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Flying long-range IFR: you're at the MAP with no pavement in sight and only 20 gallons of gas between you and an NTSB report--just like you planned.

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A friend of mine says the secret to staying alive as a pilot is to .have a good imagination: "If you can imagine how scary it would be to be upside down in a thunderstorm, you probably won't put yourself in that situation." He's got a point there. Virtually every serious instrument pilot I know obsesses on the low-fuel-nowhere-to-go scenario. We have little trouble imagining it: unforecasted low weather; fuel gauges deep in the yellow; our alternate unexpectedly at minimums; ATC asking, "Say intentions?"

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My flight instructors routinely planned training flights to an airport 51 miles away (so it could be logged as cross-country time), so they weren't long-haul pilots. Now one of my Bonanza's missions is a once-monthly flight from Maryland to Georgia, which is at the margins of my legal IFR range.

Early on I found myself making fuel stops and scrubbing missions due to the compound effects of weather, fuel and fear of pulling that red lever toward lean. Aviation's school of hard knocks has since taught me a repertoire of strategies to dramatically increase my one-leg success. To be clear (and to save my editor from a flood of love notes), I count myself as a card-carrying member of the League of Fuel Conservatives. This article is about fuel smarts, not stupidity.

Flexible Flight Planning

My approach to long-range flight planning doesn't resemble anything they taught us in flight school. While it's a nice thought to sit down with a wizzy wheel and work out a precise waypoint-by-waypoint plan, there's too much theory and not enough reality in that approach.

For example, I often encounter mountain-wave activity for the middle two hours of my Atlanta run, which adds to my fuel burn due to the wide oscillations in true airspeed. Try as I might, I can't find the mountain-wave ring on the E6B. My more-pragmatic approach is to: 1) Take in the big picture on my laptop; 2) Create a pretty good plan; and 3) Adjust and optimize the plan as the flight progresses.

By way of reminder, FAR 91.167 says that if your destination is forecasted to be less than 2000 and 3, you have to have enough fuel to fly to your primary, divert to your alternate, and then fly 45 minutes beyond the alternate. I don't know about you, but I want way more gas in my tanks than that. If I'm headed to Peachtree in Atlanta, Ga., and my alternate is Gwinett County, the FAR says that I can theoretically arrive at Peachtree with eight gallons a...

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