The best advice i had from my instructor was this "FLY THE NUMBERS". Do your plog and then set off overhead the field(as departing straight out can put you a few miles off before you even start) and fly the numbers. Concentrate on heading and altitude, dont forget your freda's every 15 mins or so and try to look out the window at angles of less than 30 degress below the horizon. Looking down at what your almost ontop of is not really going to help you. I agree with IO540, GPS is the way to go and it should be covered in some detail in the syllabus, in however many years GPS has been up and running i cannot think of one instance where it has been intentionally turned off. That was always the reason trotted out for the reluctance to embrace the technology. Whilst on the subject of GPS, a note of caution for you all before putting your complete trust in GPS. My freind was on a holliday in the Carribean on a chartered yacht and bought a GPS to navigate. His words were "It guided me litteraly into the harbours even in thick fog". So when we were on a long leg, Cark back to Stapleford, he had his hand held on and i was tracking LAM. My DME and VOR were telling me i was where i expected to be, but his GPS was saying we were about 15 miles off to the east which worried me due to Stansteads zone. I cross checked all the intruments ADF VOR 1 and 2 and i was sure that the kit in the plane, which had been there for many years was right and his GPS was wrong. He re-checked the co-ordinates from the pooleys for Stapleford and i looked at his entry on the screen and it was correct. However the vis was good enough for me to confirm my instruments were correct and his GPS wasnt. I must admit that if i were in IMC i would possibly have been inclined to believe the GPS
. As a sort of Thursday morning test, can any of you guess what was the problem with his GPS, as we did indeed arrive at Staplford on track and time??