Todd McClamroch has recently written a short post on his My Flight Blog about his return to steam gauges, his love-hate relationship with VFR sectional charts and finally a useful tool (SkySectionals) for other old-school pilots who also have a love-hate relationship with their VFR sectional charts. At the beginning of his post, Todd wrote that as a cost cutting measure, he is now foregoing time in a G1000 and has been flying aircraft with good old-fashion steam gauges. Moreover, some of his recent flights were flown without the benefit of GPS but he did note that he has enjoyed his recent flights – even if it means sticking his head out of the window to try and spot landmarks.
However, he has since rediscovered his love-hate relationship with VFR sectional charts and he noted that while its fun to spend hours looking at them before a flight (“dreaming of all the cool places to fly, choosing routes and spots to fly over, plus I like the smell of sectionals even more than a magic marker…..”), its not easy to keep them folded in a nice and useful shape.
As a possible solution, Todd then mentioned a useful tool called SkySectionals that was developed by Eric Boles. SkySectionals can be downloaded and printed on demand and Todd proceeded to mention their pros and cons with the biggest con of all being all of the printer ink you will use to print them out.
At the end of his post though, Todd concluded:
All in all I think it is a creative solution and for the uber-organized it is probable a gift from above. I think for my needs I will likely stick with the standard sectional, something about the smell of them I just can’t live without.
Nevertheless and if you are an uber-organized pilot, you may want to check out Eric’s product.