Garmin 296 argh not again
 

Now I know some of you will moan for asking more GPS related questions but I have searched for previous threads and they dont answer my questions so here goes:

Does the Garmin 296 terrain database include structures such as towers etc in the UK or does it just include the mountains and hills. I thought I read somewhere that this feature was only available to the luckky people who also can buy a 396 version of this.

Sorry don't know the answer to your question Stuart, but was wondering why you would want to know?

Can't think it would be of use to anybody except those who would want to fly in IMC below MSA :confused:

Thats a stupid answer and you should be ashamed for posting it. Of course I wouldnt want to do that but I would like to know it help me if I made a mistake.

I dont know if you intended your answer as a tongue in cheek response but this forum is often full of people trying to be smug and belittle people asking questions which may be "stupid" to their expert flying skills but may be a valid question to the person asking it. It really annoys me.

Using your argument there is no need for Terrain data in any aircraft because terrain is almost always found below your MSA I believe!!!!!!!!

Presumably you dont carry lifejackets when you cross water as only people who intend to crash into the water would carry them.

I'm afraid I don't know the answer having only used the 396, but I echo your sentiments about "stupid" answers.

Constuctive answers only please.

Wasn't tongue in cheek at all, I really dont see why you would want this info.

Apologies if my response apparently annoyed you, wasn't the intention.

As for lifejackets...

The Atlantic basemap version of the 296 does not have an obstacle database nor (more annoyingly) does it hold any VRPs. The US version of the 296 does have an obstacle database so it seems it's not impossible to implement. I believe that due to a certain amount of pressure from European owners, Garmin is considering adding this in the future. The Bendix King Skymap IIIC does however have these essential things already held in it's database.

Thanks Speedtape for the sensible answer.

Clearly that was what I was looking for as it makes a difference how good a safety device it is if it doesnt include these things I would say.

Mariner9 if you cant include sensible answer then you shouldnt waste peoples time replying with stupid ones. Obviously I wanted an answer to this not some smarmy comment designed to make you seem cleverer than me. Personally I think the device would be better with this feature. Its not up to you to decide how I use it so FO. Dont bother apologising because it would have been better not to have been so up your own a**e in the first place. Sorry if I offend you with my reply. Its not intended like that :)

The answer is also on the Garmin website, took me 15 seconds to find it.

You are welcome. I was disapointed to find these features missing and considered exchanging the 296 for a Skymap. However, the advantages of the 296 over the Skymap in real world use persuaded me to keep it and I must say it's excellent at what it does. So long as you don't mind spending a bit of time putting the VRPs and other salient features such as masts and other tall obstructions relevant to your route in yourself, it does the job marvellously. The first time I used my 296 was on a trip from Kristiansand, Norway to Carlisle via Esbjerg, Den Helder, Ostend and Newcastle. It performed flawlessly. I took an hour or so whilst planning the route to programme all the route relevant VRPs in to the 296. I got these from the various charts I had to use and from the relevant national AIS websites.:ok:

Well your probably not gonna take any notice of me any more, but will provide some (in my view constructive ;-) ) advice anyway.

The pro's and cons of GPS's have been debated on here countless times. (I'm firmly in the pro camp BTW)

But I suggest you do not, under any circumstances, ever rely on GPS terrain databases for terrain clearance. If you do not, then the knowledge whether obstacles are included in the database or not is irrelevant.

Again Speedtape thanks for your help. Big shame it doesnt have obstacles as this slightly negates the benefit of terrain as I reckon towers hurt just as much as mountains. Anyway no doubt it will get fixed one day.

IMHO I thought the question was quite valid, and I also understand M9's PoV.

However, if I were to buy a mapping GPS I would expect structures to be included as I would use them for visual reference.

Power stations, radio towers and masts, etc. all make for excellent reference material.

Of course, this would be complemented by flying at or above MSA and so actual knowledge of position of structures isn't necessary for clearance purposes.

Mariner9,

I wouldn't agree with that. If you were to follow the same logic with the GPS itself, you could say that because you have a chart and know where you are going, and are a competent pilot, you shouldn't need a GPS. Yet most of us accept that it is a fairly useful gadget.

