In Defense of the Paper Nav Log

We’ve all heard the stereotypes about the way age affects the abilities of student pilots.

“Those high school kids? Watch them nail a steep turn after just two attempts. But the mid-lifers? Their peripheral vision and hand-eye coordination barely work for pickleball, let alone landing an airplane.”

As an aviation instructor (and a mid-lifer), I’m wary of generalizations. According to the FAA’s Aviation Instructor’s Handbook, we instructors are supposed to treat all our students as individuals.

With respect to one aspect of flight training, however, I’m willing to disappoint the FAA. I’m talking about the paper nav log, and how students accept or reject it based on their age.

The younger students tolerate the paper nav log. Some are even genuinely curious and eager to learn. None attempt open revolt.

A mid-lifer often shows up equipped with ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot from the start.

Mid-lifers are often different. While younger flight students generally wait to buy an EFB, a mid-lifer often shows up equipped with ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot from the start. And the paper nav log? They’re having none of it.

“How 20th Century,” they’ll say. “Doesn’t the FAA understand my time is valuable?”

“Pilotage and dead reckoning—what? Why am I being treated like a child?”

The typical mid-lifers are accomplished overachievers. The way they see it, they could easily learn the Rubik’s cube of a paper nav log if they were made to do it. But why require them to spend hours mastering a process that in the real world of EFBs, they’ll never have to use again? For a mid-life pilot, this seems like a criminal waste of time.

When I hear their complaints about paper nav logs, I hear something else.

I first hear a misplaced reliance on technology. It’s true that the Private Pilot ACS now allows EFBs to be used on checkrides, but show up to a checkride with your nav log on an EFB, and you’ll get the same questions you’ll get with paper. In fact, the questions will be harder to answer. Instead of explaining how you arrived at your numbers, you’ll be asked to explain how ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot arrived at theirs. You’ll have to show your work without having any work to show.

Mastery of the paper nav log requires you to generate the numbers yourself. It’s a must for the checkride. But there’s more. The concepts that allow you to generate those numbers are usually emphasized only once, during the nav log lesson. Even after you fully transition from paper to electronic nav planning, those concepts are still important to safe flight. They can also be entertaining to learn about.

Both important and entertaining? The mid-lifers are still shaking their heads, but now other skeptics have also entered the room. Can I make a convincing case?

Let’s start with the compass. I’ll agree that you skeptics will probably never have to navigate solely by compass. But all the same, it’s interesting to know that it’s how passenger planes once flew from point to point—even though the compass, strictly speaking, is flawed in many ways. And maybe you’ll get by without ever having to manage those flaws yourself, but you’re going to need to know about at least one of them: why the compass doesn’t point to places on a map but must first be corrected for magnetic variation.

Now there’s a concept—magnetic variation—that packs a punch. Even you skeptics will need to understand magnetic variation. Otherwise, how can you be certain that you’re flying at the correct VFR altitude mandated by FAR 91.159?

Okay, so maybe you fly in a part of the country where true north and magnetic north are practically the same. You might end up flying at the correct altitude without knowing what the “magnetic course” of FAR 91.159 really means. Or maybe your EFB, which skips the true course and plots everything as magnetic, will bail you out. But how will you do when you’re flying in an area with a much larger magnetic variation?

And what about winds? When are winds reported as true, and when are they reported as magnetic? If you don’t know which is which, and don’t how to apply magnetic variation, how can you figure out the crosswind you’re confronting on your landing?

Winds on the surface, and winds at altitude: both concepts are covered in the nav-log lesson. Isn’t it interesting to know that based partly on measurements from weather balloons, you can predict the way the winds aloft are going to cause your plane to drift as you fly from point to point, and that you can correct for that as you fly? Sure, ForeFlight will tell you where to point your plane, but do you know what’s gone into making that prediction, and the ways it might or might not be accurate? These are concepts covered in the nav log lesson, and are more likely to stick with you if you do the calculations yourself, rather than relying on an EFB.

To properly use your performance charts, you need to be able to figure out the pressure altitude, and understand what that means.

What about the performance charts from your POH? You needed some familiarity with performance charts for the written test, but it’s during the nav log lesson that you must read and understand the performance charts of the airplane you’re actually flying. Even as a skeptic, you’ll agree about the value of the POH. By the way, have you remembered to update your EFB with the performance details of the plane you’re actually flying?

To properly use your performance charts, you need to be able to figure out the pressure altitude, and understand what that means—again, the one and only time during your training that this is strictly required.

From pressure altitude, you can move to density altitude by correcting for non-standard temperature. Density altitude is something that’s covered on the checkride for good reason, because it’s a critical bit of knowledge for safe flight—and one that in many non-mountainous parts of the country, comes up only in the nav log lesson.

Other concepts that are important to the nav log lesson (and one of the reasons it can be so time-consuming):

• FAR 91.103, and all that goes into proper flight planning, including knowledge of the weather;
• VFR charts and symbology, airspace and special-use airspace;
• Weight and balance, which is necessary to properly use the performance charts;
• The differences between, and practical applications of, indicated airspeed, calibrated airspeed, true airspeed, and groundspeed;
• Fuel planning, and the variables that affect the final numbers.

None of these concepts are strictly necessary for flying patterns with an instructor, or for maneuvering in the practice area, but all are important both for cross-country solos and for flying as a licensed pilot who takes the “V” in the PAVE acronym seriously. While the use of an EFB makes it easy to offload many of these concepts to a computer chip, you don’t want to be the pilot whose deficiencies in these areas end up affecting the safety of your flight.

From the FAA’s point of view, in fact, once you’re a certificated private pilot, young or old, you are fully legal to take a plane and fly it from coast to coast. That’s one of the reasons why the amount of knowledge you are required to know on your checkride is so vast—because the FAA assumes you’re going to do just that. (It’s also the reason why on your checkride, you’re required to know the difference between currency and proficiency.)

So then, to all my fellow mid-lifers: submit to pencil and embrace the paper nav log. Once it’s finished, you can shake off the eraser dust and use it to fly your solo cross-country. If you’re impressed by how well it works, you’ll have yourself to thank. It will be like walking across a bridge you built yourself. A big undertaking, for certain, but one that will help lock in key concepts you’ll be using throughout your life as a pilot.

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Evan Schaeffer

Evan is a lawyer, writer, and ground instructor passionate about aviation education. He enjoys teaching aspiring pilots of all ages and believes enthusiasm is the most underrated teaching tool. Drawing from his own experiences earning private, instrument, commercial, and AGI/IGI certificates, Evan deeply relates to his students’ journeys. Evan also flies gliders and is a proud member of the Eagleville Soaring Club in Middle Tennessee

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• In Defense of the Paper Nav Log - March 10, 2025