Originally Posted by PENKO
A lot has been said..
Yet I still cannot understand the safety aspect of this whole homing business. Chaps, the Great War is over! We are not flying Lancasters anymore eventhough I am sure they had better navigational solutions!
Teach your students some basic VOR navigation, let them buy a handheld GPS, even an ordinary PDA with a TomTom moving map will do. Even more, it will prevent you getting lost in the first place.
This homing is a thing of the past.
Hhhhmmm. As a previously licensed D&D controller I can assure you that aircraft (almost invariably GA) still get lost with monotonous regularity in the UK. Your technological solution is ideal but not utilised in the UK. Use of a transponder squawking 7700 or 0023 would assist as well but a lot of aircraft aren't suitably equipped nor the pilots trained to operate them.
The 'safety' aspect has two parts to it really:
1) If you're lost and IMC then its quite possible that you'll suffer a CFIT.
2) If you're lost and blundering around inside controlled airspace then identification, with position fixing will get the previously lost aircraft out of the way before some metal gets welded. Controllers are legally entitled to assume that non squawking aircraft are not within controlled airspace and they will direct their own aircraft right through a non squawking radar target.
BD