I don't think he was sneering.
It just that its quite a common point of discussion with examinors and experenced pilots that there is to much heads down and furious button punching for the most simple tasks which the easy solution is just to flick up a NAV beacon and fly the aircraft. Using a 1 in 60 fudge or WAG for an intersection.
Look out suffers as does SA. Some may say SA is improved with moving map etc which I would agree with up to a point as long as the data goes in smoothly. It is quite common though for any interuption due misspelling etc to have the aircraft not being navigated until thats sorted. Where as the old boys/girls will have already turned to a rough heading towards the point in space and by the time the box of tricks have been beaten into submission you will find its only out by < 5 degs.
And to be honest I was going to keep out of this usual hampster wheel about GPS but for Peters incorrect statements about what airliners do and use.
He will never defer away from GPS is King. Any experence that the rest of has that its not quite as golden bollocks as he would have us believe is put down to.
1. We are ****e pilots
2. Our aircraft have some sort of dodgy installation.
3. We are mistaken with what we experence.
4. We arn't using it properly
5. Your just unlucky (well I do over 1800+ flights a year compared to the high end GA usage of what 100?)
6. GPS jamming never occurs, a garmin can defeat the might of the military and can get a decent signal when there mil spek GPS can't get a thing (well I presume they can't get anything as they seem to have the Jammers on whenever there is an exercise)
7. Solar flares and storms don't occur.
8. We know what the USA's intentions are for the next 20 years (maybe N reg owners that use the loophole get a special brief that the rest of us don't) don't )
I use GPS every day but I am glad that there are some cooler heads out there that arn't putting all our eggs in one basket.
Most boxes are DME/DME first and only give you a message when they go to GPS. After giving up on VOR/DME VOR/VOR
There are plenty of RNAV approaches in europe and SIDS and STARS. As you say no GPS ones. And the DME/DME boxes of tricks usually use 6-9 DME's to get the position and when it can't see that many it shiggles the combinations including using VOR/DME to keep the error within limits (not that the pilot would have a clue)
Last edited by mad_jock; 7th Feb 2012 at 09:29.