On the ground, sure. In flight, you would be working like a one-armed bandit 
Gallois wrote"In VMC with compass, chart and watch, no problem"
Peter wrote:- Only in one’s very local area.
Depends what you call local. If LFFK to Perpignan LFMP is local, then I would agree with you. Our ULM does not have an AI or GPS or DI yet I’ve done this trip and back again.
France has loads of VORs, and mostly CAS-accommodating ATC.
Peter wrote:
On the ground, sure. In flight, you would be working like a one-armed bandit
Well, in my first flying life when GPS was almost unheard of (and even KNS80s were unusual) getting a VORDME fix could be done in seconds. It shouldn’t be different today. Of course if you have to actually plot the fix on a map, it’s slightly more involved
working like a one-armed bandit
I thought the expression was “like a one-armed wallpaper hanger”?
As for the topic – I generally keep a VOR tuned, because why not. And with the RMI-like feature of the G500 (etc) it’s even quite handy as confirmation. But the only time you would be depending on it is if GPS fails, in which case presumably minor details like violating Class A airspace would be forgivable (though maybe not by tjhe UK CAA!).
I have always had an RMI too; a real KI229 and later 2 x SN3500. But that is very different to KNS80-type of “VOR shifting” which is what one needs in practice, because a position fix is just a position fix. Actually navigating somewhere without getting busted is a different proposition. You have to do multiple fixes and fly a heading (possibly a wind corrected one) off each one. The very definition of masochism!
Yes they could, but since GPS did to the Royal Institute for Navigation what the CD did to vinyl, the market is zero. For starters, at GA altitudes, you will frequently be not merely outside the navaid DOC but actually without a signal.
DME/DME would be much better (one can pick up the EGKA TDME all the way from LFAT, at 2000ft+) but good luck with getting an emitting device approved. There is a website (posted here years ago) of a really bright guy in Slovenia who built all this at home
what the CD did to vinyl,
So there’s hope for VORs then – vinyl now out-sells CD. Maybe in 2030 we’ll all be retro-navigating with VORs and four-way ranges. Maybe I can finally unload some of my collection of valves/tubes.
It might do today, 38 years after the relevant time
It will still be impossible to sell such a product, and how would it be done without DME i.e. radiation? The KNS80 used VOR+DME.
I can see a way of doing lateral guidance (basically what GPS NAV mode gives you) without DME, i.e. using just a receiver, using multiple VORs with knowledge of heading and TAS (and TAS needs OAT + IAS + altitude). In fact it should be doable with just one VOR although there would be an initial ambiguity, resolved after some time. You need to be concurrently solving a load of simultaneous equations. A variant of this method is used for satellite positioning in space, where you have just a “DME distance” and knowledge of the orbital mechanics equations which constrain the solution.
