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.
What you need is a cockpit that isn’t cramped, so you arent’ crumpled, and good company 
Also, most GA pilots don’t know their fuel status to anywhere near 5% accuracy.
I’d say the overall GA figure is nearer to +/- 20%
In fact, I personally use 20% contingency fuel…
What you need is a cockpit that isn’t cramped
The issue is that those planes that have it don’t make it into the interesting destinations
Good company is the #1 thing 
But 16hrs would be difficult… It does depend on the scenery (I mean the scenery outside the cockpit ) to some degree e.g. the first 2hrs out of the UK is pretty boring. Normally I end up looking at some Lancair IV after a flight back home with a 50kt headwind, but always give up when I realise they are no good for going anywhere seriously (no CofA or IFR).
What you need is a cockpit that isn’t cramped, so you arent’ crumpled, and good company
Depends on the company. In excellent company a C152 may be preferred.
[…] instead of being a gadget which tells you that you can fly for another 750nm, and you expect to be landing with 35.5 USG in the tanks. That is a huge confidence booster.
I always enter the full flight plan before takeoff and during the flight I modify it based on the clearances ATC gives me. That will continuously update the calculated landing fuel.
What takes down my confidence a bit is the fact that I’ve learned on flights within Germany that frequently one ATC sectors gives out a “clearance” to a waypoint that is very far away and then the next sector changes it to something else. So I keep all the originally filed waypoints in the flight plan until I have actually passed them and have reason to believe that ATC will not send me backwards. While these waypoints are still in the flight plan the landing fuel calculation and landing time will be way off, which is a bit uncomfortable.
The negative effect of this is that only close to the destination will the calculations actually make sense. I might even fall into the trap of complacency at some point.
You can view and playback your aircraft’s recent flights here
http://www.flightradar24.com/data/airplanes/n41518/
Just click on the aircraft icon on the right column for more detail of each flight
It looks like you came back from the Champagne region three days ago at FL100 with speed of 170 to 200 knots….after a weekend in Nice or Cannes.
Sounds like a nice trip.
Works for pretty much any registration, just doesn’t track VFR – you need to be squawking something other than 7000.
David,
thanks for that, I had no idea how to get to that page.
Interesting to see where the tracking starts and stops…
That is a very interesting find!
Many thanks.
Clearly it still deletes the tracks after a few days.
Wow, great. What do you have in mind? Belgrade – Egypt? Further on to Kenya?
Well, there are still three things I would have to do first:
1) Divorce my wife
2) Offer my children for adoption
3) Sell my businesses
None of the three seem realistic at this point… so the tank is mostly there to carry my return fuel for the Egypt trips but I can indeed now do Belgrade – Alexandria without stopping in Greece. That would be a real Peter-flight (6-7h) though. On the way back, a stop in Greece would be required unless I get gasoline in Egypt.
16 hrs endurance – achimha or the aircraft?
3 Egyptian milk bottles (they have an extra large cap diameter…), 3 newspapers and my kindle are all I need. Long distance flying is booooring.
