Beags: If I understand your comment about NTR it's to take reciprocal of fraction gone and multiply it by closing angle to regain track at destination - not exactly "new", although I guess it depends on your vintage
- I'm a '53; a particularly good year (BTW, my formative years were spent in Lincoln, flashing morse code message to the Vulcans from my bedroom window - why didn't you write down the address and visit?). This is the method that's currently in vogue in a number of schools (including mine) and I don't like it. Since so much time was dedicated to studying the planned track it seems such a shame not to get back onto it at the earliest opportunity rather than at the destination. SCA seems a good way of doing it (although my boss (ex- groupie TP) is adamant that it doesn't work at GA speeds) or simply to double the error to regain track at double the distance gone.
Accuracy is laudible if it's to do with nuclear safety or something else where all parameters are accurately know. Pretending to calculate headings and times to the nth degree in aviation is pointless, it's a bit like the GCSE candidate writing down all 24 digits from the claculator having used a series of approximate parametric measurements as inputs. "Garbage in garbage out" comes to mind.
The wind is approximate, the IAS is approximately flown, the height is maintained approximately and the track may require minor tweaks. I suggest that 21.6 vs 21.8 minutes is pretty damn good, especially if the stude then has a picture of what's going on rather than a series of meaningless headings and times without a "picture".
Please don't misunderstand - I teach and (almost) praise the wizz wheel but, post-PPL, the evidence is that many people don't use it and rely on the great god of GPS (a wonderful tool but doesn't help with the big picture). In my day job (that's giving the game away a little) part of my role is to innovate and to think outside the box. Applying that to GA: why shouldn't we work backwards and set the IAS to give an easy TAS? Why do we have to force people to use a device that they don't use after the exams? Why do we have to teach slide rules to people who haven't even heard of log tables and who don't know about geometric series or how electronic calculators work? Why do we have to teach one method for planned Nav and a different method for unplanned Nav (which, BTW, they won't need to use for 4 years post-PPL and by then will have forgotten)?
The way we teach people to fly was set down nearly 90 years ago - maybe we should re-think a couple of areas in light of educational and technological changes.
I hope this makes sense when I read it tomorrow, after the wine has dissipated.
HFD