For the first navigation exercise, we went from a town called Jedula to Coripe, then to Alcalá and back to Jedula. The scenery was beautiful, especially near the mountains. Initially I head East at 3500ft and then climbed to 4500ft from Coripe onwards following the VFR (Visual Flight Rules) altitude rules. It was quite turbulent, but I felt no disorientation or discomfort so I was happy. The forecast winds didn’t match up to the winds we experienced so there was some good practice in using the various methods in assessing and correcting for track error and in addition it was quite a challenge to fly under turbulent conditions, navigate, plog (write in the pilot log), and do the radio calls all at once! I’ve done some VFR navigation before but that was more than a year ago and Spain is a new territory, so it felt like I was starting fresh. Also, the technique used here is based on flying a heading accurately and keeping track of time rather than “map crawling” where features are followed. The map is used to confirm position and check drift and calculate ETAs at checkpoints along the route.
Next: Solo Nav.