You could be flying along, in VFR, maybe it's a bit misty, and you know that there is a mast 'around here somewhere' but can't quite see it. Masts are hard things to see at times! You might believe it's over there a couple of miles, so you concentrate looking in that direction. You might be looking in the wrong direction. Having the obstacle shown on your gps confirming it is where you thought it should be, or that you've got it wrong, and you're looking in the wrong place, could be very useful.

dp

The fact is Stuart asked for the info, thats what a forum is all about, to gain knowledge.

Get a grip:{

I think the OP flies a plane with a decent panel mounted IFR GPS, so this must be a backup unit with the intention of seeing VFR data with terrain - a very reasonable objective in general and potentially very handy in case of an engine failure above clouds above mountains in particular.

Option 1: a pocket/pc PDA running Memory Map (UK only) or Oziexplorer (any map you can find, or scan in)

Option 2: any XP tablet PC running Jepp Flitemap with their VFR raster chart add-on (reasonable Euro coverage equivalent to their VFR/GPS charts)

I wouldn't trust Jepp to include anything of real importance like that in their vector based GPS data...

I know the above are not the expected answers but the results will be a LOT better than any standard aviation GPS I have seen. All the standard units use the same Jepp vector data and that is very poor for detailed terrain.

Yes indeed my trusty steed already has 2 Garmin 430's and I have a 196 but I fancied a 296 or something for Terrain data for exactly the reason that IO540 has said.

I would really like something more exciting and have considered many options. I was originally going to put an MX20 in but then have been put off by the price having spent a bomb on my plane recently.

I have looked at memorymap which is OK but I decided against it due to fiddlyness.

Has anyone seen a Avmap EKP-IV as these look good but as I have never seen one in real life I worry about buying one.

Actually it seems that Mariner has the most sensible answer here.

It is currently illegal to use a GPS as primary form of navigation in the UK. Therefore a database of obstructions seems particularly useless. If you are having that many problems that an obstruction you can't see in good time might be an issue then you should be either making a precautionary forced landing or above safety altitude, considering flying under IFR and perhaps talking to D&D, not looking at your GPS! In fact that is the point where GPS becomes a positive hazard - you are considering using it instead of climbing or landing in a worrying or emergency situation.

Guys get your heads out of the cockpit. Fly visually, see and avoid; if you can't then fly IFR. There is no in between, except the situations that kill pilots. GPS is a final resort for the VFR pilot, or a useful aid to the IFR pilot, it is not an excuse for flying in conditions that are beyond your skills.

Actually first of all Mariners answer is not the most sensible as it doesnt answer my question. My thread was not a pro's and con's of GPS. It was a simple question about the functionality of a GPS. The best practice I think would have been to let someone who knew the answer, answer it and that would have been the end of the matter.

Send Clowns IMO your answer is complete rubbish. Nobody on this thread said that they were going to use GPS to navigate and dodge towers. I just wanted to know as if I buy a safety device (which I consider GPS to be) I want to know that it does what I expect.

Just like the parachute on the Cirrus there are always clowns like you, pardon the pun, that will say people will use it to land the plane etc etc. I personally think that is a major advance in safety.

GPS must have saved hundreds or thousands of lives on the quiet while people like you are putting the frighteners on "junior" pilots telling them why it is so unsafe. I totally accept that GPS (particularly portable GPS) should not be used as a sole source of navigation and should not be used for approaches but when was the last time that you flew a plane with Garmin 430's that sent you off course. Ah I thought so never! Of course you wont remember the last time you flew an NDB at night near the coast and it was completely wrong will you?

One day people like you will be in the past and GPS will be accepted for what it is. A highly accurate source of navigation that just gets more and more useful.

I watched a program on Discovery Wings recently where a passenger jet in 1991 flew into a mountain because they were the wrong side of an NDB on an approach but had they have had a simple Garmin 296 they would have almost certainly been alive today. They could have double checked their position (they tried to but couldnt get enough information in time using traditional navigation aids) and seen a mountain ahead. All the passengers and crew on that plane would have thanked you for that £800 Garmin miracle then. THEY WERE FLYING IFR AS YOU SUGGESTED.

By the way my plane also has 2 Garmin 430's, 2 VOR's, 1 ADF and a portable backup radio with VOR. Will all this wonderful equipment at my disposal I rarely use my current 196 other than for another check. Is that OK with you.

SC

The above is complete and utter RUBBISH. RUBBISH. Quote the passage from the LAW, the ANO please. (I will save you time, there isn't one).

