It’s true that most pilots of “advanced” IFR aircraft do only short trips, but it would be interesting to have a poll as to exactly why.
Hemorrhoids? I get no joy out of sitting 5-7h in my cockpit. Nothing to do with confidence or technical things (I have 16h endurance as of last week). I’m also not ecstatic about peeing in a bottle.
If I lived in the upper left corner of Europe, it might be different but being in the middle, 2-4h gets me pretty much everywhere.
PS: I have a fuel totalizer and it is very accurate (ca 1-2%, the Cessna is difficult to fuel to the same level every time, a small slope makes a big difference).
I don’t plan 7hr flights either but if you are on a “5hr” flight and you get an unforecast 40kt headwind…
Would you land, just in case, perhaps descending through icing conditions and then being unable to climb back up?
2014 was the year of the unforecast headwind. I saw 70kt (35 forecast) and 40kt was common. We had winds going the wrong way, hence EGKA-LDLO taking some 7:30 as against 5:00 in still air, and usually there would be a big tailwind. Wind forecasts at piston levels are pretty crap. They all come from GFS… I get the impression that in upper airspace they are OK, but they should be, from the huge amounts of airliner ADS-B data being collected in real time.
That is why we have so many fuel exhaustion accidents
Those cases I know where people exhausted fuel or were very close to hadn’t much to do with the fuel gauges, more with the lack of any preflight fuel planning
you would find that many avoid long trips because they don’t have much confidence.
I personally don’t like to plan more than ~3h legs, but that has nothing to do with confidence, and everything to do with not wanting to sit 7h crumpled in a spamcan.
How many G1000 owners know anything beyond how to load a route?
The answer is probably highly depressing. I’ve seen experienced pilots using the G1000 “direct” button as their only method of flight planning. The G1000 user interface sucks. Of course everything can be learned, but still…
South East Asia ensures plenty of +5 hr trips. Or rather, you quickly get tired of doing the same trips to the handful of airfields within a 2-3 hr distance.
Distances are great and airfields sparse in this region. Alternates are often somewhat “challenging”. (MIL airfields, major commercial airports, no landing/overflight permits etc) Also wx develops fast & unpredictable out here, so you need reserves for an approach hold.
I do agree that tedium & Gatorade bottles does start to set in after about 4-5 hrs…
I never find my flights on flightradar24, is there something special I need to do? N41518.
is there something special I need to do?
Fly higher, in an area covered by multilateration, with your (mode-s) transponder on 
Also FR24 deletes GA flights after landing.
(I have 16h endurance as of last week).
Wow, great. What do you have in mind? Belgrade – Egypt? Further on to Kenya?
16 hrs endurance – achimha or the aircraft?
Also FR24 deletes GA flights after landing.
That would explain it.
