As many of you know, I recently spent some time flying out of Long Beach, California. When I finally dared venture out alone into the wilds of LA, I flew up to Santa Barbara to visit a friend, taking a nearly qualified PPL to keep me company. Everyone had told us to follow the freeways to leave LA, as they do out there. Well, as Brits, one freeway looks much like another, and in the LA smog we momentarily became...er...unsure of our position. "Hold on", said Nick, "I'll find it on the GPS. Well, as he fiddled I thought - that looks like a coastline emerging from the murk, the compass says we're heading West, we should be going North, we could be in controlled airspace in seconds, and less than five minutes ago I knew where I was, so let's go back to there and look for a freeway that goes roughly North. I did, and it worked, while Nick still fiddled with his GPS.
The point is, basic navigation principles will work anywhere, even when you're in the middle of a 60 mile square sea of concrete in poor vis. But ONLY if you're up to speed with them, enough that it's second nature to note the time, note the compass heading, and so on. And GPS isn't much help in LA, or didn't seem to be.
So to my mind it's not GPS v map and compass. It's fine to use both, but too many people who use GPS forget how to use map and compass competently. And most of us reading this forum haven't been flying for as many years as Chuck, who likely as not couldn't forget if he tried.
