Damn - the navex has been pushed to this coming weekend, so I ended up flying solo squares around the airfield instead.
Thanks for your replies everyone
Sleeve Wing
thing
glendalegoon
pirke
baikonur - I'm also using the e6b (well, learning to)
stevelup - calculator is 'cos I haven't invested in the proper square protractor thing (£HowBloodyMuch?!) - I am ordering one up today though.
jan - understood - if the water/land ratio exceeds 50% water, I'll do a 180
cusco - thanks for the PM. I'll take a look this evening
phiggsbroadband and 2high2fastagain - I've set a 6-ish mile initial leg which I'm going to use to work out the actual wind, instead of the metar's lies
Johnm - very nicely put point about waypoints
I learnt walking nav exes as an air cadet, when the only thing between my eyes and the waypoint would be my feet when I was on top of it, so it takes some thinking to remember the aeroplane strapped to your backside can be quite effective at hiding stuff...
Whopity - excellent tip about getting the permanent pens off with a whiteboard marker; I seem to remember the teachers at school used to have to use a whiteboard marker to remove permanent marker when they got things mixed up drawing on the whiteboard...
27/09 - yes, I'll be flying with an instructor - it'll be a while before I'm trusted to go off on my own I think, but I asked on PPruNe for the same reason everybody does - it's good to have a variety of sensible advice (and some less-sane suggestions) to compare to what my instructor is saying. Even though I'll follow his instructions to the letter, I like to have an idea what things everybody does the same, and which aspects of flying are done differently by different people.
But the bottom line as far as I'm concerned is what he says, goes - I agree with you. I couldn't think of anything more irritating than trying to teach a student who insists he knows better because of something he read on the interwebs...
I think what I wrote makes sense...
Also, thank you for the tips on scale calculations and yep, I'm making up a flight log using a template designed for VFR flights.
A and C - started watching it. Nice to see how little of the basic airmanship training hasn't changed in 70-odd years plus.
wood73 - did you do the solo navex?
150driver - that's always a concern of mine. I've resolved not to cheat and buy myself a GPS but will have my phone (which does have GPS) just in case things go askew and fuel gets critical. Not many fields around my way which don't seem to have power lines strung across them or big trees dotted around them...
airpolice - I will investigate how many rolls of Andrex I can fit in my bag