Track a route directly from the airfield
 

Hi all. This may seem a bit trivial. But for my flight planning I've always used a remote start point where I can turn onto track.

I know for when I start my cpl when I've got enough hours they like you to plan your route directly from the airfield. Obviously I know how to draw the route onto my chart directly from the airfield, but how do you actually manage to get on track?

Getting on track from having a start point as a landmark is easy enough, but directly from the airfield I can see it being quite easy to be a mile or so off track

In the real world, that is outside the flight school make believe bubble after you get your license, you hit direct to after clearing the airport zone and then cross check the paper map for landmarks every once and awhile to keep your personal situational awareness.

Many moons ago when I did my CPL flight test, I climbed in the circuit and departed from the overhead to get a precise departure point. My examiner criticised it on the grounds it was not expedient enough for commercial operations. He suggested pick a point a couple of miles up wind on the climb out, where you will be at 1000' and mark that as your departure point on the chart.

Most airfields have some prescribed way of leaving the circuit. End of upwind, end of crosswind, whatever. Why not use that as the start of your track?

In any case, the size of the circuit is relatively small compared to the length of the track, and in VFR conditions you should be able to see at least the whole length of the circuit. So if you plan your track to start overhead the airfield but actually start your track at the end of upwind, you are now maybe one mile off track - something that should easily be correctable visually in the next few miles.

Pick a convenient "Set Heading Point" somewhere in the local area which you know you can "wing it" to without looking at the map. Start the plan from this point.

Subject to local restrictions follow the circuit in plan (but keep climbing to initial altitude) and leave at the end of one of the circuit legs (i.e. upwind, downwind, base leg). Of course once you're above 2,000 ft AAL and/or outside the lateral dimensions of the ATZ then you are clear of same and can do what you like.

For me the concept of setting course overhead the airfield is from the days of flying non radio Tiger Moths (not that I have anything against this!) and as has been said above many airfields don't want you to do this anyway.

I looked into this a while ago, and concluded that different schools prefer the two different approaches, and there's no absolute right or wrong answer in absolute terms. This doesn't seem to be particularly different for either PPL or CPL.

I think that the right approach is to decide, depending upon the location. For example, flying from two of my regular airfields - Cranfield and White Waltham, the local practices are such that your range of entry and exit routes are fairly limited - so I'll invariably fly to a convenient start point, and take my route planning from there.

On the other hand, if I'm flying from, say, Glenforsa on Mull - where there's no airspace, but there is a risk of nearby low level military traffic, I would most likely climb to a cruising altitude in the overhead, then take my route from there.

It's not hard to look at any airfield, plus your planned routing, and decide which of the two approaches to use. I wouldn't be too prescriptive about it.

G

I suppose I would dial in the VOR radial I wanted to intercept & track then steer for it after leaving the pattern, or if not NAV radio equipped or VOR station available then Direct To on the GPS, and if neither VOR or GPS equipped fly by dead reckoning in the ballpark direction you plan on going till you see a distinctive landmark and locate it on the map and steer accordingly to your first waypoint.

I agree with all the above comments. At High Wycombe/Booker, we used to plan the first track from (and last track to) the Stokenchurch mast. An easily-visible landmark and known to all students who used to leave the circuit to the north for general handling exercises.

Another method is to plan from the overhead. After departure, turn onto a heading that intercepts the track by 30 degrees. When the airfield is in your 5 o'clock or 7 o'clock, you remove the 30 degree intercept angle and you will be on track. This method may of course have to be modified to fit in with local departure procedures. Start timing when airborne, or for large changes of track, when abeam the airfield.

I agree with the idea of using a well-known and easily recognised VRP. But to use one and the same for departures and for arrivals is asking for trouble.

When I flew from EBHN, I used published waypoints: Delta (on the EBAW Visual approach map) when westbound, EBBT or the radio mast to its SE when eastbound.

And depending on where you are when you hit "direct to" you may or may not then end up busting airspace.


Which is why I hit "direct to" on the ground, and after take-off regain the planned airspace-avoiding track.

There either is a published procedure to leave the pattern (mostly noise related) or you use common sense to leave circuit as soon as feasible. My personal experience tends towards avoiding climb overhead, as there are aircraft entering the pattern at higher than thought altitude (a guy I know always enters at +2,000 instead of +1,000 due to the bad gliding capas of his Bonanza).

Whose track? You are doing the planning. It does not really matter what you do as long as it is sensible. Climbing overhead to depart is pointless if you don't need to, as is whizzing off to a remote nav. point. All you have to do is actually arrive at your first TP within your two minute guess, as expeditiously as possible. Backpacker has a 'real world' solution.

PM

I see your point AP, but I'd question the credentials of someone who sets such a task as an example of a commercial operation. Unless it is for a specific task or reason, it has absolutely no place in the real world. But if you really have to do it, do as you said, climb to the overhead and depart. But be prepared, quite rightly, to be criticised by an examiner. You also have the choice of taking off and turning towards this precious track, giving yourself something like a 45 degree intercept. At the same time make a time allowance of say one second per degree of turn.

PM

In pre-GPS days I don't remember many people except, occasionally, students departing from overhead. I used to leave the airfield the most sensible way as to avoid traffic and end up going the correct direction. Then do an appropriate wiggle to get on track, this could either be aiming for some feature that is on track or just go a bit left or right as appropriate while glancing over one's shoulder.

No, the chat in the Crew Room goes: "I'm struggling to find out why someone would want to plan to depart from the overhead. Please would you give me some reasons why anyone should do so and at the same time confirm to me that each and every CAA examiner will expect an overhead departure." If you don't like the answers, take your business elsewhere. And if the person teaching you has been doing this since God was a boy, maybe he's been doing it wrong for ages.

PM

Well they expected the planning to start from the overhead when I was instructing for the CPL (and IR) in the late 70s and early 80s.

Maybe not now though?

As long as your chosen method is safe, legal and expeditious, it should be acceptable to anyone.

After clearing the circuit in the appropriate manner, I enter 'Direct To' on my GPS and Ipad to the first waypoint on my route, monitoring track on my paper map if required.
Surely as everyone does in the real world after training!!

Not unless I am quiet certain that that "go to" won't take me anywhere I don't wish to be. Personally I usually actually use the route I planned, as I already have determined that this won't. Starting a few miles away might.

G

No me. Who knows what CAS "direct to" from some random point might take me through?

If I CBA to program the entire route into the GPS, and am taking the lazy direct-to-one-waypoint-at-a-time approach (which is, actually, more work in the air, of course), then I do the direct-to the first waypoint on the ground, that way I can be sure that my track will take me where I planned, avoiding anything that needs avoiding. Then after take-off I regain track in an appropriate manner from wherever I am.

Of course I check my 'Go To' track before entering. Surely nobody blindly follows the magenta line?
GPS procedures should be in the PPL and IMC (IR(R) Rating syllabus by now.
Hilarious watching a mate practising for his IR(R), checking his position plotting VOR radials and NDB bearings in the cockpit enroute. Couldn't see out of the windscreen for maps, protractors and rulers!