The best you will find is a repeat of your (totally unsupported) assertion in some handout from the CAA ("safety" sense leaflet #25 is a likely culprit) written by some old fart who has never actually flown anywhere and whose exposure to GPS is from looking at them in the locked glass cabinet at the local camping/hiking shop.

SF's requirement is a 100% legitimate thing to have, for both VFR and IFR flight and especially for IFR.

One day, people with the backward views will have left aviation and the whole scene will then be able to move on and modernise, and attract some normal modern people, not the desperate-to-fly people who make up the bulk of new PPL recruits today. The problem is that the average G-reg GA fleet age is about 27 years and it will all be scrapped long before attitudes change sufficiently.

SCThat argument doesn't stand up against those of us who have BRNAV (mandatory above FL95 IFR in Europe - and that includes UK & Eire airspace) approved units like the GNS430/530 and KLN94 series - these become the primary mode of navigation.

Still think it's illegal for primary nav?

As IO540 says - there's no point looking in the ANO because there is no legislation, in much the same way that it doesn't say if navigating VFR you're not allowed to use VOR's and NDB's - you have to use a chart, stopwatch and compass.

You can navigate anyway you like, provided you fulfill the equipment requirements of the type of flight being undertaken within the flight rules and airspace being flown. THAT is the only criteria that covers the legal/illegal criteria.

It often pays to check the detail before making inaccurate and sweeping statements.

I cannot understand that why in this day and age it is so difficult/expensive to get a GPS that uses the CAA half and/or quarter mil charts. If you look at the marine side of the GPS market, it is littered sets with full marine charts built in (or at least on a memory card).

SC may well be wrong about the ANO and the use of GPS, but surely he gives sensible advice in the rest of his post. Does anyone here disagree?

I've not flown with a certified GNS430/530 whatever so can't comment with any authority whatsoever upon them, but do they not rely on databases of published instrument approaches? If so, then presumably terrain clearance is assured by the published procedure, and not by a terrain database on the GPS. Feel free to correct if my understanding is incorrect however.

I fly with a BK Skymap III complete with terrain and obstruction data ;) . I am perfectly happy to rely on it for range/bearing to next waypoint/nearest airport etc, but would never rely on it for terrain clearance. If that's considered a backwards view by some then fair enough.

...but would you believe it if you were in IMC and it said you were just about to fly into the ground or an aerial?

When I plan IFR, I plan to say above the MSA - so I won't fly into the ground - but then again I would imagine all of the pilots killed by CFIT crashes also planned not to fly into the ground.

Having a bit of technology looking over you like a guardian angel and tapping you on the shoulder, saying 'I think you might be about to die' has to be a step forward.

I would think if faced with that situation RR the most prudent action would be to climb immediately and worry about whether the GPS was right/wrong once you've got to a safe height.

I quite agree that a GPS with a terrain database is a potential aid to avoid CFIT. As Stuart Forrest pointed out earlier, it could have saved those pour souls killed through an incorrect NDB approach.

However, I still dont feel that the inclusion or exclusion of obstacles on a database would make any difference to the safety or usefulness of the device. A simple terrain-only database should help you ensure your MSA was correct.

Chilli Monster, IO540

I do some consulting for a GPS manufacturer, for whom my father consults to oversee sales in Europe. He called the CAA only a couple of weeks ago to confirm the current situation, having been confused as you by the lack of mention in the ANO. They confirmed that it is illegal to use GPS as sole navigation, less certainly it seems to be also illegal to use it as the primary form of navigation. I'll go with the CAA on this one, thanks, as the rule seems sensible until some sensible ways of using GPS are defined, considering how some VFR pilots use it. The rules are to be changing over the next few months.

You cannot navigate any way you like; I'm not sure how the rules are written down, but even if not in the ANO try defending ignored recommendations in court if it goes wrong. You quickly learn that not everything that is law is written as firm rules, especially in the UK*. Flying VFR you must fix position visually (I believe it is every 60 nm, but it is rather irrelevant to my job teaching navigation theory, and since I would not let my flying students go anywhere like this far I have not checked), although between these fixes you can navigate however you like. Flying IFR you must navigate by some means other than GPS, although you can use GPS to confirm those means.

*Try murdering the mother-in-law, and then try to persuade the court that it was not illegal as there is no written law in the UK against murder. How far do you think you'd get? Yet there is no such law.

