Distance from A to B.....

[Guest Bendorn]

Say I'm trying to work out the distance and approx flying time from one point to another, eg. Lilydale to Sea Lake (both in Vic), short of getting a VicRoads map out and drawing a line from point to point, does anyone have to user friendly method? Or have a link to one on the net?

 

:;)5:

 

Ben

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Ben

 

Assuming you have a reasonable internet connection (ie better than dial up) then download google earth onto your PC http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html and use the ruler function to measure the direct distance from one point to the next. For flying, make sure that the ruler units are set to nautical miles so you can use the direct correlation between a nautical mile and 1 knot of airspeed.

 

For a non computer based solution buy the WAC charts (World Aeronautical Chart) for the area that you are interested in, and a suitable scale ruler( 1:1,000,000) , from the same place that sells the WAC charts and your well sorted. I'm sure your instructor will cover this with you, most definitely in the cross country endorsement. If your not sure of where to buy the WAC chart use google, or perhaps better still your instructor can probably help.

 

If you want to get slightly ahead, buy yourself a book called "Ultralight Navigation" by Des Rycroft. The only thing I don't like about it is the name, the same navigation techniques work for any Aircraft and are not Ultralight specific. The only differences are that if your only tootling along at 40kts a 20kt wind is going to have a big impact on what you do, whereas the same wind impact on an aircraft at 120kts is relatively smaller.

 

Andy

 

 

[Ross]

Hi Ben

 

WAC or World Aeronautical Charts are charts (maps) specifically designed for Visual Flight Flying.

 

 

 

They have things on them that are important to pilots like the heights of TV towers and mountains and the location of these and aerodromes and major roads, railway lines and out our way wheat silos at railway stations etc etc.

 

 

 

Lakes and rivers are easy to see from the air so even if they have no water in them are still very prominent so feature on the charts as well.

 

 

 

The charts can be bought treated so that you can write on them and rub the tracks & notes out without permanently marking the map.

 

 

 

See the index of all Australian WACharts below.

 

 

 

[ATTACH]3590.vB[/ATTACH]

 

 

The series covers the whole of Australia with each chart covering 6 degrees from East to West and 4 degrees from North to South.

 

 

 

Regards

 

 

 

[Guest Bendorn]

I just used the google earth site. Too easy. Worked it out in seconds. Thanks for that.

 

 

[Admin]

You could also use the Route Planner on this site under the Flight Bag menu item - just enter the departure and destination airstrips and it will calculate it with much more.

 

There is a separate menu item under the Flight Bag that is a distance calculator but I haven't set that up yet - coming soon