Flight chart troubles
This is exactly the type pf comic strip I would love to see animated. You can make greater comedic pauses and timing and there is just so much going on here. I love Julio’s line when he says “you know that’s not an etch-a-sketch, right?”.
How many times have you seen people shake their phones when something isn’t working? It’s hilarious! And when Chuck says “I know it’s backwards” still has me laughing every time I read this strip!
You can tell by the last line, that this comic is a few years old already. But it is still not all that long since the Foreflight App was released. I believe it was somewhere in 2008. And my current company still hasn’t completely switched to an all-electronic flight bag quite yet. I wonder if you can even still find paper maps nowadays. All the ones I have are like Chuck’s maps, stuffed somewhere in between nooks and crannies, crumpled up, coffee stained, and long forgotten.
Although we still run into heat issues, especially down in Arizona on fires, there just is no going back once you get into Foreflight or whatever the other equivalents are.
How did people ever fly without it? What’s a VOR again? Do I see a shirt idea in there somewhere?
Mike
Basic pilotage and dead reckoning skills are about as scarce as mental arithmetic. Redundant electronic navigation aids are handy and, in some countries mandatory but I’ve seen multiple failures before. In remote locations, having a chart as a backup could be critical to getting where you must be. Here is a short story I wrote about such an event;https://medium.com/@keithgill/following-along-db107a82fe65
This happened to my mom once a couple years ago during a survey/recon flight. IPad died mid flight, she had to pretty much rely on her (marginal) knowledge of the area and luckily had some of the needed frequencies memorized. All ended well, but that sounds pretty hazardous. I’d always been telling her to keep a backup, this was why. Sectional doesn’t need to be current (this is one of their challenges, having to replace them all every 6 months or so), but should be on board. In Chuck’s case, if it weren’t for Julio on board, I could see him declaring an emergency – wonder if anyone’s done that due to iPad failure, wouldn’t surprise me!
Studying for my ppl instructors said you may use a GPS but any time they ask where we exactly are and what is around us and you cannot answer then that flight lesson is completely void.
Noone used a GPS…
I keep using the printed map and actually enjoy pilotage.
Nevertheless I also carry a GPS just in case and for logging. If one is busy looking for thermals or talking to passengers a GPS can aid one to relocate the position quickly.