DFC, I normally ignore your posts but in this case I will make an exception.
With IO540's position, one has to remember some very important things-
They fly with GPS under BRNAV in controlled airspace with ATC service.
If the GPS fails they are entitled to radar vectors or there is guaranteed to be appropriate along track navigation aids which can be tracked.
If the Navbox has put out some weird heading or for whatever reason the GPS does not take them the right way, ATC will notice and will offer assistance
As you no longer fly aeroplanes, you don't know what "the Navbox" is, clearly. It's not a "box", it's a flight planning program. And it doesn't (usefully) support airways so is not useful for airways flights. One normally does airways flight planning with Flitestar or, possibly, with Jeppview 3.
And Navbox doesn't put out any "weird headings". It has a database of waypoints, navaids, airports, etc and you draw your route and it generates a wind corrected plog. It is used for VFR, and is used in conjunction with a printed chart for controlled airspace and terrain reference reasons. It covers Europe, as far as Crete, where I have incidentally been VFR. Unlike most VFR charts, it contains airways intersections which makes it much quicker to plan VFR flights because one is rarely short of a database waypoint where needed. I still use it for UK VFR and haven't had to make up a user waypoint for ages.
Navbox is updated monthly from any changes in the national AIPs and, on the scale of flying costs, costs almost nothing.
I am merely advocating the use of a modern method to generate a plog - something which is error free and would enable the slide rule to be discarded and the time saved spent on better things.
I taught my 11 year old to use Navbox in about 5 minutes.
If the "lowest common denominator" is to be a pilot not capable of interacting with any technology, then we better urgently find ways to keep all the decrepit old flying school junk flying for ever, because 10 years from now much of it will be scrapped and will be replaced with stuff with a modern instrument panel which the "lowest common denominator" will have to interact with whether he likes it or not.
There is only one way anything in GA will truly change, and that will be when the old geezers in regulation start drawing their pensions. Maybe that won't be so good though because they will be joining their old mates on pprune
