On a related note. . .
My thoughts on an earlier article in the series that's been puzzling me for some time.
The earlier article was called 'Actions when lost', much time was spent on ways to fix your position:
1 - trying to relate the ground features around you to your chart
2 - identify an obvious feature in the area and try to positively identify on the chart, maybe from patterns of roads, railways, rivers or canals etc
3 - get a QDM from an aerodrome nearby
4 - Call on 121.5 for a position fix if (3) can't be achieved.
So, my big question is:
"Whatever happened to using the radio navigation aids like you were taught during your PPL training???"
There's absolutley no mention of using VOR/DME and / or NDB to fix your position - but hey, why should you need to when you can just make a call on 121.5??
When I fly I always set VOR / NDBs along my planned route and constantly use them to cross reference my position against my visual / dead reckoning navigation (although I pay extra close attention to radio aids when I'm near controlled airspace!). To me, including nav frequecies as part of my route plan is plain common sense as it gives me an extra check of the accuracy of my navigation at all times!
Now, the guys who produced the article are experts, and I'm just a PPL student. (Prepares for flaming!) So, what's wrong with my approach to being sure of where I am?
Cheers,
David.