This afternoon was a nice short flight, and I wanted to capitalize on this opportunity to make a critical assessment of my navigation skills. I have several legs in the not too distant future that will require a rather precise application of aeronautical navigation skills. The "nautical" part of that is especially apropos, since many of these flights will be across vast expanses of water. The weather was VFR along the entire route this afternoon from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Teterboro, New Jersey, so I wasn't too worried about the weather; I just needed to find some good landmarks, estimate arrival times, and go.
Fueled up in Lancaster at my own SparkleGate-Amish with 30 gallons of 100LL and made a final check of the weather - the outlook was VFR for New York, New Hampshire and Maine. Of course the leg to Maine wouldn't be until tomorrrow, but all the same it gave me a good sense of good weather, with just some moderate north winds at planned cruise level, 5500 MSL. I would have chosen 3500, but there were moderate headwinds, yet almost no winds a few thousand feet higher. (How will I do without all this good information once I leave the US?).
I departed Lancaster at 4:46 PM EST and flew a magnetic-corrected rhumbline heading of 079 for 111 NM. I identified three major landmarks along the way: Lake Nockamixon, Lake Lebanon, and then the Chatham NDB. I'm not going to get too much into the details, but will point out that I was able to identify all of these while I was enroute, and my only concern was that I was a bit south of course in New Jersey, which I noticed because I flew right over Newark. This was a only a few miles south of course, so it's not a huge deal, and it was a good landmark to set me up for Teterboro - where I landed after 1 hour and 14 minutes of flying and had burned 11 gallons of fuel.
No comments:
Post a Comment