WWW:. .. ."Standards today are actually higher than in decades gone by????". .. .This thread is discussing how to "FLY " aircraft not how to follow SOP's that have been dumbed down to the lowest common demominator.. .. .So how come in the sixties and seventies we had to be very profficient in landing and taking off from sand beaches, arctic eskers, ice runways and unprepared snow surfaces flying DC3's DC6's, Twin Otters and the like in every type of nasty weather the Arctic can produce?? Sometimes the x/winds were off the page never mind the chart?. .. .Your statement got me to thinking that maybe,just maybe you have misspoke on this one?. .. .As an example I was wondering how in hell I would try and persuade an Airbus computer generated flight system to do some of the manouvers we regularly got the " old " birds to do? . .. .P.S. WWW. .. .For navigation we used the astro compass, dead reckoning and if we were really lucky an ADF approach at the destination. ( Usually with a 25 mile receive range as the beacons were very poor. ). .. .................... . <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="biggrin.gif" /> The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="biggrin.gif" />