Most commercial pilots who trained in the last 10 years won't have a clue about PAR's or for that matter SRA's shy.
Looking back, it does seem crazy that in a previous life we were routinely required to depart into IMC from our grass airfield in the Midlands with no ground based aids, climb to altitude and carry out basic instruction above cloud in an SEP with no cockpit navaids whatsoever! The outbound climb was made on a "free lane", into Class G, using heading information gleaned from ATC using "back bearings" from our RT transmissions.
Once out of the lane on top (or sometimes not) we were on our own. We used to keep a mental plot of position by requesting a couple of "true bearings" from local military airfields. For recovery we used to ask for a homing to the overhead (done on the DF screen) followed by a QGH letdown.
A QGH involved flying from the airfield "DF overhead" on an outbound heading corrected for estimated wind by the ATCO. After a timed outbound leg and initial descent, a level turn onto the inbound heading was flown. A further descent was then made to approach minima (650 ft IIRC).
The QGH pattern was fixed, the runway in use wasn't.....so sometimes a circling approach had to be made after sighting the airfield. Again, not easy because it was a grass field and the runways weren't strikingly obvious to pick out at the best of times, let alone in bad weather during a low level circuit.
Anyone else here done a DECCA letdown?