On my South Island trip, I took my Garmin 96C GPS. This was the first long trip I'd taken it on, and since it was a nice day on the way down I thought I would get used to tracking along my route on the GPS. I found that if I switched it to HSI mode and tried to keep the CDI centred, I would end up wobbling left and right like an old drunk while I was trying to keep it on track. I found it much easier to get it lined up then look out the front of the plane and pick a landmark directly off the nose, then just hold it in the same place. When I got there I found I'd more or less stayed pretty well on track. When I got to the next waypoint, I lined it up on the next part of the route and picked a landmark, and so on.
The next thing I found is my complicated route I planned, which kept me from going too far out to sea, was essentially useless as the day I went down was such a good day visibility wise, I found I could see where I was trying to get to and was able to go direct and cut down the distance a bit. Of course on the way back the GPS was useful to keep me from just clipping the corner of some controlled airspace as I was avoiding weather.
2 comments:
Sounds pretty much like how I use my GPS. I normally set my waypoints about 15 minutes flying time apart, and I also set the proximity on them to 5 miles, so I can just pass with 5 miles of each waypoint at it automatically changes to the next one, rather than having to fly directly overtop them.
Yeah, the idea of using the HSI to fly the aircraft on track kind of went out the window when I actually used it in a moving aircraft!
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