T_richard,
You have to understand the Europeans. The Brits slag off GPS as being "American" but use it all the time (actually they like GPS and Americans a lot, its the politicians who scare them). It's part of their sense of humour.
The French on the other hand hate the Yanks, and don't like them being in control of such a wonderful tool like GPS, which the Americans have provided free of charge to the world. The French want the rest of Europe to pay for Galileo, which will be controlled from a building in France (so giving the French control). The good Europeans will also find a way to charge users of Galileo, and it will probably be quite expensive, like the premium rate phone calls (0870) you have to use when you want to call somebody up and buy something.
As Tony is desparate to remain friends with EVERYBODY in the world, he will go along with the French plan at the expense of his electorate, just so he is seen to be a good European.
No evidence that dubya will turn off SA, but even if he did, he will keep it over the US because the only thing he cares about is re-election (and avenging the attempt on daddy's life) and pilots in the US are a very powerful lobby
As for whizz wheels, you will need to show a reasonable proficiency in their use when flight planning for your private. Most people then forget about them, until they have to show reasonable proficiency for another annoying test.
What I do is go to duats to get the weather and NOTAMS. Duats is a nifty (and FREE, so American
) tool which lets you store aircraft profiles and has a database of airports/intersections/VORs etc. You put in your origin and destination, and it works out your route/headings/times etc, using winds aloft if known. Duats then gets the weather/NOTAMS for your route. This is VERY important.
On the very detailed flight planner page, you get total time and fuel burn. If that is within my comfort zone for the amount of fuel in the plane, I file the plan with the FAA, then print it out. The paper plan then goes in my bag only to be brought out if some FAA inspector asks me to demonstrate I have prepared for the flight. I then fly the route visually, maybe checking my location using VORS if I have a receiver in the plane, but if I really want to know where I am (and that means I have failed as I have got lost), I use my trusty hand held GPS.
If the fuel burn as planned by duats is too close to what I am setting off with, I just go to airnav.com, find where fuel is cheap on my route, reenter into duats flight plan calculator, and print out new flight plans which go in the bottom of the bag in case somebody asks to see it. It generally goes in the same place as my whizz wheel, which only comes out when I am cleaning the bag of flight plans which went in at some stage, never to be seen again.
So if I am VFR, and as all I really care about ahead of time is weather and fuel because messing either one of those up is what will kill me, the above procedure works well. Always know how much fuel you have on board, what the weather is, and where the nearest airport is. No need to use a whizz wheel for that.
If the weather requires IFR, total different ball game, but still no real need for whizz wheel.
If ATC makes the rare annoying request for time to next fix, you can work that out on paper or in your head