Blimey ... I'm only 40 but feel old when I hear about all this about outdated navigation, aeroplanes, engines, ect ect ... yadda yadda yawn yawn! Just as much as IO540 gets frustrated with all the knocking of new thinking, I get frustrated with all the knocking of traditional stuff! (Bloody hell, flying was only 60 years old when I was born "how long has man been around"?)
The whizz wheel for all it's draw backs is essentially a very accurate and clever bit of kit. Run down the batteries, throw in some nasty atmospherics or even a dodgy time in the middle east, and all of a sudden that GPS isn't as good as you thought (but the whizz wheel still works!).
Perhaps I'm IO540's nemisis, but I'm sure if we met, we'd probably get on well. Why? we both love flying ... but maybe from entirely different ends of the spectrum. I'm sorry IO540 but you sometimes make me boil with all your "Let's drag flying into the 20st century" stuff (you may not have noticed but the 20th century has passed BTW). Lot's of what you say in subsequent posts makes a lot of sense ... but that first post was simply a virtual copy of numerous knocks of "traditional" flying you have made in other forums over the last year or so! Sorry, I digress ...
Yep, I'm kind of a traditionalist. I like to fly open cockpit, slow draggy (but fun) airframes around the sky. I've been flying years, but have relatively few hours cos I'm not made of money, and funnily enough having said all that I have, I rarely use the whizz wheel. Most of my nav is ... draw a line on the map, mark in a big arrow showing wind direction and speed and then play it by ear. Yikes! .... but (so far) I've never been lost and find I'm rarely far out.
My point is (in the most protacted and round about way) that there are no hard and fast rules. I still think you should learn about the whizz wheel, as it teaches the fundamentals and it's then there if you want to carry on using it. If you later want to embrace or enhance your nav with modern aids then great, but why sacrifice the basics to do this? Don't be suckered into thinking that more and more money thrown at a problem will fix it ... there are many out there who want to fly, navigate and challenge their brains, rather than just burn money on flash, fast kit and a big pointy thing that takes away all the brain effort.
SS
PS ... Shhhhh! Just set myself up with a PDA and GPS as I had to have the former for work. Show's I'm not a complete luddite ... but perhaps just a slight hippocrate
