A general GA nav question

[742-xx]

Having just started nav , fying to a local airfield recently , I was wondering how long other Ppruners spent on nav ?
Obviously there is a legal requirement and it also depends on student ability, but how long does it really take on average ?

Thanks in advance.

Stay safe.

[S-Works]

Having just started nav , fying to a local airfield recently , I was wondering how long other Ppruners spent on nav ?
Obviously there is a legal requirement and it also depends on student ability, but how long does it really take on average ?

Thanks in advance.

Stay safe.


A whole lifetime........... It just gets a bit easier with practice!

[IO540]

Not sure what the questions is on. How long does it take to learn navigation, using the methods taught in the PPL? How long does it take to learn navigation, using more modern methods? In the former case, probably hundreds of hours to get really good at it, and it will still fail you occassionally. In the latter case, not very long, but you need to get your PPL out of the way first ;)

[Fuji Abound]

The first problem with nav is everything looks very different from the air - contrary to what you expect! You think you know your local patch - but you don’t.

That changes fairly quickly. You will find you can identify the local landmarks and find your way around without any problems.

Unfortunately that helps you surprisingly little with the wider patch. It is not your navigational technique that has improved just your familiarity with the visual clues in your local area.

Whatever they tell you, in my experience accurate navigation using a map, eyeball and slide rule is an art. Bose-X is correct it takes a life time to perfect. For some it is an enjoyable art. There is an active group called the Precision Flyers and they organise some excellent events. Go join in once you have your PPL if you wish.

The alternative is to learn to navigate using radio navigation or a moving map GPS. The second is amazingly easy, the first requires more training, but at least is now part of the syllabus (to some degree anyway). Perhaps consider doing an IMC rating, I doubt there are many pilots with an IR or IMC who would consider navigating any distance without using a GPS or radio nav.

[FlyingForFun]

742,

If I understand you correctly, you are asking how long an average student will spend learning navigation on a PPL course?

In that case, I don't know about an average student, but I can tell you what I used to get my PPL students to do.

I used to work on the general principle that I wanted to see a student do something twice before I'd let him do it himself. So we would do two dual navigation trips before I'd let my student do his first and second solo navigation (which would be repeats of the two dual trips). Then we would do two dual land-aways before I would let the student do first of all a solo land-away, followed by his qualifying cross country.

So that makes a total minimum of 8 trips, 4 dual (including two land-aways), and 4 solo (including a land-away followed by the QXC).

As well as that, there would be further dual trips covering unplanned diversions (at least one flight) and radio navigation (at least one flight). And all of this would be revised prior to skills test.

That's an absolute minimum. It's quite possible that someone wouldn't reach the required standard on an exercise (i.e. a standard where I'd be happy to allow the student to repeat the trip solo), in which case it would either be repeated, or I'd find another different route to consolodate whichever aspects needed more work.

Bear in mind, though, that this was my own personal interpretation of my school's standard syllabus. It's entirely possible (probably, even) that other schools and other instructors do things differently.

As others say, though, this is only the beginning. I now teach the CPL course, which includes a lot of visual navigation, and I am still learning new techniques all the time. And we're just talking about visual navigation combined with ded reckoning - there's a whole other world of radio navigation which is only covered very briefly in the PPL syllabus, but which you could ask any instructor to spend as many or as few hours teaching you to a more advanced level.

FFF
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