Proficiency and a Tale of Two Pilots
December 2011
It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Two pilots rent a local training airplane to fly separate pleasure flights in the local area.
Pilot A preflights the airplane and takes off to see what he can see. Leveling off when the air turns smooth, he eyes a large lake in the distance and decides to take a look. Once there, he flies a few wide circuits of the lake and checks out the boats below. Leveling the wings, he sees a power plant in the distance and aims the airplane's nose in that direction. After a while, he decides it's too far away for the time he has left, so he hits "Direct To" the home airfield in his GPS and flies there, making a perfect squeaker landing. He ties the airplane down, smiling at his performance and happy to have burned through his flying budget of one hour aloft for the week.
Pilot B picks up the rental next and also flies an hour. But before coming to the airport, he put together a plan. He accessed the free online manual to the rental airplane's GPS and reviewed instructions for activating the cursor on the moving map, selecting a specific spot on the display and loading that spot's coordinates in the GPS' flight plan. Then he pulled out the current Sectional chart and located a large lake about 20 miles from the airport. That's where he'll go first with the "select-a-spot" function, but a pencil line on the Sectional and the magnetic direction and distance measured beforehand from the chart will tell him if he's loaded the waypoint correctly in the airplane.
With the Sectional out, he picked a prominent landmark about 20 miles from the lake so that the lake and the home-base airport form a small triangle about 50 miles around. To make certain he can replicate using the map cursor to load a waypoint, once he's over the lake he plans to use the same functionality to load the second landmark into the GPS.
Starting up, Pilot B loads a waypoint over the lake into the GPS and confirms that the direction and distance match his expectations from the Sectional. After takeoff, he heads directly to the lake, cross-checking outside references on the chart while holding level on a preplanned altitude. Over the lake, he sees a sailboat and flies two circles around it at 1000 feet AGL, holding altitude and compensating for wind so that he remains the same distance from the sailboat all the way around both times. Then he sees a speedboat stretching straight across the lake, so he flies a quick S-turn across its wake, holding altitude and compensating for wind.
Next he activates the GPS moving map cursor, moves it over his selected second landmark, and confirms he knows how to use this function by activating it as the "go-to" waypoint. Along the way he does a couple quick clearing turns and practices a power-off landing configuration stall, followed by more clearing turns and a power-on accelerated stall with a 20-degree bank angle.
Pointing back at the waypoint, he accesses the GPS flight plan function and adds his home airport as the final waypoint, and then practices holding altitude and cross-checking outside for traffic as he reaches the landmark and makes the magenta-line turn for home. Descending into the traffic pattern, he makes a squeaker landing then decides he has time for one more trip around the traffic pattern before his hour is up. After takeoff and a second touchdown, he ties the airplane down, smiling at his performance and happy to have burned through his flying budget of one hour aloft for the week... knowing he has practiced to maintain his proficiency at several skills and tasks, and learned something new at the same time.
Most of us are faced with budgeting the time we have to fly, because of the cost of flying or other demands on our schedule (or both). You don't always have to hire an instructor pilot or go through a boring series of flight maneuvers to stay sharp on a limited flying budget. (Although periodic instruction is always a good idea). All it takes is a little planning and some creativity to turn the same hour of sightseeing into a fun refresher and an opportunity to learn something new.
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