Hi all. I'm in the middle of my CPL course and I'm just trying to find a knee board set-up that works nicely.....I favour the A4 board, and the approved plogs are A4 too. I have my stopwatch in top right corner (analogue) and I have a card that flips over it with a distance/Groundspeed/time claculator card for diversion planning. I Just wondered if any of you have any useful set-ups? ie handy info like timings for compass turns, drift/GS calculations. Nothing like making it easy for yourself!

I seem to recall calculating and drawing an 8-pointed wind star somewhere on the map where you can see it and the planned route. That way, when you get a diversion, you already have approx figures for the wind component, g/s and time to do 10 miles (or something similar).

Also - for compass turns, you want 3° per second I think, so you can use the compass to see how many 30° segments (i.e 10 seconds each) you need to turn through.

For the wind star I got a plastic sheet, you know those fairly stiff ones that fit into the A5 books (you can cut it down, kinda like clear card)...well draw on that your wind star with permanent pen. When doing your winds that morning of test/flight write in you corrections (different colour). I used to do just N,E,S,W and then every 30 deg between. The clear sheet will fit over your diversion point. You have your new heading straight away. Also marked the sheet with 10nm on the arrows coming out. Diversions made simple!

Stopwatch I put velcro on back of mine and velcro on the yoke. Stick it up there out of the way.

If anyone is interested i made up a very useful excel sheet for my diversion's when doing the CPL a while back. Just put in your winds of the day and your TAS and it calculates everything for you (EASY)

If you want send me a PM with you e-mail adddress and i'll fwd to you!

Good luck with the training!

Interesting thread, I sympathise with your plight as I'm not a naturally organised person and have to put a bit of thought into it. Regarding the stopwatch...I don't even own one. I made a point of becoming familiar with the timer on the ADF...I personally found that much easier to incorporate into the scan during the instrument flying on the CPL, particuarly witht eh timed turns etc when the last thing I wanted to do was get distracted from the scan. I flew the Duchess for my CPL where the Avionics along with the ADF are located centrally. Just a personal preference I guess but try it out one day ad see how you get on. However if you do, just ensure you wear a good watch so you've got a backup.

I too use an A4 Kneeboard and have an A5 ring binder on the left hand side which contains a quick refernece sheet I made up early on in my CPL....it contains all the V Speeds, Pre-Landing Checks, Key Frequencies for the South of England etc etc (albeit all of these soon become memorised but there have been a couple of time Ive had a brain fart firing and its great. Worth a go but dont make it over complicated!)

Hope this helps.

2W2R

I remember staring off with masses of information, then i slowly reduced it to virtually nothing which worked much better for me

Chaps..... what ever happened to 1/2 forecast wind speed is max drift and then 1 in 60 it....

CPL flying is about airmanship and keeping it simple which in many ways is the same thing. All airborne maths should be rule of thumb (literally - thats where the saying came from...1 Thumb = 10NM!!!!)

Agreed, the ADF timer is excellent, where available.
Absolutely spot on chaps. Chart, watch, pencil, brain and you're ready for anything