Originally Posted by FormationFlyer
Where i have the problem is handheld GPS - which I doubt will EVER be a primary means of navigation - in the same way that at night you cannot fly without lighting systems powered by the main busses in the aircraft - i.e. the CAA will not allow you to fly using battery powered torches or headlamps. If the GPS is panel fit then Im all for it.
Well, reading your soul-bareing c.v., it seems we may not be so far apart after all. When, that is, you've brushed up on your air law.
I certainly agree that portable GPS equipment (as opposed to panel-mounted units) present important additional issues. Issues that would benefit from suitable guidance (often unavailable in the present 'GPS is the work-of-the-devil' environment). Issues that can be adequately dealt with by appropriate pre-flight planning, the provision of spare batteries and by the proper use of map reading as a secondary means of navigation.
You confuse these issues, however, with your analogy. Night flying requires, per the ANO, lighting that is supplied from the main electrical source of supply in the aircraft. It does NOT require the equipment to be 'installed' as opposed to portable or 'hand held'.
Many users of portable GPS (including me, in the Chipmunk) use the aeroplane's main electrical source of supply to power the equipment via an electrical-supply socket (or cigar lighter). With an adequate GPS aerial, I can think of no reason why such an arrangement should not be used as the primary means of VFR navigation. Indeed, I successfully used just such a system recently to 'assist' my navigation around 4,000nm of Africa in a Cessna 182, where the lack of distinct ground features (and an almost total absence of traditional radio navigation aids) makes map reading/conventional radio-nav rather more of a challenge than it is in the UK (although, for the purists, unquestionably not impossible!).
Of course, if you or anybody else can actually point to the legislation that prohibits the use of GPS for primary navigation, I would protest (along with a very, very large number of other GA pilots!) that I only ever use it as back up ... except, that is, when I'm actually required by legislation to use it in the altogether much less demanding application (sic) above FL095 in controlled airspace designated for the purposes of RNP-5.
