I am saying that learning the IFR 'trade' in a badly equipped aircraft in busy airspace is not the brightest of moves. Dead reckoning or using unapproved equipment is not very sensible.
IFR is a highly skilled game requiring proper planning and use of all of the tools possible to ensure it is carried out safely.
Bose; I hear what you're saying, but the instructors at my club were quite happy for me to fly the flight given the equipment I had. Are you saying they were not sensible too?
The average club hack with a single VOR that is not FM immune etc is not an appropriate platform. Not to mention the fact that VOR reliability low down patchy at best. So relying on it in IMC is daft, just imagine bowling along through Luton or Stanstead and the VOR loses lock. What happens? You have to declare an emergency, get a controller to divert resources to sort you out.
If that had happened to me, during the 'busy airspace' phase, I could have descended to safely below cloud & continued visually. I checked the forecast cloudbase before I left; If I really cocked up my IFR nav I wanted to make sure I didn't blunder into somewhere I shouldn't. Having said that, I experienced no problems with it the VORS (both of them) & I wasn't relying on them soley.
Are you saying that if two different VORs or recievers packed up in flight I should declare a pan call?