Am I missing something here? When you are sat in the aircraft, wings level, ball in the middle, how do you fly a track when there's a cross-wind? Do you wait until you veer off the GPS line a little and then correct, and continuously keep doing this? I can't think of any other way.
Because the GPS will give you your ground track, so you adjust that until it is the track required.
Actually IO has some very valid points. Real life nav and PPL nav are completely different - or can be if you want them to be. My real life nav consists of:
Reviewing paper chart
Entering my route into Memory Map / Flight star
Connecting to the internet to download weather and notams
checking
printing out a plog
programming GPS
Doing it this way takes 30 minutes for a long cross country. The PLOG is accurate in case GPS is lost (it calculates wind, GS, magnetic variation, course to steer etc...). One can either program the GPS manually (simple route) or plug one's laptop in and download the route and off you go. I actually find it quite satisfying when the PLOG agrees within a minute or two.
If I'm flying a G1000 type of thing in the USA it is even easier. I know how far I'm going from the paper map and hence whether I can make it fuel wise (or use rule of thumb and range rings
). I then call 1800WXBrief for a weather and notam brief, jump in the plane and program the G1000.....off we go
IFR is even easier.....ATC tell you where to go
Call 1800WXBrief, jump in the aeroplane, call ATC - they tel you how to get there, program GPS / G1000 and call for IFR release...easy