Now to really stir things up!!

[Sarka]

All I'm saying is it's nice to have a backup plan when the "technology" takes a dump. If you have the gear, by all means use it, but it can't hurt to know the manual way.

 

[English]

manual way...fingers and toes...

 

[Lead Sled]

All I'm saying is it's nice to have a backup plan when the "technology" takes a dump. If you have the gear, by all means use it, but it can't hurt to know the manual way.

Question #1: Do you need to know the basics?
Answer #1: You betcha, absolutely, without question, period.
Question #2: Will there come a time when you won't have much need for it in the cockpit and even less opportunity to practice the basics?
Answer #2: See answer #1.

Sure it's fun to take a step backwards every one in a while and fly a leg using pilotage or deadreckoning. But in the real world, flying today's aircraft, in today's environment you seldom will have the opportunity or the time necessary for the luxury of planning your trips manually. When you start talking high performance turbojet airline or corporate equipment (And isn't that what most, if not all, of you guys are hoping to get into?) with direct operating cost in the $1000's of $$$ per hour, you're not going to be pulling out an E6B and working wind triangles. You're going to be using computer generated optimized flight planning from one source or another. Operating efficiencies and economics demand it.

We're living in an interesting time. The level of accuracy demanded for navigation, both laterally and vertically, will be increasing dramatically over the next few months. After the first of the year, after the implimentation of DRVSM, we won't even be able to handfly an airplane at FL290 or above. For good or bad, we're becoming less and less pilots and more and more computer programmers.

Lead Sled

 

[LarryinTN]

Don't switch them to E6Bs, switch to Jepp's CR computers. The CR-2, CR-3, and CR-5, IIRC. I use the CR-5 as it's the smallest and easiest to store but my PVT studends usually opted for one of the larger models.

http://tinyurl.com/5al8c

 

[52Vincent]

Question - And my instructor didn't know either -
Why is it designated "E6-B"? Was there an E3,4,5, etc? What about an E6-A?

Good question, and as long as I have been using this circular slide rule, I have always wondered the same, and your question prompted me to seek it out. Besides I have nothing better to do right now. Taco Tuesday in about 15 minutes. Anyway my first search came up with a little history but did not answer the question http://www.sliderule.ca/combine.htm (good information). Then I found this cute and cuddly guy http://www.e6b.com/ and could not quite figure out what he had to do with the E6B, until I scrolled down, more good information. Finally one last click to find out that E6B is simply an Army designation. Once used by the US Army Air Corps in WW II. Found here: http://www.utdallas.edu/~frensley/scouting/distcomp/history.html


btw my e6b is actually labled E6-B2, can anyone shed light on the "2".