Wiz Wheel Wondering...

inventor

inventor

Well-Known Member
Hey guys, I have an E6-B, and have downloaded the manual. Can anyone recommend the equivalent of 'Wiz Wheel for Dummies? Meaning a good text/instruction book? And a source of exercises with solutions I could check my work against. I won't be flying or taking classes any time soon, so I thought that getting up to speed, and staying with using the whiz wheel would be my best bet for learning something that would move my education forward, but that wouldn't fade away without continuous study.

Thanks!:)
 
The lost art of the wiz wheel. I have been carrying one for over 20 years. Even though I don't really use it much with my current aircraft, I still keep it in my flight bag. I prefer the CR-type wiz wheels. They are a little less cumbersome and more capable.

I used to calculate almost anything with a wiz wheel. In addition to doing standard E6B calculations, I could compute Vnav, Rnav, Flight path angle, Required radar antennae angle, Radar beam width... All of these could be calculated faster than an electonic calculator with practice.
 
Buy an electric one. ;)

Really I think the manual is the best thing, it's fairly straightforward. Just think of problems and solve them, use something else to check your work. I'll admit if I haven't used one in a while I'll be a little slow with it until I jog my memory again.
 
I <3 E6B!

Seriously though, it really is a great tool, and as smig said, it is much faster than an electronic one when in skilled hands (that's what she said). I too carry one with me. I used to make it a competition with my students when doing inflight diversions and I think the fact that I was using it too made them appreciate it more than just learning it enough for the written and checkride.
 
Check out this YouTube channel for E6B example problems. I found it much easier to learn than by reading the little pamphlet that came with mine.
 
I never learned to use one of those things...I don't even think my 6,000 hour ATP rated primary instructor knew (or remembered) how to use one. I used an electronic one (that came with my sporty's kit back in 2006) during training/checkrides and use Duats/basic mental math calculations in my everyday flying. With students, I typically reccomend the Sporty's learn to fly course for their "ground school" and everything on that course's flight planning portion is based on the electronic E6B that comes with it. If someone ever shows up with a slide rule, I'm sure I could figure out how to use it with the directions, but they'd have to let me know before we sat down to plan our first dual X-C, so I don't look like an ass :D
 
I've got copies of several E6B problem worksheets, I think from old NIFA competitions and the like. If you want to get good with an E6B so that it's actually a useful tool you can whip out to solve actual problems with in the air, the key is to sit down a practice a bunch so that it becomes second nature. I can send you some of the practice worksheets if you want, just PM me your email address.

That reminds me, I've been meaning to brush up on the CR3...I think I lost mine years ago, but always thought they were kind of cool.
 
mechan9 said:
Check out this YouTube channel for E6B example problems. I found it much easier to learn than by reading the little pamphlet that came with mine.
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Awesome, thanks. Looks like lots of channels, I like to go over the same info in different ways, so those'll work great.

Thanks again, everyone. Hope to see you at the next meet up in Las Vegas.
 
rframe said:
How do you teach wind correction angles in your head?
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I use cross wind component (in kts) divided by TAS (in nm/min) for wind correction angle.

Example: You're doing 120kts TAS (or 2 nm/min) and have a 14 kt cross wind component. 14/2=7...a 7 degree wind correction angle. What does the spinning slide rule say? 7 degrees.

Operationally, I just round TAS to the nearest .5 nm/min (or 30kts) increment for the WCA calc. The difference in rounding is never more than a degree or two.
 
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