RAF Navigation "Training"??

[BEagle]

I was astonished recently to discover that RAF University Air Squadron trainee pilots are no longer taught how to use the basic navigation computer. I had someone in recently who had never seen one before, despite having had 2 years training! Hadn't a clue how to use the back of the circular part to do basic speed/distance/time calculations either. It seems that they just gash about using Mental Dead Reckoning and assume a speed of 2 miles per minute....

I know that HMFC doesn't teach much theory these days - but this is the giddy limit. 17 year old PPL students with 15 hours flying can master the computer, surely 'professional' military pilots should be able to as well?

[jsf]

It seems that they just gash about using Mental Dead Reckoning and assume a speed of 2 miles per minute....

Good enough for government work

jsf

[Send Clowns]

As of about 3 years ago they did teach it, and I suspect they still do. Is is possible your friend has not reached the navigation section? That would not be unusual after 2 years if he did not fly very much.

On the other hand when I did my nav training at JEFTS/BFT we all gave up using the Dalton Computer, and used mental ded reckoning instead. As taught by the military it was perfectly accurate enough, it was quicker and of course it was good practice for airborne replanning where using the flight computer is not a reasonable option.

What is wrong with "...[gashing] about using Mental Dead [sic] Reckoning and assume a speed of 2 miles per minute...."? As taught in the military system it allowed me to find the corner of an individual field, or a rusty wind pump among trees.

What you should ask is can your PPL holder cope with that level of MDR? This is far more important to safe, competent flying than use of the flight computer. I know that I can almost always beat my students to an answer that is easily close enough, be they PPL students or ATPL groundschool students with PPLs and perhaps many hours.

[BEagle]

At, say 420 KIAS and 250 ft, where the effect of wind is less, I concede that the LL technique is fine. But at 2500 ft and 90 KIAS, a wind needs to be pre-planned and time at waypoints pre-calculated.

Learn the basics first - including how to use the back of the computer. Then move on to other techniques.

I'm not suggesting, by the way, that there's a need to take the Dalton into the air - just use it pre-flight and then correct in flight using normal techniques.

I had one Qualified Service Pilot who thought that still-air planning and in-flight correction by observed error would be OK at medium level in a Cherokee......

[Send Clowns]

Ermmmmm, BEagle, can I ask you what you think mental ded reckoning actually is?

You seem unaware that it involves taking into account wind to correct for drift and to calculate an approximate groundspeed or head/tailwind component, using that for calculating expected time at certain points (as, it seems, does one service pilot you know, but you don't say how long it has been since he flew slow aircraft). As far as this goes it has exactly the same purpose as the use of a Dalton computer/circular slide rule. The only difference is that it is slightly less precise, but since the precision is beyond that either of wind forecasting or flying headings in a light aircraft that is, in my experience, completely immaterial. It seems you don't know or don't trust MDR techniques, so what are you teaching your students?

I was using these techniques to navigate a Squirrel at 100 kts or 60 kts, down to 200 feet, by the way, and still use them when I navigate myself. They work even at 1 nm/minute TAS. They work extremely well.

BTW my comment on not using Daltons in the air related to diversion nav, not correcting a pre-planned route. You need some MDR technique for planning a route while airborne.

[BEagle]

I am entirely familiar with MDR, thank you very much - I fail to see the need for your evident hostility.

The service pilot to whom I referred hadn't flown a slow aeroplane for about 2 years - but had no idea how to use a navigation computer nor how to use MDR to obtain a groundspeed. He just used 1.5 mile per minute groundspeed and guesstimated the headings using 'clock' proportions of max drift. Sorry - I don't think that's good enough. There's plenty of time to do a proper pre-flight navigation plan for a simple triangular navex; in-flight errors should then be relatively small if the plan has been flown correctly. During the diversion element of a PPL Skill Test, the applicant indeed uses MDR after first measuring track and distance....but are taught how to do that properly.

This is basic stuff - all PPL students are capable of it, but why isn't the military bothering anymore? I recall many sessions in a classroom at my UAS, RAFC Cranwell and even at Valley using the Dalton - we had the time then to bother, it seems....

