1. Charts. When planning a cross country, it is necessary to draw nice thick black lines on them to show the route. The charts aren't exactly cheap. How do pilots usually handle this? Meaning, is a special pen or lamination or something used so that the course can be erased after the trip is complete...so that the chart does not become full of confusing intersecting lines all over the place? Sorry if this is a very dull and boring question.
2. Same question on the E6-B wind side. It's necessary to draw a line and a point on the face of the wind computer...over time it will just fill up with lines.
I don't like laminated charts at all for that reason, and because they're harder to fold. I just get paper ones (the Jeppesen VFR+GPS series are great) and use a pencil with an eraser at the other end. In the US, the FAA sectionals I got were also plain paper.
If they get too creased so they tear apart, I simply buy a new one. Flying is so expensive that that expense disappears.
The E6B is the same. Pencil, eraser, simple. And no, you don't have to draw lines from the origin. A simple dot for wind direction and speed works equally well. Drawing a line may help you visualize the wind triangle so I can imagine that your instructor wants you to do that for now, but once you've got the hang of it, a dot will work just fine. And is easier to erase.
3. VFR training videos in my King School's Cessna program all show the King's flying over western terrain with *very* obvious landmarks...lakes, rivers, mountains, towns in the middle of nowhere, etc. Where I live, it's all suburban. Everywhere you look are houses, more houses, towns, and more towns. The landmarks are not NEARLY as obvious as they are in the King videos and quite honestly they really make it look a lot easier than it really is in an area like mine where finding a landmark is sometimes like finding a needle in a bucket of needles. Does anybody else fly over what you consider somewhat difficult VFR territory?
IFR: I Follow Roads, Rivers, Railway lines, Power Lines and such. Plan your route alongside these lines, ticking off various intersections. Easy. And if you do need to plan a route across a no-waypoint area, plan it so that it ends at a very conspicous line feature perpendicular to your track, and continues from a distinct landmark along this line feature (an intersection with another line feature, or an S-bend, or something else that's conspicuous.)
Once you've done a couple of x-countries you'll get a feel for what features are good landmarks from the air, and what features are not. Then look at your map again and plan your route so that you use these features. If that means flying an extra few miles, so be it. Getting lost wastes a lot more fuel.
And obviously once you progress, you'll learn how to do dead reckoning (compass and stopwatch basically), radio navigation, use GPS, and enlist the services of ATC to get you where you need to go.
4. GPS or not...I understand that I MUST learn to navigate by pilotage, both for safety reasons in the case of equipment failure and for my check-ride, and because it's just fun (when you can find your landmark!). However, it's not 1950. We HAVE the technology to never get lost. Should I always take a GPS with me, even during training, to avoid getting lost? I guess I would feel really silly getting lost because my GPS is sitting in my truck. Anyone feel the same way? Obviously the GPS can fail, but it's guaranteed to fail if left on the ground.
Take it with you. However, a GPS that has not been turned on lately loses its almanac data, and a GPS that's been moved a fair distance since it was last turned on will also take a long time to acquire a lock. This may eventually take as long as 15 minutes. By which time you'll be even more hopelessly lost than you were before. So make sure to have it turned on, or turn it on at the first hint of trouble.
5. Autopilot coupled to GPS...a question I've wondered for a while. When aircraft are flying a GPS course and there is a decent crosswind, is the flying actually inefficient compared to simply flying a heading? OK what I mean here is that the GPS does not know that there is any wind. Say you are flying coupled to GPS on a heading of 270 magnetic. The wind is out of 360 magnetic at 20 knots. The GPS is going to fly a unit of distance, let's say 200 feet, then check where it is again (I am making up these numbers). GPS says OK, we're too far south, bank right a bit. 200 feet further, OK we're on course, roll out. 200 more feet, we're south again, bank right...on and on and on.
If one was hand flying, or had the AP set on a heading, say 280 magnetic which would take care of that wind (it's probably not actually 280, just an example) the aircraft is always "clean", meaning there are not constantly aileron's dropping or rising into the relative wind. Would this not be more efficient flying?
I guess it would depend on the exact setup that you've got, but I can't imagine that the designers didn't foresee this. So I would assume that the GPS/autopilot combo is smart enough to correct for a crosswind. Better than you can by twiddling the heading bug.
In fact, I've seen high-end flight directors that take airspeed/altitude/temperature/heading/GPS data, calculate the current x-wind component for you, and display it in the corner of your PFD.