"I’m so screwed" aka flight planning hell

I came to this conclusion after spending several hours with RTH planning a flight.  To be fair it took me longer than last time to come to this conclusion but come to it I did. Let us start at the beginning.  This is the equipment you need to plan a flight from City to Peterborough to Kingston*.

In case you don’t recognize half of it, we have

·         An E6b flight “computer” ( more on this later)

·         A copy of the CFS ( contains info on airports/aerodromes)

·         The C172 POH (handbook)

·         A VFR Navigation Chart (VNC)

·         A VFR Terminal area Chart (VTA)

·         A square protractor

·         A rule marked in Statute miles on one side , Nautical on the other

·         Various coloured highlighter pens (colours are for a reason not just pretty!)

·         Pencil and eraser (very important!)

I’m not even going to attempt to explain to you on here how the hell you go about this, because a) I’m only just getting my head round it myself, b) it really is more of a practical demo subject and c) it’s not actually that interesting to the average person.

On a positive note, I remembered more than I did last time RTH tried to talk me through this, and I didn’t feel the urge to throw anything at him. I’m OK with the planning the route, drawing the various lines, even picking out waypoints. I’m even OK with finding the heading and figuring out all magnetic variation and even altitude selections. The problems arise from the two pages of calculations to do with the various speeds, wind corrections and stuff. Because for that you have to use this. It's called an E6b flight "computer"

Oh, it gets worse. The damn thing is double sided! See…

Basically it is a slide rule on steroids. It spins around, and it slides up and down, it has instructions printed in the centre as well as a 40 page instruction book. Now I’m no stranger to mathematical implements. I taught myself how to use a standard slide rule in high school (as well as how to do arithmetic in binary and how to use log tables) **.  But this one, well words fail me to be honest.  There are so many ways it can go wrong.  The slidey bit either sticks fast so that it won’t slide, or slips the second you remove your finger. The scales have so many random units written on them (it is a multi-use thing you see) that you forget what it is you are meant to be lining up and reading.  Because you can use it to calculate so many things you have to use the correct order of magnitude (10 could be 0.10, 1.0, 10 or 100 for example) otherwise you end up wondering why it would take 80 gallons of fuel to get to your first set heading point***

The ultimate insult though came when RTH was showing me how to calculate ETAs and times en route. The horrific realisation that “you mean I have to use this thing in the air?” When receiving an answer in the affirmative, that’s when I realised “I’m so screwed” a la post title.

Ever patient RTH coached me through it****, providing fake timings for me to practice with (although how we got up to 180knots I don’t know!). It took me longer to plan the flight than the flight itself would have taken. I don’t know how I’m going to manage this for real. The last flight we did I got excited because I managed to spot the airport. How the hell am I going to spot " the corner of lake X where it touches the road?"

* Completely arbitrary route chosen at random

** Don’t ask me why, I was bored. I was bored a lot in high school

*** The plane doesn’t hold this much fuel

**** Imagine your average couple trying to plan a road trip, now add an extra dimension (literally), this should give you an idea of the potential for conflict here. Luckily RTH has the patience of a saint while trying to show me this.