Plastic Pilot

As all good pilots, you fly with up-to-date version of all charts you can possibly need. But do you use paper, self-printed, or fully electronic charts ?

Personally, I print my charts from a JeppView before the flight, be it VFR or IFR. I chose this solution because I got bored with updating manuals, but can’t afford a panel-mount nor portable display. What are the pros and cons of the various options ? Have a look…

All Paper - Old Fashion
We probably all started this way. A binder full of charts, and one or two revisions each month. Remove the old charts, slip the new ones in, and so on. I made it for years for my swiss VFR coverage. Then I upgraded to France, Switzerland and Belgium IFR… This meant a lot more updates, but also flying with Jeppesen extra-thin paper.

The charts of my homebase and places I go frequently got rapidly damaged. To save time, and have charts in good state, I took a step towards modern charting…

Home-printing
Printing charts at home using JeppView makes the update work an old story. Simply download the updates, or load them from the CD. Charts handling is also easier, as standard paper is more resistant… and it is anyway possible to print as many charts as needed ! It is also possible to write directly on the charts, making cockpit management easier.

On the negative side, a good printer is a must. As there is no manual update, each chart is printed with a limit date. Even if no change occurs, all charts are time limited ! The main disadvantage is the management of diversions. Shall you print charts for your planned alternate only, or also for all airports in the vicinity ? And what about the emergency chapter of the manual ? Shall you print it once, or re-print it after each update ?

Not being able to access any chart but only those you printed before the flight requires a good strategy. Mine is to be generous when priting, even if I throw 95% of what I print later on without using it. Not the good way to save the rain forest…

Full Electronic
I never had the chance to fly a plane equipped with electronic charts display… until now. This would be the ultimate step in the modernisation of charting. Simply get the SID, STAR or approach displayed on the secondary screen of the glass cockpit.

This however reaches a question regarding complete electrical failure. If you loose all electrical power, not only the glass cockpit, GPS, radios and lighting will go off, but the chart will be gone as well. The best way then is to use yor hand-held radio to call the last frequency you worked with. Hopefully you will remember it, because you will not be able to look at the electronic chart ! If you don’t remember it, the last option is 121.5 !

What about you ?
Which kind of charts do you use ? If you print, do you print a lot, or just what you need ? Are you lucky enough to have a digital display on-board ? If yes, what is your backup ?

In a previous post about the various kinds of aviation I mentionned air-police. This is probably one of the smallest niches in aviation, and obviously conservative as it is under state control. Despite that, modern aviation is reaching it, and this is a strong sign to me that nothing can stop its development.

Diamond anounced on the 25th of January 2008 that Venezuela placed an order for 6 DA42 Multi Purpose Platform (MPP). These planes will be equipped with daylight and thermal imagery, and will transmit pictures in real time to ground operators.

The advantages of the DA42 are the following factors:

• Low cost compared to usual platforms
• Low fuel consumption
• Long endurance
• Low noise levels making it less likely to be spotted
• Low flying speed if required

The DA42 MPP is produced by Diamond-Sensing, a subsidiary of the Diamond Group. They offer special versions of the DA40 and of the HK36 SuperDimona with various imaging and laser devices. According to their press release, they have “a long list of potential customers”.

Link to Diamond’s press release.

Aviation is a good school of life, particularly when it comes to learning humility. I’ve no reason to be proud of what I will relate in this post: my worst landing ever !

It all started with an ILS approach to runway 09 in a Bonanza. The needles were well centered and quite stable. Everything was looking fine, and I was relatively relaxed. The wind was blowing from my left, and the correction angle I was applying worked fine.

The descent was smooth, no turbulence despite the wind. While flying down an ILS, the wind speed normally decrease, and the pilot reduces the correction angle to keep the localizer needle centered. But an excellent meteorolgy teacher told me once, all rules but one in meteorology have exceptions (i.e. pressure always decrease when altitude increase)…

On this particular day the exception was that wind speed was not changing at all during the descent… When passing 2 miles on final, the controller confirmed it: “HB-XXX, wind 360 degrees 15 knots, cleared to land runway 09 !”

Yiiiihaa ! A perfect 90 degrees crosswind of 15 knots ! I was glad the runway was 40 meters wide and 3 kilometers long. I mentally reharsed “Aileron to the left, rudder to the right”, and made my best to apply it.

I initiated the flare way to early, so I had to apply power to get the things within survivable limits. The subsequent landing was more than positive ! All pieces of the plane were still together, and I was probably able to walk away.

After that I swallowed once, and then turned towards the right seat, saying something like “Errrrr, not my best landing ever…”. The guy sitting there was looking more relaxed than I was, and just said “I’m not judging your landings today, only your IFR skills”.

Did I mentionned that this was the first leg of my initial IFR examination ?