DFC
Like most of your more technical postings, you are describing an ideal world which in practice doesn't happen. Pilox X buys a chart from his local pilot shop and flies with it. He buys the next edition the following year, etc.
Translate that situation to going outside the UK, where you deal with potentially a multiplicity of charts, some (e.g. Greece) not updated for 5-10 years. Electronic databases like Jepp are the only way to get up to date chart data for a lot of places in Europe.
boomerangben
I don't disagree, but in your case IF the person you are rescuing had a GPS and was able to transmit the lat/long to you using some means which doesn't involve speech, your job would be a lot easier. Know about EPIRBs with a built-in GPS? If you can't use the signal then a lot of your capability is pretty sub-optimal.
To clarify: a lot of this pro- or anti-GPS debate is really the modernist v. traditionalist debate. "GPS" just drags the respective protagonists out of the woodwork.
I have no problem with somebody who wants to fly traditionally; it's their business entirely. If you want to fly like Charles Lindberg, right down to wearing exact Lindbert replica underpants, I admire you for the effort and wish you success. I have just spent some time in Arizona, where the most modern turboprops/jets with all the gizmos coexist happily with wood and fabric aeroplanes from WW1, all on the same airfield, and often flown by the same people.
But if the objective is to make a dent in the few-hundred CAS busts that were reported last year, it's no use pretending that "better training" is the answer. Well it might be but it won't come about.
It's equally no use pretending that pilot X is suddenly going to navigate reliably by dead reckoning, when (like most people) he has been having problems with it beforehand.