[Send Clowns]

Well your second post had nothing to do with MDR, in fact it seems now to have nothing to do with what your student was doing. He evidently did not think "...that still-air planning ... was OK ..." as you said since you now say he used MDR to account for the wind. That is not still-air planning.

I was redsponding to your obvious negative attitude for which you have given no good justification.

If your friend flew UAS a couple of years ago I can assure you he was taught to use a flight computer. I can assure you the military do still use the basic techniques, as I teach some UAS graduates. I am not entirely surprised that your student can no longer use the Dalton computer, even forgotten about it at all, as most pilots don't like the thing and even more have forgotten how to use it soon after they finish their initial training, EFT or PPL, let alone if they have not needed to for a couple of years (I know I had when I was in that position). You seem very hostile to the military training system, due to a single case, without bothering to consider what can be expected of this person.

Whatever you think, I can assure you that the precision of MDR is "...good enough...". Not only do I think so, as a lowly PPL instructor and ATPL General Navigation instructor, but so do the service instructors I have flown with, and the people writing the training manuals for approved IR training courses, specifically saying that CRP-5s need not be used and giving tables instead with about the same precision as MDR. In-flight errors will not be significantly greater using these techniques.

The purposes of navigation is to get the aircraft efficiently to the desired destination. What does the technique matter as long as it is effective? How do you justify saying this is "...not good enough..." without evidence that MDR is inneffective?

[Sleeve Wing]

RAF Nav Training

Come on, Send Clowns. Don't be too hard on poor old BEags.
He's got a point you know.

We talking here about the difference between casual (sloppy?) and thorough basic understanding of the triangle of velocities here.

I've been flying a fair old time as well and I know what I would use if the vis. was really poor.
We can all remember the 97%, 87%, 75% etc. of max drift ( sin of...)

How many times have you been sitting there waiting for the second hand to come round and there it loomed - that difficult waypoint, right on time, - because you'd taken the trouble to plan it properly ?

Think about it.
Rgds, Sleeve.

[BEagle]

Send Clowns - no, my QSP thought that a 'standard' GS would suffice and that he could just wag the heading by applying an on-the-day wind to track using MDR. His so-called planning consisted of measuring track and distance - and that was it.

I have nothing against proper military instruction having been an A2 QFI/IRE for many years. But I do not accept that dumbed-down, gash, sloppy basic instruction is in any way acceptable. Students must learn the basics. Period.

No matter - I shall be writing to the CFE to recommend that the credit for the navigation section of the PPL Skill Test for QSPs is suspended. The "oh - it's good enough" attitude has no place in civil flying and I'm surprised that you think that it's acceptable for professional military flying. It b£oody well wasn't when I was a QFI, I can assure you - and I won't accept it now!

So-called military trained pilot scored a mere 48% doing the PPL Navigation and Radio Aids exam yesterday. Frankly, I was appalled. Basic - very basic - errors and an astonishing number of gaps in his knowledge. Mostly not his fault, more the fault of the contemporary cheap and nasty approach to training...

[Dendmar]

BEagle

Before you take the 'yooful' attitude to immediately go tell the Authority, may I suggest you check out your facts. It would be very unfair of you to deprive Army Pilots of their exemption based on an unchecked opinion of yours. At DEFTS Barkston Heath, they ARE taught the DC.

I agree with you that the DC is a useful tool to become familiar with in Flying Training but it is not what I would call essential. However, I do feel it should remain within the knowledge base of any aspiring pilot.

The truth is, that a QSP has a lot more experience by the time he wishes to acquire a PPL and we do know that MDR for an experienced Pilot, does work very well.

I have to say that I find it hardly surprising that your threat has engendered a rather juvenile response from some PPruners on 'MILITARY AIRCREW'; perhaps it came across in a way inintended,but then your original threat, was rather juvenile.

Concerning:

"They get taught Jack Sh*t as far as the computer is concerned. All they get is MDR! I have to deal with it on the UAS and, as you've said they haven’t a clue. MDR is the ONLY way they are taught; I spend all my time at medium level ensuring they don't get too far off track because they don't listen to met briefed winds or apply the MDR wrongly!"

