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Old 6th October 2006 | 10:20
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IO540
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Joined: Jun 2003
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From: EuroGA.org
This may not be the answer anticipated by the original poster, but there is a number of ways to do this.

If you use Navbox Pro - www.navbox.nl , a super VFR flight planning program which IMHO no VFR pilot should be without - then you get rapid plog generation. Just draw out your route, click on the plog item, enter the wind if you want to, and it's done in an instant.

Navbox also does W&B very nicely. You have to configure it initially for your particular plane, with the envelope corner values from the POH.

Other ways to do this are on a PDA, Palm or Pocket/PC. There are various programs. I used to keep a Palm PDA in the back of the plane with Co-Pilot on it; a Canadian freebie program which was poor for flight planning (poor database) but the W&B feature was very good. Unfortunately, as with all PDAs, the batteries are often flat when you pull them out of the bag...

I would not use Excel for a plog. Excel implies having some sort of reasonable computer, and while one is lugging that around, one may as well run Navbox on it and get the whole lot. The huge attraction of using Navbox is that its database already contains the airports and the navaids, intersections, etc. I don't see how Excel alone is going to be much good.

There are more expensive solution for flight planning, of course...
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