Friday, June 4, 2010

Charts, charts, and more charts!

I just finished a marathon on-line chart shopping experience extending over two days and two pilot supply stores. I would have bought all our charts from JoePilot.com except there were some they didn't have - like Canadian charts. So I also placed another order with Sporty's Pilot Shop.

In all I've so far spent $180 and we still need four more Canadian books of approach plates for Canada at $20 a pop. I'm told they are cheaper in Canada so maybe we'll get them on our first stop there and hope the weather is VFR for that first stop as we won't be shooting an IFR approach without any approach plates.

But we have it pretty well covered. we have all the VFR Sectionals for most of the northern tier of the US (our outbound route) as well as IFR EnRoute charts and approach plates for every airport in every state we'll be traversing.

I'm also wondering how much all this paper will weigh and how much space it will take up. With only two of us in the airplane we should be OK weight and balance wise unless we get some very short fields on some very hot and humid days, in which case we'll just take on less fuel. Still, one of my next tasks before departure will be to weigh everything including ourselves and see where we stack up on the weight and balance envelope and also how we look on the performance charts.

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