what it might look like with less-than-perfect weather. You can set weather in Flight Simulator to be anything you’d like—and during the last week before leaving, I was particularly concerned about the thunderstorms that always pop up on summer afternoons.
One more backup: while I planned to use the electronic charts in the M1200, I wanted to have paper approach plates for the airports where I might be most likely to fly instrument approaches: my planned fuel and overnight stops, and preselected alternates. JeppView has a nice option to print those out, and my laser printer produced crisp-looking plates. (Better, in my opinion, than Jepp’s originals.) A one-inch binder held all the ones I’d need to cover the 4,000 nm round-trip.
Other gizmos on the trip included a Garmin GPS 92 in a yoke mount and a Palm VIIx personal digital assistant (PDA) with a built-in wireless modem. (Remember those, from back in the days when cell phones only made calls?) I had software on the Palm VIIx that would let me view NEXRAD; now I can get that on my iPad using ForeFlight and a Stratus 2 ADS-B receiver. But just as in 2003, I suspect it won’t work well in the mountains, where it can be hard to get good line of sight with a ground station.
We’re going to fly basically the same northerly route this time, though we won’t visit the Oshkosh area. We are planning one major diversion to Rapid City, S.D. for air and ground tours of Mount Rushmore and Devils Tower National Monument in northeast Wyoming. And since the aircraft we’re flying this time has long-range fuel tanks, I can plan longer legs—though I still plan to do most of our flying in the morning (with a shorter leg possible after lunch) given the prevalence of afternoon thunderstorms.
Of course, electronics have improved almost beyond recognition in the past 11 years. Instead of that clunky M1200 with its two-hour battery life, I’ve got an iPad running ForeFlight Mobile. Though I do miss FliteMap’s automatic routing, that gives me almost all of same flight planning capability. Instead of a portable GPS in a yoke mount, I’ve got a Garmin GNS 530 in the panel, and the iPad strapped to my leg as a moving map.
Still, I’ve had enough experience to be a big believer in paper backups. Air Chart Systems went out of business a while ago, but I’ve found Sky-Nav chart atlases from Aviation Chart Co. to be a (mostly) acceptable substitute; the IFR atlas is quite usable. I also have Sky-Nav’s WAC chart digest, and while it’s okay, I miss the Terminal Area Charts and partial Sectionals that Air Charts offered for busy Class B and C airspace. Sky-Nav offers a four-volume set of bound Sectionals, and I may get those before the trip.
Then there’s the question of what to use as a backup for approach plates. Just in the last year, I restarted a subscription for paper approach plates after finding myself without the plates I needed in a diversion, but buying a full set of plates for the entire country seems awfully wasteful.
Twice during the 2003 trip I found myself dealing with instrument approaches for which I didn’t have a pre-printed plate. In one case, I used the M1200, and in the other I actually hand-drew a plate from the M1200 display and used that. I’m a lot more comfortable with the iPad and expect to make less use of paper backups this time; I may just go ahead and print them off as I did in 2003—and include some blank pages in case I have to make one up in an emergency!
Another option would be to take two iPads. (One of my partners does just that.) If we had an MFD in the panel that would show charts, I’d be comfortable using that as backup for my iPad, and vice versa.
Just as in 2003, I plan to spend quite a few evenings simulating legs for the route—and I’m going to add one additional preparatory step: an instrument proficiency check with my flight instructor just a week or so before our departure. We’re into the dry season now, and it has been quite a while since I’ve flown in any actual weather. Hood work isn’t a perfect substitute, but combined with time simulating the route, it should be helpful.
I wish there was a site in my area where I could spend a day in a full-up flight simulator (excuse me—“advanced training device”—per the FAA). In 2003, I was able to spend a day at Proficient Flight in Waukesha, Wis. (they’ve since moved to Dodge County Airport (KUNU) in Juneau, Wis.) before proceeding east, and I’m very glad I did—the weather got progressively worse on those legs and the confidence I got in the simulator
really paid off.
John D. Ruley is an instrument-rated pilot and freelance writer. He holds a master’s degree from the University of North Dakota Space Studies program (space.edu) and is archivist for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) operational history project. Ruley has been a volunteer pilot with ligainternational.org and angelflight.org, two charities which operate medical missions in northwest Mexico and provide medical patient transport, respectively. Send questions or comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
