He consults his sectional chart, reaches for the VOR receiver, and hears me say, "Sorry," as I turn off the VOR and ADF receivers. A handheld GPS receiver appears immediately, but again I say, "Sorry, the batteries are dead." In a wild flurry, he produces a calculator and a miniature plotter, both of which I commandeer and toss onto the back seat.
"Now what?" I ask.
"I'll have to follow your previous advice and 'do everything with nothing,'" he replies.
"Excellent," I say, "I enjoy watching a real pilot survive bad situations."
The student returns to his last checkpoint - usually within 10 miles of our present position - and establishes a shallow-bank turn in order to remain over the checkpoint while he chooses a plan of action. He maintains bank attitude with rudder while he uses the thumb and index finger of each hand to pinch the chart at the end points of his new leg of the flight. He pulls both hands apart to stretch and fold the chart, and then runs this fold back and forth across his chin to form a sharp crease that represents his course to the alternate airport.
This course-line is superimposed mentally over one of the chart's VOR compass roses in order to estimate its magnetic course, 035 degrees. Then he uses the middle segment of a little finger to measure the course line distance. When doubled over so it forms an inverted U, this finger's middle segment represents approximately 10 nautical miles (nm), and my student sees that he's 70 nm from his alternate.
Earlier in the flight, he verified the winds aloft, 210 degrees at 25 knots. Because his true airspeed is a little over 2 nm per minute (142 knots), and because the wind would almost be a direct crosswind, he divided wind speed (25) by his true airspeed (2 miles per minute) to determine his wind correction angle, 12 degrees. His initial heading to the alternate is 047?.
His ground speed estimate is a conservative 130 knots. Therefore, he'll cover 130 miles in 60 minutes, 13 miles in 6 minutes, and 1.3 miles in 0.6 minutes. Because 70 miles is slightly more than half of 130 miles, his flight time estimate to the alternate airport is 35 minutes. No problem. He has two hours of fuel remaining.
My student notes the time, turns on course, and concentrates on good pilotage procedures. He flies a constant heading and makes sure the directional gyro always agrees with the compass. As he proceeds toward the alternate, his right index finger remains on the chart and follows his progress as we fly past visual checkpoints. This finger always points to his present location.
After 30 minutes the alternate airport comes into view, and he either smiles or continues his previous expression. I feel that students who smile think they've lucked out. Students who continue their previous expression have complete self-confidence - they're my favorites because they took the time to study and master the mental navigation rules and the worst-case, dead-reckoning navigation procedures.
Five factors mandate this level of performance. Students spend 95-percent of their time looking outside the airplane for conflicting traffic, attitude deviations, landmarks, surface wind indications, and emergency landing sites.
Almost everyone knows that while flying in visual conditions, all pilots should keep their eyes outside the cockpit. Why, then, do so many pilots ignore this time-honored advice? Because they were allowed to keep their eyes indoors during training.
Never concentrate on charts, navigation logs, computers, or plotters inside the cockpit. You must develop a practical navigation system that minimizes cockpit workload so you can look outside, and you should learn to use reliable rules-of-thumb and common sense. The accuracy obtained is no worse than the accuracy of the winds aloft forecast.
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