Gertrude ,
I love using radio navaids... I also love flying DR..!
On being totally lost... I think most of us have probably never been "totally" lost. But have you ever flown in Belgium!?
At the risk of offending our Belgian chums, I found when over that country last weekend that - from the air at least - the mid-northern part of the country is almost totally featureless! This was compounded by:
a) only having the Jepessen chart (OK for high level but not enough land features of the lakes and forests variety to be useful at low-level, in comparison to ICAO charts);
b) choosing the MAK NDB as our turning point... in an aircraft which has an extremely insensitive ADF!; and
c) the wind strength and direction being significantly differnt to forecast.
After some minutes in Belgium we understood that we were off track, but where exactly!? No problem: a couple of VOR crosscuts and use of the RNAV facility in our KNS-80 soon had us sorted out... and I was glad I knew how to navigate using radio NAV techniques!
Best,
Andy