You seem to have set much store on this comment - I thought it was a UAS Instructors role to teach Navigation using, yes perhaps MDR. You can say the same, if the above UAS student was using a DC.

[BEagle]

Point taken - shall not be writing just yet.

Glad to hear that the more senior services are still able to give their pilots a sound level of basic instruction.

[Send Clowns]

That's a good comment on this student, BEagle, and it sounds like he needs rebriefing (although the heading should be OK), but is there any evidence to extend this to the whole system? Sounds like he is just not using the techniques he has been taught. Not an uncommon fault of private pilots and even instructors I have known.

I am not surprised if he had problems on the PPL theory nav exam. There are 5 questions on radio navigation, and apart from the fact that some of the questions asked have been rather daft, the military tend not to use much radio navigation in elementary training. 48% is rather low, but I suspect he also did little revision and how many of your PPL graduates would do better after a break in training?

My attitude has nothing to do with "it's good enough". Correctly applied by an experienced pilot the MDR techniques are as good as the flight computer. I would not let a new student use them, but a much more experienced or more carefully-trained pilot should be able to use them.

[arfur-sixpence]

I personally can't see the problem with using MDR. If applied correctly, the "clock code" method gives answers which are close enough to the "whizz wheel" method as makes no difference.

For example, the IR students I train use the clock code method to (very accurately) work out the drift to be applied in holds and on approach procedures.

If we are talking about visual navigation, then the student pilot should also be reading ground-to-map and map-to-ground and therefore the MDR is not the sole navigational reference used.

If it radio aids navigation, then the VOR/DME is used to fix position and again, the MDR is an aid to placing yourself close enough to the desired fix such that appropriate corrections may be made.

Let us also not forget that the 2000' wind used in the nav computer calculations is actually just a forecast - so even though the whizz wheel can calculate drift to 0.000001 of a degree, the information being fed in is just a guess by the met man.

If, upon reaching the first waypoint, the wind assumptions are found to be incorrect, then a correction may be made. If the trainee is used to calculating drift etc. using MDR then this airborne replanning is actually EASIER for him than for the student who relies solely upon the computer.

[homeguard]

MDR

The Met Man's forecast is more than just a guess! At higher levels it is usually very accurate. At lower levels almost impossible owing to surface factors but averages out quite well.

How do you MDR over the North sea better than using forcasts and applying the same by using the whizz wheel. I understand the arguements of MDR but are you throwing out the baby with the bath water?

[arfur-sixpence]

I suspect that "out over the North Sea" I might be following a VOR or ADF track most of the time (or RNAV or GPS). Don't recall long, oversea VFR nav legs being part of the training.............

Seriously, I would like to know the %age error incurred when using MDR as opposed to the nav comp. I postulate that any such error is probably offset by the ability of the MDR trained pilot to re-think when the met mans best forecast of the 2000' wind turns out to be a tad inaccurate.

[The Trolls' Troll]

