My grandfather is thinking about buying an Ercoupe. The fact that as of now the one he is looking at is equipped with only a VFR GPS got me thinking. I’ve always done the dead reckoning calculations (with a plastic plotter and metal E6B, i.e. no batteries, no microchips) on all point A to point B flights (even if they’re within 20nm sometimes), just for the practice and to keep up on it. I will also fly the outbound radial, and my checkpoints will be intersections made of from crossradials that go over my checkpoint. With this Ercoupe possibly coming into the picture, I became curious as to what everyone else does.
Since I don’t fly every day, I do the radial tracking and dead reckoning for the practice of it all (plus I sucked at math and it’s awesome to get that stuff right) what do you guys do when flying VFR?
This is territory that I know well, and could easily fly seat of the pants and find my way, but I find it much more fun to use the above methods. Obviously I’m flying VFR so I’ve got my eyes out the windscreen and am verfying everything visually as well, but
What do you guys typically do as far as VFR navigation in, lets say known territory, and for that matter on longer X-countries in less familar territory?
E6B / Plotters waz that??? 
Truthfully, with all the technology we have today and better made energizer batteries, GPS units going cheap, cell phones, why do we even bother with the E6B? I personally think it’s time for training to come up to speed of technology. We sure seem to lose that E6B AND plotter during IA training , I can’t imagine anybody using the E6B in IMC and everything in the plane has the same chance of going belly up. Even in VFR, I don’t ever see me pullying the non existent E6B in my flight bag out and doing in flight calculations. I am just goint to the nearest airport and land. I think it’s time to retire that E6B. One pilot I know carries a Sporties electronic version of the E6B. Won’t that battery die just as easily as my Garmin 296 battery??? Mine did from lack of useage! Ok, off my high horse.
To answer your question, for me, I still do carry a sectional mainly not for land marks but for the the minimum safe altitude numbers in large numbers in the 30 NM grids. Of course as you say, eyes outside the window looking for the typical large landmarks and fly toward them using the sectional as a verifying tool to my flight path. Flight planning prior to wheels up I really find remarkably accurate for times between checkpoints.
Filling out a paper nav log? With DUATS, and any other flight planning software, the only paper nav log I have is the computer generated one. Before I had GPS, I would have highlighted all airports under my flight path on the sectional within a 10 mile corrider so I didn’t have to concentrate in finding the airports while in the air.
I did a dead reckoning flight last year for a 50 mile XC just for the heck of it, and ended up about 5 miles off course when I finally got the airport in sight. Not very many checkpoints and on this flight forward visibility was about 10 to 15 miles. It was fun doing this for me as it really made me concentrate my attention outside the airplane. Winds aloft were very light.
ill be honest, i do remember learning all the forms of navigation and know that i could accuratly use them, but with the 530 in the airplane i havnt seen a sectional in months, oither than buying them for my flight bag. it is important to know how to navigate in other ways than simply tune the GPS to where you want to go and follow the little purple line, because like mentioned above how do you get where youre going when the GPS fails…(although its not that common but could happen) or what are you going to do when youre NAV radio goes out, all unlikely scenarios but in my opinion its very important to be fresh on all things flying, cause you cant exactly ask for directions at the gas station, not that any man would anyway 
Correct me if I’m wrong bro, and this is only cause I don’t ever fly VFR. But isn’t it a reg that you need a current sectional in your AC if you fly VFR?
Yes it is a reg. No correction needed.
You would be one step up on me if it required using that whiz wheel. To be honest, I’d have to re-teach myself!
If I had to pull that durn thing out now on a flight today and do a computation, I probably would be in Monroe, LA rather then my destination KMBO by the time I figured out my answer and even then I would have second doubts 
It is reg risingup.com/fars/info/part91-503-FAR.shtml to be exact, but the question then comes, does it have to be in paper form?
Would notebook tablets meet the requirement, panel mounted IFR GPS meet the requirement? Nothing in the above addresses this.
Allen
You are the fact checker. I guess if it says “aeronautical charts and data, in current and appropriate form” then that is what is means unless you can some up with something else.
It’s the verbiage “appropriate form” that tosses me for a loop.
If it is acceptable to using my Garmin 430 enroute as my aeronautical chart for airspace, I wouldn’t need that sectional in my flight bag.
