Silvaire wrote:
Higher altitude typically makes it worse from the point of view of winds which are a significant fraction of IAS,
Except on the rare days you have tailwind, I guess.
Silvaire wrote:
ATC can do nothing for you at lower altitude – even if you can maintain radio contact, they can’t see your traffic on radar and aren’t likely talking to them either.
In my experience flying what was low (for me…) in France, they get you everywhere, except near their north-east border. And from my experience flying VFR in the 4000ft-FL085 band (ground around 1000ft to 2000ft), from the traffic reports “unknown altitude” I was getting, and seeing these traffic hugging the ground, they have some kind of radar return pretty low.
Sebastian_H wrote:
Why? With the Cub I probably wouldn’t fly as high as I do now, so I would be more than happy to get some traffic info from Langen Information. I rather felt that ATC wonders what I am doing flying alone along at FL75, merely getting handovers to the next frequency every now and then
With my Luscombe I used to fly at 2000 ft over terrain, or 1000 ft agl in completely flat country. That kind of flying is actually more fun and rewarding than what I’m doing now with higher wing loading and more power, but the problem is speed so low that you can’t go anywhere very quickly. Higher altitude typically makes it worse from the point of view of winds which are a significant fraction of IAS, and ATC can do nothing for you at lower altitude – even if you can maintain radio contact, they can’t see your traffic on radar and aren’t likely talking to them either.
ADS-B works a bit better for traffic down low, if you and that traffic are equipped, or alternately if you’re low enough and slow enough you could also get Flightaware traffic via Foreflight over the internet. I haven’t tried that when flying but it works well on my back porch – with Foreflight open every plane I can hear I can ‘see’ and identify 
Malibuflyer wrote:
what is required for compliance and not what is practical for actual flying.
Well, ideally I was looking for a way to combine both. It seems that keeping a VOR/ILS receiver might be the most practical solution as it provides legal compliance, emergency ILS let-down capability, and requires no database subscriptions etc.
Silvaire wrote:
I’m laughing about the idea of filing a flight plan to fly a Cub cross country, with continuous ATC contact. It’d be fun to try it, but I think ATC might think you were stupid
You will need an FPL for cross-corder flying even in Cubs 
, especially when you are not transponder equipped, flying bellow radar/airspace with a flying permit rather than a CoFA
On ATC perception, a friend has an IFR equipped LaMaule and always get laughed by ATC every time he asks for “IFR clearance” on the ground/air (he is the kind of 200ft ILS and 0ft ceiling takeoff and only need 500ft ceiling to make it to his grass)
For flying high than 6000ft without transponder, I find it it is always worth talking to ATC even in class G, people don’t expect you to be up there and assume you are dimmed bellow airspace, I recall I was flying a motor-glider SF25C when a KC135 decided to join the VFR show at FL140, they spot us and did make sure we will never have the nerves to go up there again
For weird FPLs, I also had to file them for gliders few times,
- In Morocco, Class D from SFC-FL200 with procedural route/altitude control and “VFR landout clearance”
- In Scotland, to get Class C when TRA(G) is not active, not that I made it to FL195 that day
Luckily in the UK we don’t have to file FPL or get IFR clearances to fly gliders in clouds, only a turn coordinator !
VFR Cubs in clouds is still illegal, except when the mags are off on a side note the Cub takes a lot of dirt on it’s wing and surfaces and still flies 100%, I suspect it still manages ice better than most non-FIKI touring SEP, but given it is open cockpit with no comfy heater, I learned a good lesson: it is a bit harsh up there as measured by OAT on my face
Silvaire wrote:
I’m laughing about the idea of filing a flight plan to fly a Cub cross country,
Might be – the same way German pilots are laughing about the thought that one could get a ticket for flying over a golf course just because our president happens to play a round of golf there.
Regulation is different across countries and this thread is about what is required for compliance and not what is practical for actual flying.
Silvaire wrote:
I’m laughing about the idea of filing a flight plan to fly a Cub cross country, with continuous ATC contact. It’d be fun to try it, but I think ATC might think you were stupid.
Why? With the Cub I probably wouldn’t fly as high as I do now, so I would be more than happy to get some traffic info from Langen Information. I rather felt that ATC wonders what I am doing flying alone along at FL75, merely getting handovers to the next frequency every now and then :) What the Cub is missing are long-range tanks – I wouldn’t mind being airborne a whole summer’s day’s worth (provided I bring both a full and empty jug along …), the annoyances of flying for me are purely on the airfield side.
