[Irv Lee]

Good game, costing you nothing, except your own coffee or beer.
1 - think of two places or towns not too far apart, no need to be airfields
2 - pick up air chart, look at them, without drawing line or measuring, eyeball the track and distance. Remember them.
3 - now draw line. Use bent thumb (knuckle to tip) as approx 10 miles pacer on half mil chart. Look at line angle as it crosses a vertical on chart. Revise your original guess on distance and direction.
4- measure properly with scale and protractor, compare values to (3) and (2).
5 - repeat with new places whenever you can until you drive people with you mad. You will eventually not need (4) and maybe even (2) will be good enough but draw line anyway!.

[iaindings]

I did something very similar to this. Except I got 2 dining room chairs and put them right next to eachother. I did it with a kneeboard on my lap with my girlfriend in the seat next to me, making rocking motions to "simulate" the cockpit experience. I wanted to practice getting things like pens and plotters organised.

Yes, I need to get out more

[Irv Lee]

I did it with a kneeboard on my lap with my girlfriend in the seat next to me, making rocking motions to "simulate" the cockpit experience

Just wait til you graduate to simulating "advanced aerobatics"... you will both enjoy that a lot more

[Nick]

I did something very similar to this. Except I got 2 dining room chairs and put them right next to eachother. I did it with a kneeboard on my lap with my girlfriend in the seat next to me, making rocking motions to "simulate" the cockpit experience. I wanted to practice getting things like pens and plotters organised.

Yes, I need to get out more

Don't they call this "care in the community"?

Nick

[David Wood]

- Fly to a line feature that goes to the alternate, make sure you are definitely flying to one side of the alternate, then turn and follow the line feature there, or

- Fly to a really easy to identify place near the alternate - say a large distinctive town, and then do the last few miles accurately from there (which again, you've plenty of time to prepare for), or

G

Ah, the lost art of the 'aim off'. Useful on land, sea and in the air. Good advice.

[Sir Morley Steven]

To navigate you need a heading and a time.
Before you take off draw a little NSEW in the handy scratchpad on your chart (Heathrow CTR) with drift and GS on all four points then guesstimate drift and GS. If you have a nine mile thumb like me and your GS is 90kt then it is one thumb per 6 minutes.
Job done.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Can I offer a somewhat different take on it.

You are flying along minding your own business when your instructor gives you a diversion. DO NOT TURN TOWARDS IT. DO NOT PLAN TO IT FROM WHERE YOU ARE NOW.

Carry on to your next waypoint, or a point en-route along that line, that's already planned and set up, so fly it. TAKE YOUR TIME, and plan from that waypoint, when you get there THEN turn. This will massively reduce cockpit stress.

All very well for the artificial case of a skills test in good VMC.

In the real world, the diversion is likely to be because the weather in front of you is deteriorating, and you may not even get to your next waypoint.

Problem is, turn immediately, onto a not yet fully calculated heading, from a position somewhere on a leg - and you create a situation for being rapidly and problematically lost. Do that in poor visibility, and things will go very wrong very quickly.

The best solution of course is to make the decision early, before things get dangerous. Failing that, it's invariably best to plan from somewhere KNOWN, and get there, before turning to the eventual destination.

There are various ways to do this - continuing to the next waypoint, flying to a known easy to find town in the right general direction, using a line feature are all valid options, so potentially is doing a 180 and planning from the LAST waypoint. In my book, turning immediately so that you are neither sure of precise location or track, is not a valid option in most cases.

G

[QSD]

I always found the task of doing mental arithmetic too demanding while flying an aircraft, so I teach my students to use a wind star and diversion ruler for diversions. PM me if you would like a PowerPoint briefing on how to use them.

In my experience the largest source of error is misestimating the no wind track. Easy to be 15 degrees out just by eyeballing it (unless you practice it a lot) so any subsequent wind corrections are likely to be "lipstick on a pig". I advise sliding a pencil or straight edge across to a nearby VOR rose to get a better estimate.

[David Wood]

But as Irv said, practising it is easy, cheap and surprisingly effective. With practice one can achieve an accuracy of 2-3 degrees without much difficulty. I advise students to play the game at home, pick any of the straight lines on the chart (edges of controlled airspace, for example - but not the lines of longitude and latitude, or course ) and to estimate the 'track' that they represent before checking their estimate with a protractor. Then to practise until they get good at it. It's a useful skill.

[QSD]

But as Irv said, practising it is easy, cheap and surprisingly effective. With practice one can achieve an accuracy of 2-3 degrees without much difficulty. I advise students to play the game at home, pick any of the straight lines on the chart (edges of controlled airspace, for example - but not the lines of longitude and latitude, or course ) and to estimate the 'track' that they represent before checking their estimate with a protractor. Then to practise until they get good at it. It's a useful skill.

Perfectly correct of course, practice does improve accuracy, but why guesstimate when you can measure with very little extra effort?

Using a VOR rose also neatly avoids any complications around magnetic variation as well. Not really an issue in the Eastern part of the U.K. presently, but I remember when it was 6 degrees or so back in the dim and distant.

[GolfHotel]

Another thing is to use line features to find way points. Lets face it if you are lost how can you set a course with in a degree or two.

Suppose you know a town (or whatever) you intend to use for a waypoint is somewhere roughly to the east and it is next to a major road, railway, river or ridge of hills. If you turn on heading then reach the line feature but cant see the waypoint then you have no idea of the way to turn. So rather than heading east you can head slightly right of the estimated course. Then when you get to the line feature you know you need to follow it to the left to find you waypoint.

This technique saved me on my nav ex when I got lost. (in those days I never knew the Chilbolton radar dome could open up.) So my main waypoint disappeared! I admitted being unable to spot my next waypoint to the examiner. I told him I would fly east until I found the M3 and would follow that to my next turning point, fleet services. I passed so he must have been OK with it.