Replying to the points made by Superpilot
1)Difficult to use in the air. Yes. Answer. Make the triangle of velocities simpler, by only using the information relevant to the particular plane you’re flying in and making it bigger and clearer. See my solution at Navok.co.uk.
2) No pencils are used for any calculation but I consider that pencil and paper are essential items.
Where you were and when you were there is the most important information you can acquire.
What sort of information or calculation do you want to do in the air? Just do a thorough preflight plan and it’ll all be in the notes. Won’t it?
No. It’s that annoying stuff called wind. It doesn’t always do what it’s supposed to do, and quite often, all the times and headings have to be re-adjusted as the flight proceeds. Using my device I can get an up- to-date wind vector in 2-3 seconds and then use MDR(mental dead reckoning) to get the time and heading for the next leg of the course. The times of pinpoints are logged. I know the distance between them and that gives me the ground speed and I note the average WCA and in 2-3 secs I’ve got the latest wind vector.
This updating is not of much value for local bimbles but I have found it invaluable on longer flights of 50-400mls. A change of wind strength and direction gives an early warning of change in weather or acts as a confirmation to the suspicion that a new set of conditions is on the way.
Calculation of heading and groundspeed is amenable to mental calculation via the 1:60 rule, but there is no reasonably accurate method of calculating the wind strength and direction. It can be inferred from headwind and crosswind components, but tangents are not amenable to mental calculation in the way that sines and the 1:60 rule is. A graphic model is easy,quick and accurate.
3)Incredibly difficult to learn for those reared in the computer age—and the decimal system and a generation or two, let down by poor quality teaching. Generations that did not have the essential template of fractions, multiplication tables, and the tricks of mental arithmetic burned into their brains at an early age. That’s the price you pay for making learning fun.
I like the “archaic” observation. The idea presumably is that because it is old it is valueless. It is not. It’s an ingenious bit of kit that provides so much information in a small space, but you need to know a bit about numbers and have some knowledge and appreciation of the use of logarithms, otherwise mistakes can be made. The chances of that are much reduced if you have the ability to anticipate the answer. The design of the machine is such that it assumes that the user is already well-practised in mental arithmetic. Those who are deficient in this respect, are forced to think in a different way and become resentful and return to their comfort zone of digital electronic gadgetry. Which incidentally I find uncomfortable, feeling much more at ease in the analogue world where geometry and numbers are combined. The retention of analogue displays on watches and cockpit instrumentation displays suggests that I am not alone in this.
And it’s not that old. It’s only about seventy years old and nothing else was there to take it’s place until the mid-eighties.
4) Inaccurate.
We are presumably talking about aircraft navigation and not guiding Voyager Two past Neptune by a hairsbreadth(in astronomical terms). Great accuracy is not a requirement and never has been. If anything, a reasonable criticism of the wind side of the instrument is that it is too accurate. 5 degree divisions round the compass would be fine, the individual degrees just add to the clutter.
5) Too big. Yes it’s not readily pocketable. I wouldn’t take one with me on the aircraft. I’d just use it for pre-flight planning. So it’s size doesn’t matter.
Taking your other points:-
1)The wind side helps you see the triangle more clearly. I don’t think so. It’s too cluttered and the scale is too small. Fine for the pre-flight on the ground, but too small for serious use in the air, especially in turbulence. Compare that clutter with the Navok design. The triangle of velocities is in your face, in colour, that guides the eye to the correct places.
2) You make a good point about the reliability of electronics. By and large my experience too. But one or two points. The displays have to be improved and more thought given to the size and number of buttons/switches, waterproofing and the provision of a facility to guard or lock the controls. Greater protection by way of design for use outdoors rather than an office environment would be highly desirable. A recall of the input figures, like a printout calculator, would be another good feature.
3) Flight computers make you lazy. Yes they do. Well they make me lazy. That is why I do all my calculations by mental arithmetic. If you don’t use it you lose it. Not only that but the more you practice the faster you get. So much so that I could get the figures for a flight in the time it takes you to go to your flight bag and get your calculator out.
Re-the thing being outdated and much beloved by oldies that don’t know about the ease of use etc of electronics.
That may be true to a degree but it is only fairly recently that electronics have become so reliable and cheap. Prior to the late eighties such devices were very, very expensive, heavy and bulky and unreliable. The old codgers were right not to place too much reliance on the new-fangled devices and often had to revert to the old techniques in the event of frequent failures and encounters with new, little-understood phenomena. We stand on the backs of those who have gone before. A little respect is in order.
When I was a boy in the fifties, the radio or wireless was a major item of furniture, the size of a fridge, that dominated the living room and took five minutes to warm up. Now, I believe you could get instant reception from one that could be fitted into a wrist watch.
Electronics do a lot but not everything. Take your GPS. Nothing affects a flight more than the wind, yet it doesn’t give you a wind vector as it doesn’t know the orientation of the aircraft’s axis. You have to go to the E6b page and input the heading and it will give you the wind vector. Mine doesn’t remember this , neither can it apply it to the rest of the route. All times given for the rest of the route are based on the current groundspeed. How daft is that?
Every pilot has to know the elements of navigation as a fall back and to check that everything is working as it should. We’re almost there, but not quite at the stage where lives or multi-million pound investments can be entrusted to electronics. Until then you’ll just have to get to grips with the maths and geometry of navigation, with the whiz-wheel being employed as a teaching aid. Get that information into your personal, portable computer--- the brain. If it(your brain) has an opinion it can criticise the output of the instrumentation. If it doesn’t have an opinion it is a slave to the instrumentation.
Whether the whiz wheel is the best aid in teaching the maths and geometry of navigation is perhaps open to question but the triangle of velocities, speed, time and distance have to be thoroughly understood. The current electronics may be easy to use and give (unnecessarily) accurate results, but they do not give understanding. I think that has been the reason why the whiz-wheel has not been dropped.