RR

GPS is not EGPWS, although it might feed position to one. It will not warn you if you are about to hit terrain, whatever the database. You would have to find teh obstruction and interpret its height w.r.t. your own altitude. That is time "heads in", when you should either be heads out VFR and see obstructions or above MSA and concentrating on correct navigation, not on a moving map display! There is nothing between VFR and IFR. You cannot be a bit IFR!

SC

Please post the name of who you spoke to at the CAA, so we can all write to him/her and ask for the reference. It's complete utter 100% bull.

Yes you can (VFR, private flight IFR context). If you disagree, reference please.

That says it all.

I hope your consultancy scope excludes legal issues, and aviation :O

Wrong. No such requirement. There are requirements in various unrelated areas such as the max leg for a DCT on an IFR flight plan for it to be accepted by the CFMU computer (50nm) but those are irrelevant.

Yes, completely irrelevant.

DS

You can, but I don't think there is a self contained dedicated GPS, aviation type or otherwise, which offers this. As I posted earlier, you can do it with a PDA running the pocket/pc operating system (or any suitably portable device running the full Windows, e.g. a "tablet PC") and run a product called Memory Map on it. MM offer the CAA 1:250k and 1:500k charts. It costs a bit of money, because CAA (or whoever MM get the data from) charge a nice bit for the licence to use the data.

MM is actually a very good product, and you can get (at a price) the full 1:25k or 1:50k Ordnance Survey charts for all of the UK on it. That should satisfy anybody who wants to see detail :O

Oziexplorer is another way; but you have to either scan in the CAA charts which you bought, or you can (illegally) download the scans from the usual places from which people (illegally) download music :O OxiEx will give you a GPS moving map over ANY map which has been scanned in and calibrated. You can get such maps, legally and otherwise, for much of the world. For any map that has the lat/long lines printed on it, the accuracy of the calibration is easy to check.

There is a huge mapping community out there. General Aviation lives in a rut which was dug out mostly before WW2 which is why we don't see this stuff more. Most "aviation" GPSs were designed 10-20 years ago.

Jeppesen have a virtual monopoly on GPS moving map data. I can't comment on the history of this but it could be that nobody offers the data in vector (all objects including text being rotatable) form. The CAA charts are clearly maintained on a database and in editable vector form but are licensed to MM only as a fixed raster, so they cannot be rotated according to aircraft heading with the text remaining the right way up.

It's easy to design a GPS which would do all this and would be far better than anything currently on the aviation market. But where would the data come from? That's where one gets shafted. For vector data, there is only Jeppesen.

Same issues apply to flight planning programs, incidentally.

Edit: The other thing is that offering the CAA charts would satisfy the market comprising of pilot who fly only within the UK - nobody will bother. Outside the UK, there are multiple and quite inconsistent aviation data sources so your VFR chart would change as you crossed from say France to Switzerland, and the elevations would change from feet to metres (really handy). Unless of course you hand a nice sum to Jeppesen and license their VFR charts :O

SCGo back and read my post again. What is there in it that a) you don't understand; and b) bears up that certain members of the CAA know the rules and current procedures of certain aircraft and airspace less than most of the high performance GA community.

How can it be illegal to use a piece of equipment that is recognised and approved (by the CAA, EASA, JAA and Eurocontrol) for the task for which it's designed. I can assure you I am in no way confused - I'm dealing in everyday facts here.

Again - not true. How do you fix position if you are VFR on top? You must do so using some form of approved navigation system - either VOR/VOR cross cuts, VOR/DME point, RNAV or, dare I say it, certified GPS installation.

(Please don't say there is no such thing as VFR on top in the UK - you'll only be showing your ignorance of the Rules of the Air and certain rating privileges by doing so).

So - with the above in mind - do you still stick to yours (and your gentleman in the CAA's) assertion? If so then I can assure you that'll just be digging a bigger hole for yourself ;)

I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous posting and the comments above. I'm sorry, I can't put them in any simpler english.

I should qualify the VFR comment, I am thinking as a PPL instructor not of the audience who might hold IMC/IR. In the UK a PPL holder is not allowed to fly VMC on top without holding an IMC or IR, because with a simple PPL you must navigate by ground reference.

