Going Commando

Amen, brother. At the very least leave it on and tuned to 121.5 so you avoid a surprise F-16 wingman. That happens too darn often where I live in Delaware.

Kevin I enjoyed reading your piece this week. You filled my mind with memories of past flying and the joys of looking out the windshield. In 1972 I purchased a SeaBee in Ohio and flew it to Utah where I was going to school. I would fly for a couple of hours without paying too much attention to precise navigation but basically put the “W” foremost into my view…if I looked at the compass. When the fuel gauge got down to about 1/4 tank I would look for a water tower to fine tune my position and head for the nearest airport to refuel. It was a delightful way to see the country and sniff the flowers along the way. Over the years of my Part 121 flying I would much prefer flying a visual approach in a Boeing than crossing ILS needles. Today I help crew a DC-3 and while we have the latest electronic navigation (don’t want to bust unfamiliar Class B or TFR airspace) I still prefer to mostly look out the windshield.

I was a CAP cadet back in the '60s. At the time, we would receive credit for four of the study packages if we passed the Private Pilot written. Each package was, basically, a stripe, so I could go from a Cadet Airman to a Cadet Master Sergeant.

So, a week after my 15th birthday, I took the written. Didn’t have a flight computer. Calculated everything by hand. For the wind triangles I went SERIOUSLY old school…had a protractor and a ruler, and solved them that way.

Got a 70%…the minimum passing score. My nemesis in the cadet squadron quit when he learned I was jumping him by four ranks.

The written test was only good for two calendar years. Since I took at just after my 15th birthday, it would expire not long after my 17th. As it turned out, I was unable to take the Flight Test in that narrow time span, and had to re-take the written. With an E6B this time, it was a lot easier.

I learned to fly on a CAP Citabria where the only gyro instrument was a turn-and-bank. This made precision turns under the hood difficult, since (of course) the whiskey compass would either turn too slow or too quickly, depending on which way you were turning. My instructor taught me some rules-of-thumb for predicting the actual heading, depending on what directly we were turning. Never used them since…

The charts are hard to work with too. I can’t pinch to make them smaller or do the other thing to make them bigger!

I haven’t done that with airplanes, but when I ran marathons, our running club would hold “predictor races,” where we had to leave our watches and estimate our finishing time. The person who got closest, no matter how fast or slow they ran, won.

We do something similar in the horse carriage driving world.

Fun stuff.

I see your point about them not being on the sectional, but the whole purpose of the exercise is to get the pilot to look outside the cockpit. The airplanes are clearly depicted on your windows.

As a Forward Observer and Fire Direction Controller in Vietnam in 1965, and later as a student pilot on my way to becoming a flight instructor, I learned to be on target and navigate using charts, a magnetic compass, pilotage, and dead reckoning—no GPS, just effective planning and good calculations. Pilotage and dead reckoning not only sharpen situational awareness but also build real confidence in a pilot’s abilities. I’ll never forget my first solo cross-country in 1966, from Zamperini Field to Hemet-Ryan—a 39-minute flight in a Cessna 150. I arrived on time, thanks to charts, wx preflight, landmarks, an E6B, a timer, and a pencil. No magenta line to guide me back then.

Even in today’s GPS-driven world, pilotage and dead reckoning are still essential. They push pilots to master the basics and prepare us for the unexpected when those fancy electronic gadgets decide to take a break. Teaching modern pilots the value of traditional navigation techniques is always a good idea!

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