Liam

I agree with the fact that you need to know pilotage and dead reckoning. These are important skills you need to know IN ADDITION to knowing how to operate a GPS. I had to learn how to use it on my own (and I still mainly just do “direct to”).

One resource that I use that I discovered on my own are the weather manuals that Nav Canada publish about each region in Canada. They are invaluable when it comes to interpreting METARs and TAFs. (http://www.navcanada.ca/NavCanada.asp?Content=contentdefinitionfiles%5Cpublications%5Clak%5Cdefault.xml)

Keep an eye out though, with Garmin releasing the successors to the 430/530, I’m sure the used market on used IFR GPSs will come down.

There’s on-and-off talk about implementing an RNAV approach at my home airport (CYRO). If/when that happens, I’ll likely install an IFR GPS and connect it to the A/P.

The GPSS is the polar opposite. As long as I’m not 180 degrees off or going too fast for the turn required, the AP will turn to and hold a course perfectly, even through holds, 90 degree turns to final, etc. I will admit though, I haven’t tried it with too many VORs, but I did test it on an ILS. The only downside to it is that its somewhat counter intuitive to need the AP to be in “HDG” mode for the GPSS to work. I’ve had to explain that to a few pilots.

One use I’ve found for the wing leveler is when traveling through small convective clouds. I’m not talking big thunderheads, but the little building clouds w/o precip or lightning but still a little bit of turbulence. I’ve found that when I get hit with winds that want to roll the a/c, the AP can sometimes exacerbate the situation by inducing more roll. In these situations, I’ll flip over to the wing leveler just to keep the AP from leading me into inverted flight.

Ryan

Now that they’re older, I find the plane is great for visiting my older daughter at university (1.5-2 hour flight, vs 4.5-5.5 hour drive) or giving her a lift home, for taking my younger daughter down to Boston for Red Sox games, and still, for Hope Air flights whenever I can fit them in. As gas gets more and more expensive, I love that the plane burns only around 7 gph at full cruise power when flying LOP/WOT.

My “new-old bird” sports the Piper-badged wing-leveler A/P made by Century. Been there since the beginning. I am just a visual pilot now (again your blog has motivated me to do my IFR later this autumn), but I already love my A/P on the x-countries. My A/P can be driven by the VOR/OBS or by the Apollo GX60 GPS. Altitude hold would be nice sometimes, but like you say trim works really well in smooth air. This morning I flew A/P for at least an hour. After I trimmed altitude, the old Warrior would hold +/- 50 feet with nearly zero input from me.

Happy flying and keep blogging.