Call the CAA yourselves. They are the authority; I will believe them rather than an anonymous contributor on the internet. I also was asked to proof read the CAA's draft GPS regulations and recommendations which are coming into force, by someone who was himself asked by the CAA, who was the one who originally told me this was with a view to being approved for sole navigation, hence the later check with the CAA to see whether they had come into force. They were not very realistic, rather too pessimistic and inaccurate.

The reason that you can't use it is that it is not yet approved as a sole means of navigation by the CAA - although it might be next month that the change was coming. Perhaps that is why it is not specifically mentioned in the ANO, I don't need to know that and so don't. I am a PPL instructor with no GPS so do not need to concern myself with this; when I am a commercial pilot I shall follow company procedures taught in line training which are CAA approved. I am not a lawyer, so see my time better spent learning flying skills for safety rather than for learning the law beyond my job. If it is not covered by my Flying Order Book or company procedures (or MEL in this case) then it should not come up, but if it does then I will err on the side of caution until I can check.

P.S. With apologies for having been the one to have inadvertantly diverted the thread, I see nothing to defend use of GPS for separation. It is not suitable for that purpose!

Reference please.

It's rubbish of course. It is 100% legal for a PPL to navigate en-route using VOR/DME/NDB/GPS or dead reckoning, in any combination. The ANO prescribes the equipment that must be CARRIED, only.

There could be an implicit assumption that one lands visually, reasonable enough because a plain PPL does not have instrument privileges. But even that is untrue because a plain PPL can, in the UK anyway, fly an ILS in VFR conditions.

It is possible for the ANO to be amended to state that a GPS is not permitted, or that every pilot must carry a rubber duck with a magnet on the back of it, floating in a bucket of water (the bucket would need CAA approval). But the ANO has only just been amended and the new version has only just come out, so I doubt they will be doing another version for a while. And the latest ANO does not mention GPS at all.

Think about it. How can a law be drafted to force a pilot (single pilot, no passengers) to navigate using a particular technique? It can't, of course.

You can do PPL instruction with these views but you would have difficulty flying a decent distance with them.

As for calling the CAA, please supply the name of the contact who believes GPS is somehow unauthorised.

I always dive into these stupid pro-GPS anti-GPS threads because if left uncorrected they spread a lot of damaging disinformation which benefits nobody.

Head.............Wall...................... Bang!

Someone out there's in for a shock when they get a Commercial seat (please don't let it be next to me :uhoh: )

If you want to come and visit sometime I'll show you 4 aircraft - all with approved, certificated, installed, legal primary sole use GPS fits. I can show you the paperwork from the CAA that tells you they are approved and legal for such use. I suspect that counts for slightly more proof than the hearsay you've been spouting.

SC - take the keys to this JCB and keep on digging. (you were warned)

As for your other statements - someone's been busy brainwashing I suspect.

Navigation
 

I feel like I'm going into the proverbial lions den here but here goes anyway.
I'm a low hours student who has not yet done any aerial nav but I do have a yachtmaster offshore certificate obtained 20 years ago.
On my sailing boat we sailed around northern Europe and were using state of the art GPS chart plotters with C-Map electronic charts in the early 90's ,we were always told that we should also do a paper chart plot every hours if in open water or more frequently in inshore or busy waters.
No one disagreed because it is pretty obvious if the GPS goes down you are totally stuffed if you have not been taking hard copy fixes.
OK boats do not go as fast as planes so it would seem sensible to fix your postion quite frequently when airborne.
Ducks and waits for flack!

No flak LN, entirely reasonable.

The biggest problem in these debates is that the old-fart anti-GPS army pretend that anybody using GPS will be doing nothing else.

Why?

True, an idiot is born every minute and some are bound to find their way into flying (plenty of crooks and conmen manage to do it). So some people will be blindly following a GPS, with no backup if the batteries go flat etc.

Equally, some people will be doing PPL-style dead reckoning and where is the backup? They haven't even been taught to track a VOR, so they are doing all they "should be" and yet they have no backup. Then they forget to start/reset the stopwatch. Then they are stuffed, but this is "authorised by the CAA" isn't it!

But just because something can be done stupidly doesn't mean that all, or even many, will be doing it.

Any half smart pilot going places is using a GPS and will have planned the route via VORs as much as possible, and will be tracking a VOR or an NDB concurrently. The extra effort is minimal.

One could back the GPS up with dead reckoning instead but that is a lot of work for very little reward because GPS+VOR is exceedingly reliable, especially given that the potential gross errors are very different in the two methods.

