I had two good flights today, both of them flights for the Club's Young Eagles [YEs]. They were fairly quick flights of 0.7 hours and 0.8 hours each, but quite enjoyable. In both cases we took off, did an Eastbourne Departure procedure then out to Mana Island and back.
It was fun putting on the GPS and showing the YEs some of its features, including the difference between indicated air speed and ground speed, and airspace boundaries [and showing them on the charts and the ground as well]. The best lesson however was a demonstration of a limitation of the GPS. In this case, the GPS map does not include Mana Island...! It shows the importance of having up-to-date paper aeronautical charts [paper charts also work better if the electrics fail :-)].
The other nice thing that happened was that on the second flight the airspace was fairly quiet, and the tower cleared us from Paremata VRP [visual reporting point] to follow the motorway south [this is through the middle of the instrument sector] then to join right hand downwind for runway 34. Awesome [and thanks!]! It's good to see some different scenery and the YEs seemed to enjoy this as well.
Yeah, my GPS doesn't have terrain, only airspace, and it also doesn't show which bit of airspace is at which altitudes, a wee oversight there mister Garmin!
ReplyDeleteChris,
ReplyDeleteNo terrain is something I can handle [not knowing the alts would be a pain] - after all, I have my eyes outside and my VNC[s] "open" to the correct place.
It's an issue though when some terrain is missing, as that could give a false sense of security.
Oh well, I'm still alive :-)
Rodney
I'd like terrain on my GPS after one flight in near SVFR conditions that I found out went to within 1/2 a mile from a very large hill and I didn't see a thing!!!
ReplyDeleteOuch! I see what you mean...!
ReplyDelete