thread drift? you Peter? Never........
I seem to recall that you can get the KNS80 BRNAV approved and FM Immune.
When I did my IR it was virtually all done with the KNS80. The problem came when we did Annecy as a training flight and got a waypoint that was miles in front and not as filed and we did not know where it was. The trusty 296 sat on the dash saved the day, we used that for a direct to and to locate it and then about 20 minutes later when in range for the KNS80 went back to that.
Originally Posted by
IO540
This is getting rather distant from the original Q
but I find that entering the entire flight planned route is very useful.
The IFR sector controllers do have your filed route in their system and they will generally give you DCTs to waypoints that lie
on that route.
With any GPS, it's a lot quicker to get the cursor up and select a waypoint already there and press DCT, than to enter one from scratch. It's also a lot easier to identify an unfamiliar intersection/navaid name from a list than to ask ATC to spell everything.
Personally I find that - apart from general weather avoidance tactics - locating unfamiliar intersections that ATC throw at you is the major workload in IFR flying.
I would not say that "RNAV" automatically means GPS. Bendix-King make both the KNS80 and various IFR GPS receivers. It indeed should mean GPS these days, but there is a lot of old planes around with a KNS80, which is practically useless.