Cactus99
I have some ex-students who now have a licence who are, quite frankly a liability in the sky
I don't want this to sound like a cheap comment but (it appears you are a PPL instructor) have you never thought about teaching them differently?
I think the "PPL confuser" stuff is way overdone. Yes, students do use it, but the CAA/JAA exam syllabus is asking for this kind of thing, by being loaded with absolute crap. The same thing happens at every aviation exam level. Even at JAA ATPL level there are various sources of questions, and these are used by JAA ATPL students probably more widely than the PPL Confuser is used by PPL students - unsuprising given the vast amount of crap one was to swat up for that license. The FAA question bank is publicly available and has been for some years.
Every PPL knows about controlled airspace. It's no rocket science. You don't need exams for that. It's one of the most basic things in flying. It's not like the daft VFR rule details, about 500/1000ft spacing from cloud, 140kt max speed below some level, etc, which nobody I know can remember and which are practically irrelevant.
Droopy
I wasn't meaning that a non moving map GPS is used in isolation, rather to supplement the paper chart. But I agree, using such a system does open up the opportunity for mistakes
This is my biggest gripe in these GPS debates - the fact that so many people automatically assume the pilot is going to get airborne with his face stuck to the moving map GPS and without a chart of some sort being carried. IMV, only a d1ckhead is going to do that - simply because a GPS, like any other device, could pack up. Does the ontrack survey find a significant proportion of pilots actually having done this,
and who didn't plan the route beforehand with a chart,
and whose GPS packed up? I bet you that nearly all infringements are done by pilots who have everything functioning perfectly.
My opposition to non moving map GPS devices is that even if used in conjunction with a chart, they are still highly confusing. Lat/long values are completely useless (unless sitting in a life raft, etc), the mag track is pointless (you have the compass for that), and position relative to some user-defined waypoint is an accident looking for a place to happen (except perhaps for locating an airfield).
Camping shop GPSs are good for .... camping or hiking
If you get lost, you plot the position on the O/S map and carry on. Can't do that in a plane. The pilots who buy this cheap crap do so because they can't afford the proper stuff, which is a few hundred quid more.