----- Original Message ----- From: "Rodney Woodard" http://www.mustangflyer.com/
I found a cool website that lets you plan routes on a VFR sectional for free. www.runwayfinder.com I'm headed out for breakfast tomorrow morning with some friends. We're headed to Steamboat Springs, CO (KSBS). I did a little test hop this past Tuesday. I climbed to 11,500' and was still seeing 500 fpm as I leveled off. I'm attaching a snapshot of my planned route to KSBS tomorrow morning. I'll plot in the Lat/Lon points in the GPS and then pick my way over and around the highest points while using the GPS route as a general guideline. I really love the terrain feature on my Garmin 496. I just watch the Red turn to Yellow and then to black as I pick my way through the hills. I'm doing this all VMC, of course, but it's still cool to have electronic confirmation that I'll clear something by more than XX number of feet. The XX is a user-selected number of feet for what shows up as red and what shows up as yellow on the 496. It won't be too applicable to tomorrow's flight, but the 496 also does a great job of pointing out the various widow-maker antennas we have dotting our horizon on the eastern plains of Colorado. I've even got it wired to play through my headset so I get a little voice talking to me about "obstacle ahead" and "sink rate" and "500 feet" on the approach. If it called me a "Retard" in the flare I'd think I was at work in the Airbus! I spent a little time out at the hangar this evening. I had a friend pick up a Zulu headset for me at Oshkosh. I bought the panel-powered installed version so now I have to wire it up. I ran out of energy at the hangar so I bagged the project for this evening. Maybe tomorrow... Loving the flying. http://www.mustangflyer.com/ Rod Loveland, Colorado (KFNL) N881MM with 18.2 hours
