58Skylane wrote:

mtv wrote:If you are in radar and/or radio contact with ATC, thus able to flight follow, you ain't VERY backcountry.

MTV

and, If your cruising up in the nose bleed section......... "You ain't Very Backcountry"

For some of us there is the 'enroute' phase of flight till we get to the promise land. At that stage it is down low and slow. When the fun really starts, how do you file a plan ? It's like , we are at Mile High,, we are kinda hungry so were off to Makay for some food, then maybe Wilson bar. I can just see the FSS guy/gals face when you try to explain your route and final destination...

Just saying......

Ben.

That's easy. Use a satellite phone, and call in the coordinates. You do know how to find coordinates from a chart, neh??

And, actually, many if not most of the Idaho and Montana backcountry strips have identifiers now.

But, I filed flight plans to coordinates when I worked in Alaska for many years. Works fine. You don't HAVE to go to a place with a three letter identifier, actually.

I don't carry a satellite phone these days, but I used to, and they are a great tool for flight planning.

And, remember, you still have to get weather for your flight if you're coming OUT of one of those places after an overnight or four. So, good way to get a briefing as well.
MTV

mtv wrote:That's easy. Use a satellite phone, and call in the coordinates. You do know how to find coordinates from a chart, neh??

And, actually, many if not most of the Idaho and Montana backcountry strips have identifiers now.

But, I filed flight plans to coordinates when I worked in Alaska for many years. Works fine. You don't HAVE to go to a place with a three letter identifier, actually.

I don't carry a satellite phone these days, but I used to, and they are a great tool for flight planning.

And, remember, you still have to get weather for your flight if you're coming OUT of one of those places after an overnight or four. So, good way to get a briefing as well.
MTV

You win...................................

I am hoping I can fly another 30 years without putting even a scratch on a plane....

Thanks everyone for the input. It looks like about 2/3rd's of us don't regularly file VFR with FSS.

I also use SPOT, understanding it does have limitations. So far that is working well for me in the BC. The 396 has a weather subscription so that helps keep track of weather, realizing it is not the "official" information. I'm more concerned then about saving my hide, and can get FSS weather once reaching radio reception.

MTV,

I'll try fling multi-day plans again when I get a chance; I'll see what happens but my expectations are low based on past experience here. I'm glad they are at least available in your area. I like the idea of sat phones. The last time I checked the cost for Iridium was: $1,200 for the phone purchase & $60/mo service plan.

BR

Actually, you can find Iridium phones quite a bit less expensive than that. There are now a lot of refurbished phones out there. Also, you can purchase air time via Sim card, or buy minutes by the month, etc. There are enough plans out there to give you a headache, actually. None are really cheap, though.

MTV

AndyH wrote:I used to rely on SPOT and only SPOT until last year I got into a heap of trouble with the family when the system failed to update the data for the SPOT page in a timely fashion.

Out at the lake with the wife, 2 kids, and parents. I decide to take the kids out for a flight to visit some friends. Around supper time, the wife & parents fire up the SPOT page to see where we are and they see a "last PIN" being about an hour earlier with nothing after that. You can imagine what they were thinking.

All the while we are fine and off to visit someone else at another lake before heading home before it getting dark. After getting home, I got right blasted by both wife and parents. About an hour later, the missing pins showed up on the spot page. Not sure what was going on, but it taught me that I should use my phone a bit more and be a bit more explicit about what my plans are going to be and when I expect to be home.

I love my SPOT, but it isn't 100% all of the time. It's only one of the tools that can/should be used when buzzing around out in the back country.

Cheers

Andy,

No machine made by man is 100% reliable. Your SPOT flight-followers need to understand that and not expect that lack of a fresh reported position means you're in trouble.

In my experience SPOT works great maybe 95-98% of the time ... but my wife has learned that that's not 100%. Not that she doesn't worry when the signal is late from time to time, but she's also not calling SAR or giving me hell when I check in later.

The most frequent cause of a lack of SPOT tracking for me has been me - I sometimes forget to turn on the tracking feature!

Cell phones are much less reliable than SPOT ... VHF radio coverage is also less much reliable than SPOT - there's lots of large areas here in the mountainous, lightly populated west that at normal VFR single-engine non-turbocharged flight altitudes, you simply can't talk to ATC ... ditto on ATC radar coverage. Even sat phones and 406 mhz ELTs can still fail, just due to impact-related or electronic failures, battery drawdown, or inability to get out from under the tree canopy (should you suffer an accident in the deep woods), or you're in a deep, narrow canyon, or under water (gulp!).

When it comes to staying in touch while we're out and about in our airplanes, we have to depend upon a combination of layered communications (not to mention redundancies in our aircraft systems), good planning, good judgment, and a degree of luck, where no single machine or technology is expected to be 100%.

Duane

nmflyguy wrote:The most frequent cause of a lack of SPOT tracking for me has been me - I sometimes forget to turn on the tracking feature!

Duane

I have "SPOT On and Set" and "SPOT OFF" written on my checklist........ Yes, I still use a check list for start up and shut down

I've never had an issue with my SPOT and my friends and family know what to do if something happens. A few of them know what to do if the tracking feature is stuck in one spot for way too long. Anyway, I've mentioned this many times over and I'm not going to keep beating a dead horse There has been some very good points to consider from the above post's, though

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I have "SPOT On and Set" and "SPOT OFF" written on my checklist........ Yes, I still use a check list for start up and shut down

[/quote]

Good idea, I'll be doing the same. I have the most trouble remembering to turn it off so if I go land out in a remote strip, it looks like I crashed in the wilderness on Google Earth. Mine sends out it's strongest signal from the hanger for some reason.

If you can get flight following that's choice 1 for me

I'm not a big fan of using a spot you got at Big 5 and your girlfriend, I can think of soooo many ways this could not work well if shit hit the fan.

If you're low and far out enough that you're not on radar get a 406 with gps. No girlfriend's frantic phone call required and if it goes off SAR KNOWS it's legit, unlike a granola munching hiker playing with his spot.

Anyone read this article?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-27/private-plane-flight-plans-must-be-public-faa.html

Not helping the situation.

Zane wrote:Anyone read this article?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-27/private-plane-flight-plans-must-be-public-faa.html

Not helping the situation.

..........I guess the drug dealers will just have to stop filing flight plans.

I filed my first one in a little while, yesterday, from KHND to U07 and damned if I didn't forget to close it. Oof.