Originally Posted by IO540
Next, nobody is taught how it actually works. I used a straight slide rule at school since in the late 1960s (this was in Eastern Europe, not the UK) and understood how it works: adding/subtracting logs and doing the antilog gives you multiplication and division. But present day PPL students never get to understand this very simple principle. They never realise that the calculator side is just a general purpose multiplication/division function, which just happens to have marks in common places like litre/gallon conversion factors. They think it is some special purpose aviation device, which magically converts one thing to another. So when they get a duff answer because they line up the marks wrong (which is really easily done) they never realise it. I also think most of them never suss out that the wind side works out the trig for the wind triangle, and when and why iteration is required to get the right answer.
Not strictly true.
The whizz will i got came with a little manual. It explained how it works and went into all the above you mentioned. It even had a little test at the end.
I would imagine hardly anyone reads that little book and waits for NAV lessons, and as you say comes to the conclusion that it is an aeronautical masterpiece.
Originally Posted by IO540
Most intelligent people that walk into a flying school take one look at this quaint old nonsense, smile politely and walk straight out of the door.
So those that do not are thick????
Picture it, pilot has no ideas how to use a GPS and battles with the whizz wheel. Suddenly he looses instrumentation including the GPS is spamcan is equiped with. Pilot plots diversion whizz's it up and makes a safe landing.
Pilot has no ideas how to use a whizz wheel as he intelligently decided to walk away from the quaint old nonsene, but he did smile nicely. His spamcan looses all instrumentation including the GPS which he has a Phd in the operation of. He proceeds to fly of course get lost and crash due to no more fuel and the inability to read a map and use a whiz wheel.
Out of the two scenarios who is the less intelligent?