Not yet quite impossible in the UK, although becoming hard now they are starting to turn off the VORs. Cranfield is a big loss around where I fly. Quite a lot of my IFR time is technically VOR and NDB tracking with a VFR only GPS 'for cross reference' although we now also have a 650.

No chance of that approach working in the London TMA!

so with skydemon and all the european plates etc., how much does that lot set you back?,

I vote for there is no either or, it is both. One - With so many political buttheads with no idea whatsoever on the subjects which matter, doing our airspace management on a knowledge of micrometer thought GoogleEarthie-like misbelief and no own piloting experience, they make flying without GPS more and more dangerous. So, No, in many airspace cage constructions flying without GPS moving map may almost be impossible, but not because of physics, but incompetence in definition. Two - Electronic brain extensions may fail and it is good airmenship to have a backup = the paper chart. But, due to cultural change, sustaining on your own is a fading art. I see young pilots totally incapable of orientation in 3D space and for them, loosing GPS is an emergency with call for help, not assistance as it may have been in the ol' days.

I agree spatial awareness seems to be a dying art. Even my ATPL friends think I'm mad doing an NDB approach with only a RBI for company. I rather like the challenge of creating a map in my head and orienting myself to it.

Definitely both are needed in the south of England. Route on the GPS to avoid CAS; but drawn onto the paper chart, too, and keep a PLOG updated so you know where you are.

Tim
 

You are lucky in that you fly an aircraft with probably the most accurate ADF that I have ever done a loop swing on. Most of the GA fleet has never even heard of ADF loop swings hence most of them have consigned ADF to the history books & listening to the cricket scores on the BBC.

A lot of people seem to think that the chart plus. PLOG is “traditional” navigation, but it is not. For the first 25 years of flying aeronautical charts did not exist and pilots had to make their own. I am sure there pilots back then that turned up their noses at pilots who bought an aeronautical chart rather then go back to first principals and mark up a topo map to create their own aeronautical chart rather then take the easy way out and buy a pre made aeronautical chart.

Others though eagerly adapted the new charts because they made navigation easier and safer.

I would suggest the new GPS driven moving maps represent the same sea change in navigation technology. The Luddites will cling to the old ways but most will recognize the advantages of new methods and adopt them

Finally I think it is important that the traditional methods of navigation were designed to deal with the fundamental limitation of the time. There was usually no way to continually pin point your location in real time. Therefore the traditional methods helped you to predict were you were going to be and how to correct back onto track when you were able to fix your position.

GPS provides instant and extremely accurate real time position information which addresses the problem that traditional nav methods was designed to solve thus rendering those procedures obsolete

The sad part is GPS does not obviate the need to teach navigation skills it just requires that we teach those skills relevant to the technology, something that is totally absent in today’s flight training.

Well put !

Hi Guys,
Above Heston says they're 'charts, not maps'. This is interesting. When I first began to learn to fly in the late 1950s, my ex RAF instructor taught me that maps were used to describe land and charts were used to describe water. In effect, every topographical feature above sea level, (i.e. mountains, coastlines, forests) would be shown on a map and everything below water level, (i.e. sandbanks, reefs, channels) would be shown on a chart. When I came to do ATPL ground school and was asked to call both 'charts' I asked my college instructor (also ex RAF) what was going on? He replied that the term charts had been decided by JAA as the correct term to use irrespective of whether the features described were above or below sea level. In short, the use of the word 'chart' for what are properly maps is EU speak. For that reason I no longer use the word chart for my maps.
Best regards,
BP

A map is a (selective) representation of things you can see - roads, hills, lakes etc

A chart is primarily used for navigation and has elements of a map but also has frequencies, airways which you can't see without specialist equipment that enhances your ability to navigate

Yes, agreed. Of course, as instructors we can fall back on the 'I teach what the syllabus requires me to teach' or 'I teach to get the student through the skills test', neither of which puts us in a particularly good light. One defence is that there is a multiplicity of devices either fitted to the aircraft or hand-held, all of which work in slightly different ways. Which one do I pick for my students and how to I then standardize training on that device? At least a 1/2 mil chart/map/sectional is a standard reference document for teaching some form of navigation skills.

I read in a recent 'Flying' magazine that a senior figure in Embry-Riddle, one of the largest producers of airline pilots in the US, has said that having an all-glass-cockpit fleet of trainers has meant that the fundamentals of navigation simply aren't getting across to their students. They are apparently looking at a programme to deliver this training in a different way. Maybe they're going to go back to sectionals/maps/charts, rulers, protractors and stop-watches?

TOO

Not true. Here's a link to an Pre-WWII US Aeronautical Chart Note that it is titled "Sectional Aeronautical Chart" Note also that it is over a thousand miles from the nearest ocean. Note further that the publishing date is 1940 which is over half century before the existence of the EU and 30 years before the existence of the JAA. Point being, that the use of the term "Chart" for aeronautical navigation documents was established long before either. If your reasons for refusing to use "chart" is because it's an invention of the JAA or EU, then you have no basis in fact.

I was taught that a map used for navigation is known as as chart.

I think it is too easy to get lost in the knob-ology. There are universal concepts that apply to all GPS navigators

A small random sample

- The difference between bearing, track and direct to track

- What is the lowest safe altitude to fly that magenta line

- If you need a sudden diversion, what do information do you want from the GPS

- What factors should you use when deciding what map scale to use

Finally I make a really big deal about developing TLAR (That Looks About Right) skills. A perfect recent example

A low hour PPL friend ask me to ride along with him on an out an back cross country

The direct track out was 323 deg for 121 miles. Setting up for the return leg the GPS said the track back was 178 deg for 78 miles. I asked him if we were ready to go and he said yes so I asked him if the out bound track passed the TLAR test.

After a moment of thinking he clued in that the reciprocal of 323 was not 178 and the distance was wrong. Zooming out the map scale it became obvious that he had entered the wrong airport designator in the flight plan.

That is exactly the kind of skills that should be taught but are not....

@BPF: I think you've hit on the scientific explanation of something pretty significant. GPS dissolves TLAR skills, aka common sense.

I took an Uber yesterday back to Santa Rosa airport from the Peanuts museum (summary: don't bother) and we took a complicated route which included a narrow, hump-backed bridge. The driver explained that huge trucks routinely get stuck on it following the magenta-line equivalent to a factory further down the road - which can, of course, be accessed without narrow bridges via another route.

Certainly someone is very much remiss if it's not taught! It's not really a skill; it's called a gross error check and is very basic stuff.

I recall when the RAF first fitted Decca TANS nav kit to our helicopters, some pilots thought all they needed to do was to plug in a diversion grid reference or lat/long and get going on the heading. I pointed out to some who really ought to have known better that rubbish in = rubbish out! A few learned the hard way about fuel planning in that you can't always fly in a straight line between two points, for a number of reasons.

TLAR skills were not always in evidence some years ago before GPS in gliders became common. When I did my XC endorsement I wasn't required to demonstrate them much to my surprise.