Thread drift, but a valid topic...I'll play the devil's advocate:
Already been said but well worth mentioning again....and again....and again. Do NOT confuse flying a PUBLISHED GPS approach with flying some DIY GPS approach!! Some of you seem to argue that its completely acceptable to fly GPS only approaches just because the accuracy of the GPS is high......
Yes, of course. But in order for your statement to be of value as a warning I think it would be helpful to state WHY DIY approaches do not compare.
Personally I do not make up my own approaches, but I do understand why many pilots might have a need to do so. Perhaps such pilots actually check their approaches several times in VMC to validate the fixes, and perhaps also they build in lateral and vertical limits, and include sensible minimums. If they do this, what is the difference between their DIY procedure and a published one? Surely a GPS fix is a GPS fix.
Is it only due to the fact that a DIY procedure might not make allowances for all of the regulatory design criteria - or are there other reasons?