Personally I use the panel mounted GPS, a little PDA-based battery powered GPS, and VOR/NDB/DME as well. That way I have the 2nd GPS in the event of a total loss of electrics.

A friend of mine has some "sailing master's" (you will probably know it) qualification and reports that sailing went through the GPS debate about 10 years ago and it's all died down now.

The other redherring is this "not authorised for sole navigation" or "not authorised for primary navigation" thing. These expressions keep popping up but they have no basis in law. Just as well, since airliners usually use their INS (inertial) systems as primary nav, corrected (when in range) with DME/DME ranges, or even GPS. The whole concept of what is primary becomes blurred.

Yet CAA employees have produced handouts, and a certain CAA employee has made statements in the CAA "safety" seminars, containing this stuff. This is what suprises me, much more than the old attitudes taking years to go away.

The CAA should get a grip on the situation. I don't know what is stopping them. I suspect there are turf wars within (a number of strong ex RAF characters, approaching retirement but not fast enough) and anyway there is no way to expand the "45-hour" PPL syllabus to include GPS. The training industry would be up in arms over it because they don't want a more expensive PPL on their price list and they don't want to spend money on the then inevitable mandatory panel mounted GPS installations.

In the meantime some 90% of new PPLs chuck in flying for good within a year or two. Anybody who can afford to fly has probably got a GPS in the car, and not many of these people are willing to endure a year of PPL-style slide rule twiddling. Those that have managed to grind through their training realise they haven't got the skills to fly A-B confidently. It's all a bit of a joke, really.

So we grind on...

In the meantime, any pilot that flies seriously can't care less about this cr*p. He's moved on; he's got a plane with an IFR GPS, and doesn't feature much if at all in the CAS infringement statistics.

If/when you get to IFR flight you will realise what a load of cr*p these debates are over. Many routes lie outside navaid coverage, and (GA context) an BRNAV approved GPS is the only legal way of meeting the requirements. It also happens to be the only way of navigating!

Within the CAA, there seems to be a group that flies fabric covered biplanes (and hates GPS) and a much bigger group that looks after commercial (IFR) stuff (and is a bit more with-it). The two never meet.

Look the legal debate is getting us nowhere, and is in fact completely irrelevant to the argument. I am not sure I would trust someone flying who concentrates on obscure legal discussion to the detriment of a debate about safety! Personally I go for safety first, the law second, but call me old fashioned.

Do you, Chilli and IO540 not agree that using a Garmin 296 for avoiding obstructions is rather more dangerous than not having one at all? It is not an EGPWS. It is not even a fitted unit, and is certainly not suitable for that purpose. Surely this is the most imoportant point, yet people attacked Mariner for mentioning it, and then ignored the point when I made it.

Who suggested using a GPS for "avoiding obstructions"?

How can having terrain information be worse than not having it? The flight will have been planned at the MSA beforehand anyway. If the "MSA plan" was always sufficient, no airliner would have ever done a CFIT and GPWS would not be mandatory on public transport aircraft over a certain size.

I once asked an instructor: if you were doing an instrument approach, and the ADF was telling you you all was OK, and the GPS was telling you that you are about to die, which would you trust? He said he would trust the ADF.

Says it all really.

I agree totally with that. If you don't have EGPWS then safety altitude is calculated by proper pre-flight planning and you don't bust MSA under any circumstances. Possession of a GPS and using the terrain mapping on it as some form of terrain avoidance equipment is lunacy in my opinion.

But that's not the statement that's caused a lot of the comments about GPS - is it ;)

Send Clowns hole is so big he is now dropping the "legal argument" possibly because he knows he has been rumbled in favour of the bloody obvious that it is not ideal to be dodging towers using a Garmin 296. Hmm sounds like something that we said ages ago.

The anti GPS lobby will be completely rumbled one day and exposed for the foolish comments they have made.

BTW I always use VOR and NDB's to check up on my Garmin 430's.

Also I think that line about the draft paper that is going to make GPS legal next month was rubbish. Its like listening to one of my kids lying to get themselves out of a previous lie while really telling even more porkys.

Give it up Send Clowns!

