GPS vs Map?????

[Daultonio]

So who uses a GPS to help with there flying????

I have read some articles saying that a GPS is good however if u relie on it to much, most people then end up in controlled airspace, and the best thing to do is use the map but have GPS on standby...........is this right?? what does everyone else do??? if u have one

[EKKL]

Wanna borrow this mate..
http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/2901148/2/istockphoto_2901148_wind_up_key.jpg

[hoodie]

Or this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/win/language/images/spell_checker.jpg

:}

[xraf]

Probly kant even spell trol! :rolleyes:

[IO540]

I have read some articles saying that a GPS is good however if u relie on it to much, most people then end up in controlled airspace, and the best thing to do is use the map but have GPS on standby...........is this right?? what does everyone else do??? if u have one

Hard to know whether this is just a normal product of the UK training scene (which I can well believe) or a wind-up.

Most serious pilots that go places use a GPS, and no, they don't get lost with it.

[Droopystop]

Like everything in life (be it a map or a gps), it is only as good as the person using it.

[Daultonio]

ummm did i do something bad? lol

[IO540]

No, you just picked a subject which is on occassions responsible for about 90% of the pprune.org server bandwidth :)

Asking if GPS is good or bad is like walking into a Catholic church and asking whether Virgin Mary got pregnant by having casual sex.

[172driver]

Asking if GPS is good or bad is like walking into a Catholic church and asking whether Virgin Mary got pregnant by having casual sex.

:):D:):D:E:E

[Tim Dawson]

Daultonio, how old are you?

[Daultonio]

too young and by the sounds of it 24 and made a mistake asking the question whoops but i did like the catholic church quote very funny

[XL319]

GPS just makes you lazy.....I try never to use it instead relying on VOR/NDB and good old VRP's

[Final 3 Greens]

XL319

Do you use still use town gas?

[Shunter]

I have to say I don't entirely disagree with the lazy comment.

My old car used to have built in GPS, and I found that it DID cause me to be lazy. I'd just follow the satnav, not bothering to look where I was going. As a result I would struggle to find place I had visited many times if I had a car with no GPS in it.

I have a plane. It has 2xVOR, 1xDME, 1xADF and 1xGPS. It also has me, and a load of maps. To say GPS is not the single most accurate nav aid in the aircraft would be silly, but personally I don't put my eggs in 1 basket, and I use everything available to me. If the GPS were to die, I know I'm well practiced using the "old" stuff, and vice versa. I view it as a compliment, not a replacement.

I find a VOR very useful for enroute information as regards to drift, but when in the locality of a difficult-to-spot grass strip with no published VRP's, GPS rules every time. Whatever floats your boat really.

[UV]

Yes Shunter, I am writing a 15 page letter to the Ministry of Transport today telling them that the modern, up to date CAA, are advising people only to use GPS as a secondary means of navigation after a paper map.
So I want the Ministry to advise all car drivers to use a road atlas and then to cross check it with their Tom Toms, or whatever these new fangled things are called.
I want them to allow this check only on motorways as its too dangerous to do it on A or B roads.

I am wriiting another 10 page letter, next week, about hand held telephones. I want them to follow the example of this up to date CAA which allows pilots to fly and even land aeroplanes using handheld radios and hand held microphnes. So why cant we drive using phones? Why not??
Aernt planes much more difficult to fly than driving cars....?

This new CAA must be bang up to date and must know what its talking about.
UV

[Fuji Abound]

if u relie on it to much

Apologies, but couldn't help say it is a bit like Word's inbuilt dictionary, clearly some can no longer spell without it.

:)

[IO540]

I think that aviation differs to most other spheres of human activity in that you just can't afford to c0ck it up.

With a car, you can do more or less anything and provided you don't hit anything, nothing of significance is likely to happen. You can stop and ask instructions, etc.

Even with a helicopter you can land and have a pee, ask instructions, etc. If you get cornered by solid IMC all the way to ground, you can land and sit there as long as needed.

But when flying fixed wing, getting really lost is a really major major problem :ugh:

The best that can happen is that you somehow manage to find an airfield, land, and sort yourself out. This will still be a significant hassle, because you will have made a total pr*ck of yourself, and you may not have enough fuel to get back. In some scenarios, in short-range spamcans (Cessna 150 etc) you may not have enough fuel to fly to some place that has fuel... Outside the UK, the fuel situation gets worse and getting lost is likely to be a major problem.

Then, things get worse. If you run out of fuel, and pull off a perfect forced landing (chances are you won't pull off a perfect forced landing because if you were a big enough plonker to get totally lost and wondered around until you ran out, your decision making isn't that great all round) it is pretty likely that the plane will have to go back on a trailer, minus the wings. That is a ~ £3000 bill, minimum. If you were renting then you will escape the immediate bill but you won't escape the extra attention you will get before your next flight.

And things get worse than that. The most likely thing, in the south of England especially, is that you will bust some controlled airspace. There are a few hundred major (causing commercial traffic to be diverted, etc) busts every year and most people just get a talking to by the CAA. And rest assured that if you get into trouble, the CAA won't give you any points for having navigated "properly" like your grandfather.

So far, there hasn't been a GAT-CAT mid-air (in the UK) but it would take only one for some big changes to take place. This is all the more likely to happen with under-equipped planes because they are much less likely to have a transponder so ATC may not see you and the airliner will not get the TCAS protection.

The worst thing is that if the pilot is lost and then enters IMC to top things off. Then, not knowing where you are (relative to terrain) is just great. This happens regularly, too.

This is why I can't understand why pilots don't embrace the best available technology.

This isn't some kind of macho "fly with a stopwatch and you will grow extra hairs on your chest" quest. It was OK in 1910, 1930, even 1950. But the stakes are too high now to keep f***king up with WW1 navigation.

Now, I am sure that most pilots are intelligent people and they know all this. Many somehow convince themselves that they know what they are doing and they will never make a mistake. The smarter ones do know they can make a mistake and they spend most of their airborne time petrified about getting done by the CAA, instead of knowing exactly where they are, for no effort at all, and enjoying the flight :ugh:

[XL319]

Hmm, i do agree with GPS being a compliment to your nav aids, however I think if people rely on them too much (which i'm sure some do) then i feel you would become rusty with other navigation techniques.

[M609]

I always use map as primary means of navigation, but on longer flights (outside let's say 30nm from base) i try to remember to bring the 296 the club has for a yoke mount as well. I don't input a flightplan in it, but it's switched on and I know how to use it.
We also have ADF/VOR/DME in our Cessna, and I use it when convenient.

For me to use GPS as anything more then a backup and confirmation of the map reading, more then one GPS must be available.
I work as a controller, and have given navigation assistance using radar to aircraft that ran out of power on their GPS a few times the last few years....... (stupid to have that happen to you, but it is obviously possible)

...incidentally two of those times I also discovered that they where flying without a VFR map as well! (They where unable to navigate around danger areas regulated airspace etc even when they fixed their position)
They flew using a WAC from the early 90s, and relied on moving map GPS with database.

One was HB-reg, the other G-reg. ;)

One thing that also happens, it that flights planning via navaids or Lat/long points far apart get lost when weather worsens and forces VFR flights to follow the terrain when clouds "cap" all the valleys.


However the summer is over, and the stream of North Cape flyers has dried up for this season! :)