Tag Archives: planning

Fuel Planning Over The Gulf

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Last weekend was a perfect example of why you must “get good” at flight planning while enroute.

I planned a simple direct flight over the gulf at 16000 FT from Tampa, FL to Galveston, TX.
Conventional wisdom says you do your flight planning on the ground and then simply execute in the cockpit.  It sounds simple … But that rarely seems to work for me.  There are frequently “surprises” enroute that I never seem to be able to predict in advance.

The flight planning on the ground looked quite promising.  The weather was clear and the winds aloft were quite tame along the route (210@10kts)  According to my calculations, the flight should have taken 4hours 9 mins.  This would allow me to land with comfortably more than 1 hour and 51 minutes of fuel to spare, which is about 30 gallons.

Since the weather and fuel looked good, I began my usual preflight.  However, because  this was a flight over the Gulf of Mexico, I took a couple of extra precautions.  First, I made sure my lifejacket was within easy reach. Second, I made sure my Personal locator beacon (PLB) was in my pocket and ready to go.

Shortly after takeoff, things started to change.  Tampa approach was dealing with a lot of traffic in the class B. As a result, my clearance was a bit inconvenient with a heading of 090, followed by several painfully slow heading changes before I was heading westbound. After I leveled off @ 16k FT, I rechecked the fuel projections on R9 and found it predicting 25 gals @ destination.

No problem… (My personal minimum is anything greater than 20) … So far so good …

Then Miami center said the dreaded words “We have an amendment to your routing, advise when ready to copy”.

Uggg… The new routing was direct Seminole (SZW), direct Crestview (CEW) direct destination.

After refreshing the fuel calcs in the R9, it showed 19gals @ destination… This was not good! I have read so many accident/incident reports where pilots “stretched” personal minimums only to realize later that this was part of the accident chain.

I decided if it didn’t improve above 20 by 1 hour from destination, I would divert.  But I still had plenty of time.  In the meantime, I reduced power to 65% to try to conserve fuel.

After about 20 mins, I found myself in and out of a thin cloud deck and facing increased headwinds (240@33).  No immediate danger… But fuel status was now getting worse and the R9 was now predicting 14 gals @ destination.

So I pulled up Foreflight on the iPad and started looking for a place to divert in Louisiana. In addition, I reduced power further to 60% to conserve even more fuel.

I also tried to be clever and “use ATC’s help” to conserve fuel.  Every time I got handed off to a new ATC controller, I asked for “a shortcut of 10 to 20 degrees.  This worked remarkably well.  Before I knew it, the R9 was predicting 21 gals@ destination!

But my optimism was short-lived.  The headwinds picked up to 244@42kts.

Now the R9 showed 18 gals @ destination 🙁

That did it, time to divert… Houma,Louisiana looked like a good spot.  I told myself 50 miles from Houma would be the decision point to change my IFR flight and start a descent.

Miraculously the winds died down before then and I was able to press on to my destination.

When I landed in Galveston, the R9 reported 20.7 gallons remaining! phew!!

I parked right next to a beautiful Citation CJ2 and a friendly lineman, named Eric, rolled out the red carpet for me!

After a wonderful flight, I am more convinced than ever, that flight planning enroute is an even more important skill than planning on the ground.

Thank goodness that there are cockpit gadgets that let us do that!

Unfortunately, with all the fretting over fuel, I forgot to take pictures!!

(Have to make up for that on my next flight)

Cheers,
== T.J.==

Fuel Planning Over The Gulf

Posted on by

Last weekend was a perfect example of why you must “get good” at flight planning while enroute.

I planned a simple direct flight over the gulf at 16000 FT from Tampa, FL to Galveston, TX.
Conventional wisdom says you do your flight planning on the ground and then simply execute in the cockpit.  It sounds simple … But that rarely seems to work for me.  There are frequently “surprises” enroute that I never seem to be able to predict in advance.

The flight planning on the ground looked quite promising.  The weather was clear and the winds aloft were quite tame along the route (210@10kts)  According to my calculations, the flight should have taken 4hours 9 mins.  This would allow me to land with comfortably more than 1 hour and 51 minutes of fuel to spare, which is about 30 gallons.

Since the weather and fuel looked good, I began my usual preflight.  However, because  this was a flight over the Gulf of Mexico, I took a couple of extra precautions.  First, I made sure my lifejacket was within easy reach. Second, I made sure my Personal locator beacon (PLB) was in my pocket and ready to go.

Shortly after takeoff, things started to change.  Tampa approach was dealing with a lot of traffic in the class B. As a result, my clearance was a bit inconvenient with a heading of 090, followed by several painfully slow heading changes before I was heading westbound. After I leveled off @ 16k FT, I rechecked the fuel projections on R9 and found it predicting 25 gals @ destination.

No problem… (My personal minimum is anything greater than 20) … So far so good …

Then Miami center said the dreaded words “We have an amendment to your routing, advise when ready to copy”.

Uggg… The new routing was direct Seminole (SZW), direct Crestview (CEW) direct destination.

After refreshing the fuel calcs in the R9, it showed 19gals @ destination… This was not good! I have read so many accident/incident reports where pilots “stretched” personal minimums only to realize later that this was part of the accident chain.

I decided if it didn’t improve above 20 by 1 hour from destination, I would divert.  But I still had plenty of time.  In the meantime, I reduced power to 65% to try to conserve fuel.

After about 20 mins, I found myself in and out of a thin cloud deck and facing increased headwinds (240@33).  No immediate danger… But fuel status was now getting worse and the R9 was now predicting 14 gals @ destination.