Whizz-wheels, computers and MDR

MDR is my favourite nav method as the pilot navigator is forced to get his head round the anti-intuitive way in which wind affects an aircraft's progress over the ground. It's amazing that nearly all text's are full of stuff about getting groundspeeds and headings, time of flight etc using whizz-wheels and computers and how to operate them, but little about the elementary maths and trigonometry that lie at the heart of all aircraft navigation.
The main problem is guessing the wind vector. My plogs prepared the night before a xc were often a waste of time as the wind had obviously changed by the time a flight actually got going. Getting an up-to -date wind vector in flight seems to be something that nobody seems interested in but if you can get that, ie KNOWING that the wind is 20kts from 260 degT rather than going by the 214 which is only a forecast, I would have thought that was an extremely useful bit of information from which the headings and groundspeeds can be worked out by MDR, and should give accurate headings and eti’s.
I designed a bit of kit for this very purpose but it can do the lot ie pre-flight planning and en-route nav as well. It works extremely well.200yds off target in 20 nautical miles in a 70kt microlight. But you have to up-date the wind vector especially at low level.
The other thing I found out by monitoring the wind vector was that a change was often a warning that new weather was on the way. MDR gives the escape route in a worsening situation -- a huge confidence builder on lengthy navex's.
MDR is less accurate than the whizz-wheel but, as has been mentioned, not enough to make any difference in the air. Add in an accurate up-to-date wind vector and it beats any ground-based pre-flight plan hands down.
MDR ought to be in the syllabus. No wonder so many newly qualified PPL's reach for the GPS. Reason. They are uncertain, and lack the confidence to make en- route adjustments unless conditions and terrain allow easy pilotage. At least that was my experience, until I came across MDR, which was never mentioned once in all my time, training for the PPL.
Why is MDR better than the whizz-wheel? MDR tells me, not only that a wind at 45deg to the track produces three quarters of the max drift, but why. The Whizz- wheel only tells me that the drift is such and such. Lose or forget the whizz-wheel, flight computer, GPS, no batteries, electrical failure, press-onitis, low cloud-base, wind vector alters and your on your way to getting lost and making a nuisance of yourself.
Another advantage is speed. You can get the answers in the time it takes someone to get their whiz-wheel out of the flight bag and it’s even faster than a computer where you have to get into the program and print out the results. These devices do the calculations quicker than I can do them, but not if you count the time to bring them into operation, especially in the air.
Nice to know that if everything fails you can still make a good fist of getting to safety, unaided, in an unfamiliar area.
As for over the North sea, if the met conditions were favourable, should be possible, but in anything less, that’s going to be one for the GPS.

[BEagle]

Well, I used the trusty old whizz wheel to plan my flight to Old Warden on Sunday. My landing slot was 1120Z, so I knew that to make the overhead at 1115 I was going to have to leave my timing point (WCO) at 1059. Did this, overhead on time, landing would have been spot on - BUT for some ignorant turkey who blundered in without checking, joined downwind ahead of me having clearly not bothered to read the arrival instructions (Overhead join mandatory) and then flew a typical excessively long final!

The GPS agreed with the whizz-wheel, but it's important to be able to fly the plan even if the GPS dumps. My forecast wind estimate of 230/15 was pretty close - so I stand by accurate pre-flight planning using the most accurate information available being the best way.

[DFC]

It never ceases to amaze me how simple but very important things are overlooked when teaching simple VFR navigation be it the RAF, or civil FTOs.

Countless times I have come across the following situation when dealing with VFR navigation tests or PPL re-training;

A flight is planned from A to B and an alternate is chosen which is either further along in the direction of travel or close abeam the destination.

The pre-flight planning for the diversion is taken from overhead the destination.

I ask the pilot where they will divert to if the visibility and cloudbase at destination are below the required minima. The answer is always to the alternate to which I say......if the weather is below VMC at the destination, how can one overfly or fly past the destination to the pre-planned alternate.

When dealing with diversions due to lowering cloudbase and/or reducing visibility, such a diversion will never take place from overhead the destination because one can't get that far and if one could, one would land. The simple fact seems to be missing from most VFR navigation training these days.

OK blocked runway/ comms failure/ ATC delays and winds are different factors but many pilots expect to use the alternate in every situation.

Thus having some MDR skill is important because when the pilot is placed with the need for a diversion it will be somewhere downroute and the computer is too cumbersome to use in the air at the same time as flying the aircraft and maintaining an adequate lookout in reducing visibility!

IMHO - computer for pre-flight, MDR in-flight.

Regards,

DFC

[BEagle]

Quite so, DFC! That's our teaching as well.

[The Trolls' Troll]

Time for a change? IMHO, MDR on the ground using the latest met info ie 214 and observation, to build an approximate picture of the flight.
Into the air and get the actual wind vector at en route altitude using the new kit on the market designed for use in the air.
MDR from there on with updates of the wind vector according to time available and need. Groundspeed and WCA and the kit(no changing of glasses) gives the wind vector in 5-10 secs.
Time moves on, things change, sometimes for the better.
Improvement in the nav kit we use is possible.