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anyone who still persists in using a map (be it michelin or CAA) to navigate around is a danger to all and sundry and should get with the times.

Far better to be looking for traffic than messing about with a map.

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What's the difference between messing around with a chart, or messing around with a GPS? The dangerous pilots are those who spend too much time "eyes in" and not looking out, regardless of what they're playing with in the cockpit.

Thats not what 27 years of Military flying tells me!

IF its dangerous navigating by a map then why does every CAA/FAA continue to teach Visual Navigation techniques using a MAP and not spend the time learning how to program the GPS!!?:ugh:

Ah! - maybe what's called for is a ride with an instructor doing some radio practice then.

If you've managed to completely lose yourself such that you can't find out where you are using

- map
- VOR
- ADF
- DME (OK, so personally I've never tried to fix my position using nothing but DME and a chart and a pen, but it's obviously possible)

and there's no GPS built into the aircraft, then provided your radio is working you've got

- VDF [#]
- LARS
- a call to London Centre on 121.5

all of which will tell you something useful about where you are, and all of which are best practised when you aren't actually lost, so that you're confident doing them.

If that's not an option, eg because you've got a total electical failure, then sure, any hand-held widget, even one as inappropriate as a mobile phone running car navigation software, could turn out to be better than nothing.

But I would claim that this is a last resort, to be tried after all attempts via radio to get someone on the ground to help you have failed.

Plus, if you're lost, there's a fair chance you're in someone else's airspace, and I can assure you that they would much much rather you called them first rather than spent time fiddling around with some electronic toy.

[#] I made a practice QDM call once. I got the expected response, but didn't follow the given course, because I wasn't planning on returning direct to the field. I got called up a few minutes later by the controller giving me a new QDM - clearly he was assuming that I was (a) lost and (b) having problems following the first QDM he gave me. Perhaps I should have said on the first call that I wasn't lost and just wanted to see what a QDM call was like in real life.

I knew that would lead to the ol duffers popping out of the woodwork :ugh:

Before I take off I tend to have a bit of a plan, that plan tends to be in 3 separate gps devices before the wheels start turning.

the only messing about I have to do is in the event that the flight does not go according to plan, other than that I'm monitoring the gps's to see they agree with each other and that mark 1 eyeball agrees with the screens.

a map ! puleeze . . . . . :ugh: erm, anyone else noticed it's 2009?

technology is there to make things easier, use it. It will reduce your workload and give you better things to be doing with your time than fighting with fold lines.
Besides, flapping a map around has a high pobability of disturbing the coffee, definitely unsafe having coffee swilling round the place.....

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a map ! puleeze . . . . . :ugh: erm, anyone else noticed it's 2009?

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F*ck! I thought it was 1959! :eek:

Technically I would first like to point out that we use charts in aviation, not maps. Just an idiosyncracy inherited from the nautical world. :8

Secondly, I actually agree with you that technology should make our lives easier, but only if one decides to accept it. I for one, have the strange notion that technology actually makes life expensive; so its actually a preferable solution to be a luddite on occasion. £17.50 for the relevant CAA chart or £600 pounds for a GPS (and you can't legally use GPS as a primary mode of navigation anyway) provides a convincing argument for the old-fashioned way. The fact that you use three separate GPS units just indicates that you have money to burn.

I really don't mind how you navigate, but why does it bother you that some pilots prefer to use charts?

Hang on a sec. A thread about GPS. Where's IO extolling its virtues whilst slagging off PPL training and navigation as being stuck in WW1? ;)

No offence intended IO540, just jesting :)

Smithy

Actually the CAA Chart is a Topographical Map with a chart laid over it! So it is both Map and Chart.

Not necessarily. I get the impression too many laymen are fascinated by it and will use (recent, electronic) technology for the sake of technology whether or not there is a more appropriate solution.

To follow the example at hand, a paper map has got a number of advantages on and off the cockpit, amongst the most important for me are the lack of maintenance and the amount of context it gives you thanks to its size (or you could always carry a nuclear powered, A-1 sized, foldable GPS I suppose :rolleyes:)

Wow well this has turned into quite the heated debate, :ooh: It was a simple question I asked, obviously I should of expected the usual comments as this is Pprune. Surely the safest way of navigating is by using the Gps combined with a chart/map whatever you may call it, to cross reference, obviously investing in a Gps is at least 6 hours sky time in a C150 put put ( for a half decent gpd anyway).

But hopefully when I have some money again, I shall add it to the wish list, so do most of you that use the Gps still use a chart/map also or just leave it in the car?

I do almost all my planning off the map (chart) :uhoh:
then goto the waypoints nearest where I actually want to go via.
(aviation in my case being almost exclusively a method of getting from point A to point A)

I would encourage you to have more than 1 gps on the go, in my limited, sheltered, life it's not unknown for the beasties to keel over (almost always power related issues, but never easy to fix in the air) best to have some redundancy built in.

Given that a lot of my flying is spent significantly above clouds, Maps are all but useless anyway.

modern gps software makes airspace avoidance simple as it works in 3 dimensions, you can have vertical separation warnings and horizontal separation warnings, show or hide various pieces of airspace to your hearts content and have warnings for whatever you want, at whatever distance you want.

each to their own.
I have the utmost respect for those who choose to use a map, but I know I can't fight with a map and fly at the same time.

cheapest way to do it?
get a smartphone with all the bells and whisltles on a cheap contract (Winmo)
install Winpilot VFR.
that'll cost you less than a dedicated GPS and give you a phenomenal piece of kit, showing all airport info, frequencies, airspace, yada yada yada, for what you would be paying for yer phone anyway + the cost of the software. (with limited battery life, watch that)

on a half decent contract you can have free 'tinternet on it and it'll show realtime weather too. (separate programme)

takes a lot less to understand the modern software than it does to understand VOR . . . . and it's faster / more accurate / less fiddly / less operator dependant / i.e. safer.

The BMAA forum is free access and in their sub div. Technical Questions & Answers:- Have a look at "Memory Map CAA charts on a cheap satnav".
Chap there has done a lot of the needed work on how to etc.

Mike Hallam.

airwave45, what phone do think would be the best? or would you look at a pda, like the ipaq 214, need to renew contract. fungus boy, i despair, it was a very sensible question.

Traffic Pilot

I have a TomTom GO 530 so the menu may differ from yours.
If I hit "Change preferences" then the ">" icon 3 times, it gives an "Automatic zooming" icon. This allows me to disable the auto zoom in Driving View.

I've stored navaids as POI's on it & have used it when SLF on 737's & I reckon it is capable of giving you a pretty accurate fix but that's from an ATCO's point of view , not a pilot's :cool: In any case, it's got to be better than nothing !

Do you know of any such software for Symbian smartphones?

I'm using an HTC Touch HD as the screen is huge and bright.
It also runs for 4 hours with the brightness up full and the GPS functional.
+ back up battery pugged in + solar charging
(Solar Charger + battery 23 quid)

Switch the phone to "aircraft mode" i.e. switch off all the transmitter functions to save battery life.

think the screen is 800 x 480 pixels so it is very high def.

only software I know of runs on WinMo.

SeeYou

WinPilot

winpilot VFR gives you pretty much everything you'll need en route.

http://www.winpilot.com/images4/VFR2.gif

Eric T CartmanThat's interesting. My TomTom software doesn't have that option:hmm:

Maybe it's time for me to upgrade!

Thanks for the info

TrafficPilot