Originally Posted by
Piloto Maluco
Even another FI (who is a real airline pilot too...) asked me to do a fix to fix with the CRP5 and I had to check at each radial if the distance from the VOR was OK with the bearing I was doing (WTH)
The fix-to-fix thing might just be in the Training Manual, so every FI at your school would have to do it at some point. But as it's not something that's going to happen often in real life, they all tend to use nice, round numbers which work out to easy solutions. As long as you visualise things properly.
Ticking off each radial sounds like overkill to me, but in general the progression of the DME throughout the track is useful to know. In the example of wiggy, if you're tracking direct to the fix you know that the DME should diminish to about 35 at the 090 radial (halfway through the track), and then increase again.
OTOH, I do notice that instructors tend to ask you more questions like this if you're on the wrong track, hoping that you somehow see your error yourself and correct it. If you're obviously doing well and know it, they tend to start yapping about other stuff. So your instructor may just have been helping you correct the mistakes you made earlier.