Since my 430 without terrain awareness doesn’t provide for that OROCA (I know this is IFR term) I take that sectional with me on my VFR flights. Would my 296 be appropriate form since it has TAWS and a sectional map?
I believe that notebooks and tablets do provide imaged sectionals which would preclude the need for a paper sectional thus me raising this question.
Much easier to pan across a screen then spread that mile long sectional across the cockpit
Me, my take is that a life time’s worth of sectionals probably a lot cheaper then a tablet capable of handling such large images. Plus I get that I look lost look carrying a batch of folded up sectionals. 
No I definetely agree with the verbage difficulty. This goes back to an old thread about FSDO’s. You can’t two of them to agree about the same interpretation of a reg. I guess the right thing to do is just have a current paper backup for your GPS.
Folding a VFR or a IFR chart is an art form, and should be something CFI’s should teach, and DE’s should test.
I have an IFR approved GPS and STILL get the IFR chart out even after the route is programed. It’s just good airman ship.
Bro I’m not knocking you at all. Now that I fly a Jet GPS is something I can’t live without. GPS to me is just plug and play (pardon the piss poor computer reference) Menu driven and not all that hard to understand.
ANY tips most appreciated especially for those flights that go from SW to NE or vice versa!
Seems that all my points of interest invariably fall in the durn creases and hills of the original folds where I have to squash the chart flat to read what I need!
Yup- break it into legs of your flight even if you’re only going one place. Make a plan on how to fold it, then plan on how you’re going to fold for the next leg etc. it’s not hard you just need to plan it. Stay ahead of the chart, just like you stay ahead of the airplane.
I agree that GPS has probably taken over the paper method for both accuracy and cockpit clutter reasons.
The aircraft I rent regularly, one has dual VOR the other has a 430. With the region I fly in, and mostly local flights I’m content with the dual VORs.
The other thing is , all you guys fly IFR mainly so that sort of takes the VFR out of the equation. If you can get that extra ATC assistance, unless you’re taking friends up to see their house or something, that’s the way to go.
For you who don’t know, I’m not a pilot. However, it seems to me that it would be logical to carry a E6B and keep your dead reckoning skills up to date just in case the unthinkable happens and your electrical system dies and your batteries in your GPS die.
I know that odds of that happening are very slim but why wouldn’t it be prudent to have non-electrical backups just in case? Rather than boasting about not being able to use a E6B and charts, I think pilots would want to have every backup item and knowledge available.
Is there something I’m missing here?
Yep… Flying a plane…
Take a discovery flight. You may then just understand.
The whizwheel (E6B) is a flight computer to a GPS like the abacus is to the laptop. The E6B would be used to calculate long distance or cross country flights. Fuel burn, time speed distance, ect ect. If you were to lose your electrical system the prudent thing to do would be to “land as soon as practical”. Hence there would not be a need for the long range calculation of the E6B.
It is used nowadays as a training tool for beggining pilots to learn how to calculate those above functions and not much more than that. Hope this answer helps.
I second this. When I did my ground school I was flat out told that other than while I was learning to fly, because of GPS, I would probably NEVER use the E6B again. However, it wasn’t rocket science to learn how to use.
I knew you would reply sarcastically. I was hoping to get a reply from a PROFESSIONAL (see below) pilot about this.
I have taken a discovery flight - a couple of them, as a matter of fact, and have done ground school, although they were both a whlie back.
I still don’t understand why somebody would not want to have all possible means of safety backup available. As an example, a flashlight is a required item on airliners. How often does all of the electricity go out on an airliners? Not very often but it’s still nice to have that extra source of light.
In this case, I mean a pilot who acts professionally when it comes to flying, whether he does it for a living or a hobby. He’s a pilot who answers people’s questions, no matter how dumb they may seem to the pilot, in a polite way.
Thank you, gr8pilot1 and pika1000, for answering my question in a non-sarcastic, non-condescending manner. It is greatly appreciated and is a lot more useful for my knowledge of flying than another person’s reply.
I will say that if you have a hand held GPS and you lose electricity, you will will be on the ground long before the batteries crap out. Most pilots I talk to at RVS who have “in dash” GPS also carry a hand held that is plugged in for power for this reason.