These GPS discussions always see to attract the same big hitters who are no doubt very current, capable IFR rated pilots who have all the toys. But I can't help thinking that since this is a private forum, most of the flying done by readers is VFR touring. Correct me if I am wrong, but the main attractions of flying are enjoying the view and the freedom of all three dimensions. That by definition means you are looking at the ground - transition to IMC is not desirable (or indeed an option in many cases). Moreover, because you are doing it for fun, you decide where you are going and what you want to see along the way. It makes sense then that navigation is done by reference to ground features.

This private forum attracts people with all sorts of flying experience/aspirations in a huge variety of aircrarft. But some of the regulars on GPS topics are pilots whose flying is on a very different level to that done by the majority of those on this forum. IO and Chilli et al, you are very correct in your opinions for the sort of flying YOU do, but they may not be so appropriate for the flying done by many contributors on this forum.

For the record, my opinion is that VFR flight means that you navigate using a chart and the mk1 eyeball. IMC is to be avoided like the Grim Reaper. Therefore MSAs and radio nav aids are of little interest. A GPS is a great box of tricks to confirm your eyeball navigation and to give you a range and bearing home. I know this contrasts with you big hitters, but it suits the sort of flying I do and no doubt the flying others do too.

I agree with Droopystop in the plain-PPL context, but would add:

The % of pilots who hang in GA for more than the few weeks after they get their new PPL would be greatly enhanced if they could bring a bit more predictability and perhaps utility (going to places which are beyond easy driving range) into their flying.

The novelty of flying from Goodwood to Beachy Head and back on a perfect sunny day, or a bit further (Compton Abbas?) for a burger, will wear off fast, for all but the most hardened anoraks. The novelty of the same flight is likely to wear off even faster on one's friends.

THAT is why I waste my time posting in these interminable threads. I don't do it because I am bored. Nearly everybody who trained with me, 5 years ago, is long gone. Unless GA gets modernised it will sink. All that will be left will be the quasi-commercial fields like Cardiff, Cranfield, Norwich, and up. This is why every airfield with a tarmac runway is trying to become "XYZ International" - they see the writing on the wall in their declining landing fees and fuel sales. Freehold farm strips, with the usual "invitation only" crowd that's not getting any younger, will always go on (which is largely why it's so hard to represent UK GA; this large group feels secure and couldn't care less) but a very limited range of planes, and very few with any utility or touring capability, can operate from these places.

There is absolutely no reason why one cannot fly VFR while navigating using a more reliable means. Even when I fly IFR I try to be in VMC (above or below) - a view is always worth having.

I don't understand why one has the religious wars over GPS. It is as if flying is meant to be just for real men with hairy chests, open cockpits, engines dripping with oil... the idyllic WW1/WW2 aviation image which predates today's controlled airspace and a mountain of other regulations.

EXACTLY like the old Brit v. Japanese motorbike religious positions which I remember well, being an ex biker myself (50k miles a year) from the 1970s.

In any other walk of life, people would grab something which improves their life, with both arms. But in aviation .....

The CAA will prosecute equally vigorously for a CAS bust whether the pilot navigated with a GPS or with dead reckoning. Why make life harder?

So true, IO540, and it backs up my worries over licensing - that we are all being pushed either to CPL/IR or NPPL, with no middle ground. The CPL/IRs will be rich, flying from Cranfield/Norwich/Biggin, while anyone poorer will be condemned to NPPL flying from unlicensed grass day VFR only. Places like Gloucester/Shoreham, with non-precision approaches, will have to go one way or the other.

Tim

I think the fundamental problem is the way in which navigation is taught and more over the amount of navigation practice ppl's get before they are let loose with a licence. My opinion is that visual navigation is an important skill to learn and maintain. May be that is because I fly helicopters and our destinations can often only be identified visually (the GPS only gets us into a ball park).

IO, you are quite right that GA is missing a trick by not teaching the use on how to use some form of area navigation system. I don't mean how to use an individual set, but what functions of a set are most useful and how they should be used. Unfortunately most GPS sets offer far more information than a pilot really needs and can be therefore very distracting. That is my big gripe with GPS - it is all to easy to lose situational awareness with respect to terrain, weather altitude etc while being obsessed with the GPS set. GA would do well to teach Cockpit resource management to PPL students, thereby making use of modern technology, but ensuring the basic principles of airmanship/situational awareness are maintained.

But don't forget that the advance of technology will one day remove the pilot from the cockpit and that will be no fun. After all when in controlled airspace, you are controlled - all it takes is an up link from ATC to the autopilot and........only politics stand in the way.