I enjoyed watching that…
and I was proud of myself to have got my license in the pre-gps and pre-tablet days… Not I feel I had it easy…
Incredible.
That looks very much like the panel I learnt on. VOR and ADF was on the panel used for nav exercises.
gallois wrote:
looks very much like the panel I learnt on. VOR and ADF was on the panel used for nav exercises
Not for me… I’m such a dino that my nav instruments consisted of a more or less correctly folded map, the dangling Schnaps compass, and 2 pairs of MkIV eyeballs to scan the ground features 🤣
Ahh, obviously we had the deluxe PPL.
It was called a TT back then.
We had to learn by map, compass and watch, scale ruler/thumb. But we also had a radio and a transponder and a DI.
Perhaps the downside was that our theory exams also included nav by ADF and VOR questions. Which meant learning morse as well. Night VFR was about 10 added questions in the theory exam book.
But at least we didn’t have to learn English.🙂
I don’t have ADF or VOR in the ULM just a smartphone, although I have just bought a tablet. So I must relearn nav by paper maps and stopwatch just in case.
back then. We had to learn by map, compass and watch, scale ruler/thumb.
What do you mean, back then? At the aeroclub where I first tried to do my French PPL, that is still the way they do things. Seems to be pretty much universal in the French aeroclub world.
johnh wrote:
back then. We had to learn by map, compass and watch, scale ruler/thumb.What do you mean, back then? At the aeroclub where I first tried to do my French PPL, that is still the way they do things. Seems to be pretty much universal in the French aeroclub world.
It’s in the EASA PPL syllabus, so I would expect it to be taught! How much emphasis FIs put on it is another matter, of course.
I should have said, “the ONLY way they do things”. iPad and GPS: work of the devil, not permitted in the aircraft.
It’s still very much the case today ! I did use VOR a bit (but between degraded receiver losing signal at 10nm, decommissioned ground stations and mismatching readings from two different displays, I’m not sure it was more trouble than worth)
You really need the ability to fly without GPS, would the need arise. And visually confirm portable GPS position (because of spoofing / degraded accuracy). Everyone knows that you don’t do a lot of “pure” stopwatch flying after PPL, but it’s a good thing to know that it’s possible. If today GPS was massively spoofed / jammed closer to us (we currently haven’t had many problems in France, I know other countries have), we would have hundreds of pilots instantaneously lost in the air at the same time. The more they can use VOR and fly visually, the better.
Some FEs allow you to use portable GPS during test (at least I think – my FE asked if I was going to use the iPad in the air), but they always disable it for a certain time during navigation. In fact, during the test you have to do a certain amount of navigation without ANY navigation aid (including VOR).
I can claim that the Canadian IR in the Jurassic period you were still expected to display competence in flying the beam, holds and approaches using LF four course ranges. So no radio nav display just morse code audio. The LF four course range was actually more reliable than the then ultra modern ADF :), assuming no TS static!
