The Journey of Flight.pdf - Valkyrie Cadet

from A to B. The wind line blows the aircraft off course and results in an actual track across the ground
labeled as the ground track.
So what would you do if you wanted to correct for the wind drift? Fly into the wind. Since we fly
direction using aircraft heading, we need to know how many degrees to steer into the wind. This is
found by measuring the number of degrees between the true course line and the ground track. Then,
steer that many degrees into the wind. Simple!
Using a Wind Triangle
There are several tools that help the pilot figure out drift corrections. Flight plotters are aviationspecific
protractors that make determining angles and headings quick and painless. Flight computers
come in many varieties. They may be little more than circular slide rules (find an old guy and ask him
what a slide rule is) or as complex as hand-held computers that can rapidly calculate flight information.
Navigation Navigation T TTechniques
T echniques
The two basic techniques of air navigation are pilotage and dead reckoning. One or the other of
these has been used since cross-country flights were first possible.
Pilotage. Pilotage means navigating by reference to visible landmarks. It can be as basic as
flying above and following a highway or railroad to the destination. If a pilot is totally familiar with the
geographic area of the flight and has flown the route many times before, references to landmarks may
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