My nav plog template

In case any students in a similar place are interested, here’s my plog template I’m using for nav.

It’s a bit of a work in progress, but it’s designed to be opened out for planning but then folded in half (and slit with a ruler) for flight, which hides most of the information you DON’T need in flight and means your windstar is on the next sheet down.

You should be able to open that up in the free online diagrams.net if you want to mess around with it to make it your own.

Note: When you’re printing, you’ll need to choose 2-sided mode with short edge binding in order to get the right orientation of the windstar one you fold and cut the A4 sheet.

PPL Lesson #21: Diversions and radio navigation

The weather managed to hold up just well enough (and for just long enough) for me to get nearly 2 hours of diversion and radio navigation in first thing this morning.

Fog cancels play

I know I haven’t passed my Met exam yet, but with less than 2 hours to go I somehow don’t think I’ll be flying today…

Reflections on my second navigation exercise

Reflecting on my second navigation lesson over a brew this morning, there were significant positives I can take away from yesterday:

• All the problems I had on the first and second legs were fixed for the final leg back to Blackbushe, and even with those earlier problems I hit all my turning points and was never in danger of becoming lost
• The tweak to add a local reference point as a mini leg at the start meant I wasn’t off track before I even began due to departure procedures at Blackbushe, and I’ll definitely factor this into all future planning.
• I remembered to regularly check alignment of DI and compass throughout, which is something I had to be prompted on in the previous lesson
• RT is definitely improving. I got to talk to someone other than Blackbushe or Farnborough, picked out the other pilots making “traffic” calls on Benson’s frequency so didn’t even bother asking them for anything and switched to Oxford. I added the routing info into the basic service request without problem.
• The new Bose A20s I treated myself to as an early Christmas present are a massive step up in clarity and comfort

PPL Lesson #20: Second nav route and stealth MATZ penetration

Well, a proper mixed bag for today’s nav session. Maybe I should have taken the misbehaving oil filler cap I encountered on my pre-flight checks as a portent and just gone home but I didn’t, and, after the engineer switched out the worn o-ring so that it would tighten properly, we set off for Thame.

PPL Lesson #19: First Nav lesson

First thing this morning I had my first nav lesson, flying EGLK ➤ Wantage ➤ Hungerford ➤ EGLK. Things didn’t go exactly to plan…

PPL Lesson #18: Solo circuit consolidation

Managed to squeeze in a lesson just before sunset today, where I finally got to do some solo consolidation after my first solo flight back in August.

As the night closed in I managed to squeeze in 5 circuits total: 4 standard and 1 go-around because the one ahead hadn’t cleared the runway in time (which in retrospect I could have avoided if I’d managed my speed better on downwind). The weather was properly calm so the landings were fairly straightforward affairs and the runway lights were on for the last two circuits, which was very pretty but I took as a not-so-subtle hint from the tower that I should probably call it a day.

Turning up, grabbing the keys and wandering out to the plane to fly all on my own while the instructor hunkered down in the warm clubhouse with a mug of coffee was a very bizarre experience.