Ibra wrote:
So I need a GPS or DME+VOR to fly a Cub VFR over open water or deserted land in Class D under Part NCO?
I’m laughing about the idea of filing a flight plan to fly a Cub cross country, with continuous ATC contact. It’d be fun to try it, but I think ATC might think you were stupid.
My Luscombe didn’t have a DG or transponder and I remember one of the local airports once giving me a heading to clear their Class D, and the resulting dialog. In the end the instruction was “OK, just head towards the bay, see ya” or something like that, although the wet compass would have worked with a little care. I think the controller was an ex-military guy, a trainee, with little experience of light aircraft.
LeSving wrote:
Might as well install MAGNAV GPS is a thing of the past.
Interesting! Probably not too easy to get high-resolution magnetic anomaly maps, though. My bigger hope is that the advances in solid-state gyroscopes and accelerometers might in a few years suffice to create a cheap and reliable INS as backup solution. Friends at my old university cobbled together something using currently-available COTS hardware that gets additional updates for an extended Kalman filter from GPS from time to time, but it could easily also use a VOR bearing (or DME lines of position if there would be an economical DME transceiver available for GA). At the moment, drift rate of the gyros is to large, unfortunately.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Call me an old guy, but in my flight training I’ve learned to fly with compass and stopwatch only. If you take the wind before you loose sight of the ground and don’t change altitude so much, wind is quite predictable even over an hour time (if your plane is not too fast). And if you really fly accurately, you might wonder how precisely you end up at the pre calculated spot.
I just finished with my PPL training a year ago, so I still remember dead reckoning :) And to be honest, inside the extremely easy German airspace it might even be not too much of an issue to fly EHRD-EDNX with map, watch, and compass; my “standard” route to my family in the south of Germany is just heading out of the Netherlands near Geilenkirchen, stay west of Köln, west of Frankfurt, and done; but looking e.g. at a route towards Annecy I find the Belgian and French airspace much less easy to navigate purely on dead reckoning alone.
Malibuflyer wrote:
The question is if you do it for practical flying or for compliance. For practical flying a tablet is obviously a great solution – but it doesn’t help you with compliance if your flight plan is defined by GPS fixes…
Yeah, that’s why I raised the question in the first place. Practically speaking, I nowadays draw mostly a straight line to my destination, pick some five-letter points along the path every half hour or so, and rubberband (using said five-letter points) around less accessible airspace (restricted/prohibited swathes, Frankfurt TMA). With the club’s planes that all had a 430 (or GTN750 in one case), that meant that I could easily plug the same route into the GPS as backup and stay legal if above solid cloud layer. Now with our RV-7, I am thinking how to achieve a practical and easy way to comply with the Part-NCO equipment requirements.
Ibra wrote:
Cub while VFR only is not slippery aeroplane and can circle tight, I am not sure about RVs but I had the impression they go really fast in clouds and worth having proper ILS & GPS capability and proper IFR pannel and practice
I had huge fun doing the tailwheel endorsement on a Super Cub, it’s a huge advantage to be able to go slowly and put her down in almost any spot! But as you say, the RV-7 cruises leisurely along at 155 KTAS, and I intend to use it for longer trips as well. Since I have to convince my co-owner (who is doing purely local flights) as well, it seems at the moment the most practical way forward to enlarge the cutouts of the current radio stack to accomodate our old SL-30, and buy a decent audio panel as well (I am fed up with the crap intercom of the Icom). Mendelssohn sells recertified GNS-430 (not W) for about 5k Euros; compared to shelling out around 1.5k for a new GMA-245, that is a lot of Avgas to improve proficiency.
Of course you don’t have to fly with FPL or clerances using GPS fixes but this has nothing to do with being able to see the surface, how on earth will you be able to identify TUKVI on FPL or follow ATC VFR cleranace to LAVRI even when you see the surface?
On Cub, I used 2 tablets and hand held Yasu 750 (COM & NAV), flying above clouds is no issue, finding wide hole at the destination is the real problem, this easily solved by having 7h fuel endurance , if you can afford an ILS or GPS for approaches get one, navigating over clouds en-route is the same as over open water or deserted land, even without GPS (I switch mine off after leaving UK CAS) you keep cosntant heading and wait untill you see surface landmarks !
Cub while VFR only is not slippery aeroplane and can circle tight, I am not sure about RVs but I had the impression they go really fast in clouds and worth having proper ILS & GPS capability and proper IFR pannel and practice
And yes it is worth it up there ! (1000ft from clouds was WIP )
