1) Flight Planning.

Every flight starts with some sort of plan. Even if it's just to make sure the weather will be VFR; the winds are within your ability, and there's enough fuel on board to fly a few touch-and-gos... All the way up to checking density altitude, the plane's loading, and how long each leg of the flight can be, given the amount of fuel you can carry with passengers and baggage... Can each runway on the route (including alternate airports) handle your plane at take-off weight ?... Will the weather and winds be favorable along the route ?... How will the winds affect your heading and ground-speed, and consequently, your fuel burn ? We'll get into non-VFR flight planning much later. All we're trying to accomplish, is to get the piloting frame of mind going.. and to make sitting down in front of the monitor something worth thinking through, as though you were about to really climb into an airplane.

By no means will we cover comprehensive, real-world flight planning.. but we will concentrate aspects relative to simming, without getting laborious or requiring the purchase of charts and flight computers (there are plenty of on-line E6B emulators).

1.a) A Sim Private Pilot will be expected to calculate a magnetic heading needed to maintain a magnetic course for a known wind aloft.

1.b) A Sim Private Pilot will be expected to calculate true airspeed (TAS) and the resulting ground speed for a known wind aloft.

1.c) A Sim Private Pilot will be expected to calculate a climb/cruise/descent fuel burn for a known ground speed, for each leg of a flight.

1.d) A Sim Private Pilot will be expected to submit a complete flight plan utilizing data from parts 1.a.b.c... including airport information for each planned stop (including alternates) consisting of; available runways, pattern data, and airport elevation... and any nav-aids to be used en-route.

--------------------------------------

OK.. let the questions and discussion begin. The idea here will be to get an informal, fun and friendly way to acknowledge our progress through ratings and endorsements issued by members already holding a rating or endorsement. Until we can come up with a better method; the only tool we have at hand for check-rides, is the FSX shared cockpit. Obviously, there will be some bugs to work out, and it will take some time before there is some consistency. I figure we gotta start somewhere. So here it is  

Please do...  These parts of the training are more like an open discussion. Posting scenarios and solutions is part of it. Sample aircraft data would be great too. The only requirement for completing Part 1, is that a simmer agrees that he understands the theories here, and has followed the thread and its discussion. Contributing a completed flight plan to the thread,and discussing it, will constitute completion of Part 1.  


edit:  (love the sign)

Excellent !  I use all those sites, quite regularly, for real planning. Edit this weather link into that post too, if you will  http://adds.aviationweather.noaa.gov/ ; ... to keep things organized (I'll edit it out of this post).

Now... I'll put together a basic, sim flight plan, as an example, using those sites...

In all my years of flying, I've yet to come across a paved runway not long enough to get a safely loaded C172 up and over the trees; even on the hottest of summer days. Granted, I've not done much mountain flying, where field elevation is a concern, but for the sake of sim flight-planning, at this time, we'll assume that all paved runways will be long enough... and we'll touch on density altitude, in its simplest form.

Density altitude is the first thing to address during your weather planning. More times than not, it will just be a formality, but if you ever get to flying heavier/faster airplanes, it's good that your first instinct is to consider density altitude. For sim-planning, all we need to worry about is the temperature. Hotter air is less dense, and that's a triple-edged sword to a normally-aspirated, piston airplane.

1) There is less air available for the wings to generate lift.
2) There is less air for the propeller to generate thrust.
3) There is less oxygen for the engine to generate horse-power.

The affect can be dramatic. On a hot, summer day, where the C172 is well past the departure end of a 5,000ft runway, almost ready to turn to the crosswind leg before reaching pattern altitude (normally 1000agl).. that same C172 can be at pattern altitude by the end of that 5,000ft runway, on a cold winter morning.

In short... air gets less dense as altitude increases. Hot air is already less dense and can make the plane "think" it's already at a higher altitude, before even taking off. Hence, density altitude is the actual altitude, adjusted for temperature (and atmospheric pressure and relative humidity, but we don't need to be that advanced in simming, yet). It's so important, that most AWOS/ASOS/ATIS broadcasts will include density altitude.

Since all our flights at this time will be VFR, all we'll account for in our planning is winds aloft... and that there isn't a fore-casted crosswind beyond our ability, at any of our stops, or alternate airports. Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts (TAF) are your best source for weather at specific airports. These (along with winds aloft) can be found at the weather planning site listed earlier in this thread.

I'm going to include the pertinent data for our flight... we can discuss how to navigate the weather site as we go.

A TAF map gives us a glimpse at the prevailing surface winds...



The little flag from each reporting station points to direction from which the wind is coming... and each line on the flag represents 10knots, Since there are no flags showing more than 15knots along our route, it's safe to assume that there will be no crosswinds with greater than 15knot components (the C172's published limit). This map also shows that there will be marginal, if not IFR weather, at times... but for now, we're just concerned about winds.

TAF data for a couple of stations along the route (green arrows) confirms things for us.

KTOL 151501Z 26011G15KT 10SM  (Toledo)

KMBS 151453Z 32011G14KT 10SM   (Bay City)

KPLN 151512Z 33015KT 9SM      (Pelston)


Winds aloft planning is a little less precise. You can use the winds map at the weather site and estimate it..  Or you can used text data from the nearest stations reporting winds aloft (boxed in areas on the TAF map)

FT      3000       6000
--------------------  
FWA   3237      3332-08
MKG   3329      3321-10
TVC    3328      3425-11

Winds at 3000msl over FWA are 3237 (out of 320 @ 37knots) and are similar (330@29kots / 330@28knots) for the other stations. We'll use 325@35knots for our time/fuel planning in the next post.

Yes.. that is the visibility in statute miles..  There is much more data in a TAF, but we won't get to that, until later...

Seeing that many of the simmers here are European...  keep pointing things like this out.. we'll all learn more 

All looks good to me. My only tip (or cunning cheat when not paying for the fuel) is fly at a mutiple of 60kts TAS. Makes MDR so much easier.

Talking of MDR, using just basic rules of thumb can be used to check it quite nicely. Calling 107KTAS roughly 1.8miles/min (ie, roughly 2), we can calculate our max drift with the 35kt wind: Windspeed (kts)/TAS (miles/min), in this case very roughly 35/1.8ish, so about 20°, give or take a smidge.

With this leg the wind is a 15° to the required track, so we take a 1/4 of the max drift to correct our heading*... amazingly 5°, just like the computer...

*30° off, 1/2 the max drift
45° off, 3/4 the max drift
60° of and greater, all the drift...

Similarly the same sorts of principles can be appiled to the speed. If the wind is between 0°-30°, you take all the headwind (cunningly, in this example, 107kts - 35kts =72kts); 45° off, 3/4 of the headwind; 60°, 1/2 etc...

This is interesting so far (a little review never hurt any pilot), and a lot of nice work, but if you are looking to get non-RL pilots interested in proper flight planning etc., this thread might be better situated in the sim forums ... I see that so far, only RL pilots seem to have taken any interest.
I realize that this section is for real and sim training discussion, but the majority seem to look at threads specific to their sim for information.
Just a thought... maybe an announcement in the FSX/FS2004 forums to get the attention of those who might want to learn about this and apply it to the sim?

Or am I completely missing the purpose of this discussion?