Bunkerhill
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 9, 2009
- Messages
- 1,012
- Reaction score
- 12
I thought about not telling this but, what the heck. Since I started my journey toward getting my ticket I have had a Garmin 296. I was so hooked on the thing that during my dual cross-country Shannon took it away from me in the middle of the trip. I had my map and all my ck points but unknown to him I was not looking at the map very much. When he took it away the reliance on the map seemed odd. I made it back but it was not pretty. He warned me about leaning on the Garmin to much at this stage of my training. During my solo cross country I did not even look at the sectional, NOT ONCE during the flight even though I told myself I would . During the ck ride the examiner of course made me fly with my course plan and ck points. I made a passable showing but even then unknown to him I was confused for brief periods. OK then I got burnt the other day. I set out on a short cross-country to an airport that was not marked very well with good ck points . I had a map and had briefly looked at it but no real plan,afterall it was only 23 miles away and I have my Garmin that I was certain had a good charge. As soon as I took off the screen went blank,dead battery. No panic As soon as I leveled off I began looking at my sectional and made a plan. No wind correction needed because it was a direct almost no headwind. I looked at my compass and flew the correct heading.The first couple of ck points were fine but when I got within 10 miles of the airport I was without any good ck points and basically got lost. I climbed up another 1000 ft and found a watertower with the name of a small town on it. I was able to limp in from there because I know the area fairly well. The area I'm in made it a non event because it is local to me ,but if I had been somewhere foreign to me I could have been in a pickle. Ive learned a tough lesson early. I am changing my behavior with planning now before this non sense becomes a BAD Habit. I'm not going anywhere past the airport area without a plan. That plan will assume the GPS won't work. If and when I get the instructors rating I don't think I will allow the use of a GPS during training. :-\ ;D
