Montgomery Field - Santa Monica / Beechcraft Baron 58 (N705TL) / IFR

It was time for a little IFR practice, so I fired up one of my Barons at Montgomery Field, and flew to Santa Monica with some virtual passengers. I flew the TEC route SANN9 at 6000.

The main problem with this flight was a change in the location of POPPR, one of the waypoints on the TEC route. It used to be northwest of SLI, now it is southeast. Unfortunately, my aging GPS database still has it northwest, which I only discovered while reviewing the route after take-off, so I had to define a user waypoint with the new location.

This illustrates a problem with simulation for the moment: it's not always possible to have updated navigation databases on the sim, which makes using updated, current procedures potentially difficult. Most waypoints and stations don't move, but some do, and procedures get updated, deleted, or added in other ways. There's no way to update the basic sim database, and the GPS units I use (Garmin units implemented by Reality XP) have proprietary databases that Garmin doesn't update. So with time, inevitably things drift.

I managed to complete the flight, though. After I redefined POPPR in the GPS unit, I was cleared direct ELMOO and then for the VOR approach to runway 21 at Santa Monica. All went well and I landed at KSMO without incident.