So I pulled up Foreflight on the iPad and started looking for a place to divert in Louisiana. In addition, I reduced power further to 60% to conserve even more fuel.

I also tried to be clever and “use ATC’s help” to conserve fuel.  Every time I got handed off to a new ATC controller, I asked for “a shortcut of 10 to 20 degrees.  This worked remarkably well.  Before I knew it, the R9 was predicting 21 gals@ destination!

But my optimism was short-lived.  The headwinds picked up to 244@42kts.

Now the R9 showed 18 gals @ destination 🙁

That did it, time to divert… Houma,Louisiana looked like a good spot.  I told myself 50 miles from Houma would be the decision point to change my IFR flight and start a descent.

Miraculously the winds died down before then and I was able to press on to my destination.

When I landed in Galveston, the R9 reported 20.7 gallons remaining! phew!!

I parked right next to a beautiful Citation CJ2 and a friendly lineman, named Eric, rolled out the red carpet for me!

After a wonderful flight, I am more convinced than ever, that flight planning enroute is an even more important skill than planning on the ground.

Thank goodness that there are cockpit gadgets that let us do that!

Unfortunately, with all the fretting over fuel, I forgot to take pictures!!

(Have to make up for that on my next flight)

Cheers,
== T.J.==

Planning For A First Attempt At Skywriting

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After reading several of Steve Dilullo’s posts, I feel inspired to try something a bit different this weekend.  His post about ribbon cutting has quite cool.  But I fly a Cirrus and I can’t “just open the window” to try ribbon cutting.  However, his post about skywriting really got me thinking.  I wanted to give skywriting a try and see just how hard it really was.
First, I had to figure out the equipment needed to log the GPS track.  This part should be EZ.  But there were several ways I could think of to do it:
Plan A was to use the basic features of the Avidyne R9 that allow you to download flight details (including GPS data) to a USB stick.  This data (in KML format) can then be pulled into Google Earth.
Plan B was to use the free “GPS Tracker” app on the iPhone.  I have never tried this before.  But it sounds promising.  Allegedly, this app monitors your GPS track, including altitude, at user defined intervals (10 seconds, 20 seconds, etc) and creates a regular interactive Google map of the track.
Plan C was to have my buddy Joe bring along an external hand held GPS tracker.  This would also result in a KML file that can be pulled into Google Earth.
I will probably try all three plans and check out the results.  However, Plan B seems the most appealing to me.  With an interactive Google map, you can easily embed that anywhere.  Unfortunately, Google Earth doesn’t let you do that…  Or at least I don’t know how 😉
Next, on to planning the route itself.  Unlike the Merry Christmas track in Steve’s post, for my first attempt, I wanted to try a much simpler version.  Instead of big words in cursive, I was planning to try just a couple of letters in capital, bubble letters.  The planning was harder than I thought.  I needed to find an airspace that was not crowded, had no Class B,C,Ds, or MOAs, of which there are many in FL.  I decided to go just north of the Tampa Class B, around Crystal River, FL. Since I didn’t know how well the iPhone GPS would work at higher altitudes, I decided to stay relatively low 3500 FT, where the reception should be pretty good.
Here is what I came up with:

The picture shows straight lines and edges instead of bubble letters… Obviously, the real thing will be rounded edges on the actual GPS track and the result should be real bubble letters.
As far as “how” to fly the route, I needed to get creative.  If I simply flew it by hand, I suspect the finished product would be a bit sloppy.  My Excel planning file, shows me just how precise I need to fly this to have a successful finished product.  So I decided to use the “Vector” Mode of the R9 combined with my STEC autopilot to help me out.
As some of you know, Avidyne’s new digital autopilot the DFC100 is now available and I am planning to have it installed next month (Can’t wait).  The DFC100 would be even better for this exercise.  For kicks, I may try to repeat this exact exercise next month with the new autopilot and post a side by side comparison.
But for this weekend, I will try it with the STEC first.  “Vector” Mode is the key (I think)…
So that’s the plan … This weekend, I will try it for real and see how close I come to the plans.  Regardless of how it turns out (good, bad or ugly), I plan to post the resulting GPS track on Sunday night!
Stay tuned…
== T.J.==

Planning The Next Big X-Country

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After getting serious about “My 50 State Quest”, I have come to realize how much planning is involved.  The first 25 states just sort of happened as a byproduct of Work, Angel Flights, and General Joyrides.  However, the next 25 states will require much more active planning.
So here we are, near the end of September, and I am hoping to make it to a few new states in October.  In general, I am thinking about the following options:
Option 1 (Northeast) –  If I head to the northeast, I might be able to finish a bunch of smaller states and do it before winter arrives.  Since I don’t have any burning desire to fly to cold places in the winter. this might be a good idea in October.  In addition, this would give me a good excuse to visit some relatives in Raleigh along the way.
Here is the general route I am considering:

The total distance would be ~ 2200 nm and probably 5 new states.
Option 2 (Colorado) – One of the other destinations I have been looking forward to flying to, is Colorado.  The Eagle/Vail airport, where my family and I go every year to ski, is a must visit.  Then of course every pilot knows about Leadville, which is the highest airport in the country. Lastly, Colorado Springs, which is close to the Air Force Academy/museum is also a popular pilot destination.
The general route is shown below:

The total distance would be ~ 2800 nm and likely 3 new states.
So next step, later tonight if I can stay awake (or more likely l8r in the week) is to start looking for fly-ins, or cool places to land/visit somewhere close to my intended route.  If anyone has suggestions, feel free to leave a comment or email me.

Cheers,
== T.J.==