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Had filed IFR for flight between Lake City and Fernandina due to bad weather with thunderstorms along the way. Turns out I ended up in a valley of VFR where it was quite smooth. Had a really nice surprise when I heard a friend who is a controller with Jax Center on the air who then gave me my clearance. Upon arrival at destination found myself a bit fast and a touch high turning base to final so decided to use a slip to lose altitude rather than speed brakes. Fun flight!

It was a perfect day to do practice approaches in actual IMC since ceilings were between 800 ft and 1500 ft around the area. Filed for a "round robin" flight noting in the remarks that I wanted to do practice approaches into KBQK and KJAX. Well..... you can't always get what you want! The Jax approach controller was superb handling all the traffic. Non-stop coms! Enjoy! Chris

Subscribe and Fly Along! Picking up Pat from Morristown to fly over to Sussex to pick up his Mooney. Morristown is a controlled airport which I usually don't have to fly to. Always good practice. Thanks for Flying Along! E-mail - PilotFun101@gmail.com Follow me - Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PilotFun101/ Cameras - GoPro - https://gopro.com/en/us/ (Hero 5 & 7) Transponder - Lynx L3 - https://www.l-3lynx.com/ Headsets - https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/h... GPS - Garmin - https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/cInTh... My Oil - https://aviationoiloutlet.com/ Check out aviation fun stuff on Amazon https://www.amazon.com This Video is for entertainment purposes only and is not to be considered flight instruction in any way. Please contact your local CFI for flight instruction. #PilotFun101 #ControlTower #MooneyM20C #PilotFun101 #ForeFlight #MooneyM20C

We can all take a breather until the next reauthorization... https://www.aopa.org/News-and-Media/All-News/2018/February/28/ATC-giveaway-push-to-end-for-now?utm_source=ePilot&utm_medium=email&utm_content=adv&utm_campaign=180301special

Do you have HF in your Mooney? Have you thought about installing HF in your Mooney? What type of HF antenna do you have on your Mooney? What HF radio and ATU are you using in your Mooney? Was HF already in the plane when you got it, or did you have it installed? Aeronautical High Frequency (HF) radio has been the mainstay of long distance Air Traffic Control for over 80 years, especially in areas of the world where coverage with line-of-sight VHF radio is not reliable or possible. Although aircraft satellite ATC communications are now commonplace, HF is still very active for Major World Air Route Areas (MWARA) as well as Regional and Domestic Air Route Areas (RDARA). HF is widely utilized for bush flights and NGOs to communicate with ground mobiles, remote outposts, camps, or portable units. Some pilots who are ham radio operators may also enjoy talking on HF radio with amateur radio enthusiasts. So, there are many reasons for Mooney pilots to want HF capability in their plane.

I apologize upfront for the length of this post. I'm curious to figure out how ATC determines routing in the northeast U.S. for /G airplanes and hope that any controllers who frequent this forum may be able to give some insight to the process or at least the logic. Some background information. I've been IFR rated since the early 1990s. Until December 2012 I have been exclusively a /A filer. Back in the 90s it was fairly common that you were stuck on the airways and corners were cut occasionally when VORs were close enough. When VFR portable GPS units became available, I learned that putting "VFR GPS" in the remarks section would often give/result in something like "Marauder, fly heading 310, when able proceed direct XXX". "XXX" was a VOR in my flight plan but was usually so far away that I would never receive it for quite a while. Since I was in radar coverage the whole time, I figured that the controller was throwing me a bone. Fast forward to 2013. Equipped with the new /G hardware I started to file direct routes. I learned quickly there is no such thing as a direct route in the northeast. In fact, it doesn't appear to even be a standard route in the Northeast. I fly to western NY several times a year. The route I filed as a /A wouldn't be assigned. In fact, routes that I accepted and flew would usually be changed but now with the added feature of some bizarre spelled waypoint, sometimes on an airway, sometimes an RNAV waypoint. When Bob Belville came visiting, I gave him a route I had filed /A only to see the poor man being given a route that appear to have been created in a random route generator. Sorry Bob! Which leads me to Saturday's IFR flight to Orange County (KMGJ). I have filed part of this route in the past as a /A when going to Maine, so I thought it should be fine. Sparta VOR is the IAF for approaches going into Orange County. When I picked up my clearance at N57, I was given this gem: N57 MXE PTW FJC LAAYK PRNCE FILPS KMGJ As I was flying this route, Allentown tells me that if I am willing to go to 5000' I can have a more direct route. I accepted and was given this prior to getting to FJC: SCOUP V162 HUO DIRECT I know there are Letter of Agreements between Center and Approach facilities and I am sure this is what happened with the re-route. But I also know that depending on when I'm flying I can and have seen different routing issued from something I have flown before. All of this seems linked to the /G capability. So... for those who are in ATC or those who have more /G experience, what is the key to filing a route /G and getting something close? I would think in the world of today's automated systems these are stored as preferred routes. I tried fltpln.com to see if I can see a trend but unfortunately it doesn't seem to cover many flights from my airport or even the surrounding ones. I will say that the new GTN series makes it a lot easier since the predictive entry finds waypoints close to my route. My biggest gripe is that in a high workload situation, loading up a series of waypoints adds to the workload. Interesting in reading what others have experienced.

Tower tells you to "report a three (3) mile left base to runway XX." Let's discuss... Background....I've been flying for 33 years...and got yelled at by my home 'drome tower controller today for not complying with his instructions...and I've always interpreted this instruction (which we get a lot at this airport) to mean something different that what he told me today....so I'd like to find out what others think this instruction means. As an FYI, I also made my first call saying I was "2 miles northwest of <insert name> mall" which is a well known reporting point....and he told me "so you're saying you are five (5) miles southeast of the field?" That should reveal something about this controller's state of mind. (Now in his defense, he was likely having a bad day given the stupid amount of traffic at KDVT this morning with a mix of foreign students, t-props, and jets.)