Why not make all instructors dispense with their maps to show how brilliant they are and while we are at it, start to wear our pants on the outside
Erm... because we don't expect our students to be able to navigation without a map, nor to wear their pants on the outside? All I am suggesting is that instructors have confidence in the techniques they teach, and convey this confidence to their students.
Mumbo, I've very sorry to hear about your colleague. His plight is obviously the reason you don't trust visual techniques, and this mistrust is apparent in the way your describe your navigation lessons.
Without knowing the detail's of your colleague's death, I wouldn't want to speculate on why the visual techniques didn't work for him; I'm sure the AAIB have already investigated and done their best to find the reasons for the mistake. Surely the best action now would be to read the report, and try to alter the way in which you teach visual navigation to your students so that the techniques you teach (and use yourself) can be used to avoid a repeat?
I also note that your colleague's entry into the live firing range occured at night. We all know that visual navigation is extremely difficult at night, and unless I was extremely familiar with the area, I would not attempt to navigate visually, at night, in an area where precision is vital - but, more importantly, I would suggest to my students that they shouldn't do so either. In this instance, every navigational tool must be used to back up the visual navigation.
Presumably, though, when teaching night navigation, the student already knows how to navigate. The aim of the exercise is different to daytime navigation, because we do not need to teach the basics of navigation at night. The reason that an hour of night navigation is mandatory as part of the night qualification is so that the student a) learns the differences between how ground features appear during the night compared to the day, and learns which are good features to use for navigation and which aren't, and b) appreciates how difficult night navigation is, and why it is so important to use navaids to back up visual navigation. Since the student has already learnt the techniques of ded reckoning and map reading during the day, and has come to trust those techniques, I can't see any problem with using the GPS, or any other aid, at night, so long as you explain to the student what your are doing, and expect the student to do the same, or be able to do the same, in a similar situation.
Hunybun do you mean to tell me that you have never tune in the NDB or DME to a station while the student flies pure VFR to have available an accurate loc stat if requested
I know I'm not Hunybun, but no, I have never used a navigation aid when a student is using ded reckoning. The only time I have navigation aids tuned and use them during navigation exercises is when I am showing a student how he can use the navigation aids.
FFF
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