Can I ask what people generally do re their initial plog given the above?
There is a lot of variation in what people do. Personally, I get the Flitestar version from the autorouter and paste it into Flitestar IFR, and print off the overall map of the route and the plog, and fly with that. This is antiquated but it works for me. I avoid using tablets for anything really important enroute, in case it packs up / battery goes flat / etc.
My old KLN94 cannot take airway names and can take only 20 waypoints, so I load the first 17 or so, plus the destination (so I have a reasonably good Landing Fuel on Board from the fuel totaliser), and take off with that, and load in the remaining waypoints as the early ones are passed and get deleted.
With a GNS or later box, you can load in the whole lot.
I always load the filed route (as above) so I have the “picture” before me. This is also largely what ATC see, which puts one in a good position to ask for shortcuts and to anticipate things generally.
Frequencies along the route are normally handed out by ATC and are impossible to computationally forecast, so SD etc is no good for that part of it. The initial frequency will be in the departure clearance, and after that you just “go with the flow”…
Edit: 10 years ago this stuff was really hard. Eurocontrol had screwed up European IFR totally, so one could not plan anything just off the printed airway chart (with some exceptions e.g. France) but autorouting tools did not arrive till 2008. Eurocontrol tried damn hard to kill them off (I am told by a Eurocontrol insider this was because Jeppesen and one other put a lot of pressure on them to not make autorouting accessible; this also killed off an internal plan to make their internal autorouter opened up as was scheduled for 2005) and killed off the first free tool but the second one is still there, and Autorouter now does a lot more.
DMEaec,
Thanks for the comments and advice. I have flown to Dinard previously VFR, so I thought It might give me a good comparison now going IFR. I will say that I thought my IFR training was good as I achieved a first time pass in the skills test with minimum flight hours. However, you have to put that training into context, which is, that training is designed to enable you to pass the EASA IFR Skills Test…..nothing more. The test involves entering CAS, a Radar Vectored ILS, General Handling and a return back to your home airfield for a Non Precision Approach (which you have practiced 30 times). The training doesn’t teach you to go anywhere. My filed routes were based on two possible exam flight profiles, Coventry or Cardiff. The flight plan for Coventry was DCT DTY DCT CT and Cardiff was DCT BADIM L9 BCN DCT…..that was it, no route went further than the crease in the map. So you can see why I ask these questions now. I’m lucky that this Forum exists so that I can ask these questions and receive some answers from the wise. I don’t know how people done it 10 years ago. In fact it was this Forum and the Trip Reports from Peter and others that spurred me on the get an IR, which is a tough thing to do when you are approaching 50 and have a business to run, family and a house to look after, partner to keep happy AND do 3 hours a night study every night and every weekend studying, question bank bashing, then spend nights and nights away in hotels while flight training away from family, friends and loved ones. I’m sure some people can forget how foreboding their first IFR flight was 
AdamFrisch wrote:
And how do you convey to ATC that you want to fly Direct if not?
We assume everybody wants to fly direct. 99,9% of the time this is true.
Is this the way it works in Europe? Can you file Direct and have the computer figure out the route? And how do you convey to ATC that you want to fly Direct if not?
No, it doesn’t work like that. You file the plan on airways using DCT as shortcut in counties and airspaces whete it’s allowed. Maybe it’s oversimplified explanation but it’s like that in a nutshell.
Is this the way it works in Europe? Can you file Direct and have the computer figure out the route? And how do you convey to ATC that you want to fly Direct if not?
A while ago I wrote some notes on IFR in Europe here
In terms of the software tools used, you can indeed enter the departure and destination airports and it works out a route which can be filed, but sometimes you need to know various tricks to make it all work.
First airways flight post CBM IR making it to Guernsey and back this past Saturday on an IFR flight – a first post the CBMIR rating came through the door
Thankfully very straightforward with two small concerns
First was a NOTAM for Guernsey that the ILS was u/s until 2nd Oct. For some reason this didn’t show on my Skydemon i-pad a/c, nor other friends a/c’s (but it did show on one friends who I was flying with)
We both checked our i-phone SD account and it didn’t show there either and then I have asked friends if they could check and they also don’t see it (via the SD service at least)
Some had suggested previously that if you put the destination in as the IAF and not the airfield then it might miss it out, but in all cases we had the destination as EGJB. Sure it is something very trivial I have done wrong but at present remains a mystery to me. Thankfully it was picked up and the conditions were good
Second issue was the return leg where I was dumped by Southampton out of controlled airspace right down into a massive glider free for all before they passed me onto a Farnborough approach frequency who then spent the next 5 minutes almost with nonstop updates of the multiple contacts all around us. Literally crossed my fingers and hoped for the best
Here’s the notam – SD should have got it
What was your mainland destination? If it was something like Blackbushe (or some other Class G airfield) then there is no possible way to get there in CAS. You have to be dropped somewhere; the only Q is where
Well done on the IR initiation ceremony
Have a look at the NOTAM-tab in SkyDemon, then go to Tools and thereafter to Extended or Enhanced (I am just looking at the version in German on the iPad).
You can configure to receive only IFR-relevant NOTAMs, only VFR or both.
RXH,
I think you have just found the issue. If I route to EGJB the ILS U/S is shown in the Notams, but that is with both flight types (VFR and IFR) ticked in the advanced part of the tools tab. If I ‘un check’ the IFR type the ILS U/S then disappears from the Notams. NICKR, check your settings, this may have caused the issue.
RXH & Rob2701 – Thank you very much. That does indeed solve the NOTAM issue. Glad I learned about that here. Peter. The return flight was to White Waltham and obviously had to be dropped out. Just came as a bit of a shock to be dumped into the middle of such intense activity. Thanks for the help above.
