They treat it like a black art, spending hours studying the map, drawing lines on it with a pencil, measuring using a ruler and protractor, calculating drift using a E6B, etc.
It’s not a black art, though. When I did my big Cessna 140 flying adventure, at most I scribbled a line, estimated the track within 5 degrees (winds aloft forecasts aren’t good enough to make it worthwhile to go to any higher level of precision), and just used 1.5 miles per minute plus or minus a fudge factor depending on the wind. It worked extremely well even over feature poor desert out west. There was an examiner in the US who reckoned that any PPL ought to be capable of planning a VFR cross country the full range of their aircraft in under half an hour.
I think it’s worth going on a VFR bimble without the GPS every once in a while, it’s good fun and satisfying.
But I won’t be a snob about it any more, Skydemon is a great time saver especially since some of my trips involve navigating around complex airspace and just being able to instantly give estimates when you get clearance through someone’s airspace means it’s just a lot more practical in those instances, and being able to thread your way through narrow gaps in airspace knowing that you’re not going to bust the airspace means you can spend more time looking for other traffic trying to thread that needle.
But really, in military flight training, pure visual navigation over large distances at very low level and at very high speed is still trained a lot.
They get trained to operate in times of war, when ground/satellite navigation aids will not be available.
That can’t be compared to a private flight in Western Europe, where you’re faced with complex airspace structure but have far better navigation options available than just DR.
I know some Dutch pilots that route via Germany if they fly to Northern France. They find the Belgium airspace too intimidating.
If DR is your primary source of navigation, I can fully understand that. With GPS nav, the Belgium airspace around Brussel is perfectly doable.
They get trained to operate in times of war, when ground/satellite navigation aids will not be available.
That can’t be compared to a private flight in Western Europe, …
Of course not. But whenever the map&stopwatch topic is raised in a place like PPRuNE or the clubhouse bar, sooner or later some die-hard fundamentalist will bring up the “but this is how they do it in the RAF” and “the battery in your electronic watch can fail” and “GPS can fail any time (*)” nonsense 
I know some Dutch pilots that route via Germany if they fly to Northern France. They find the Belgium airspace too intimidating.
Horror horribilus! Wasting such a lot of fuel, despite their traditional thrift (shared with the Scots, and rumoured to base upon the same Calvinism). What keeps them from flying controlled, ie higher than FL045, and get the excellent assistance of Belgian controllers? And when flying lower, there is such a wealth of visual clues that it really takes a fool to loose track. There are motorways, canals, railways, cities, power plants, all of them in great number. The main danger is indeed mistaking one for the other.
When I fly cross-country (with relatively little experience) I am always surprised that my next waypoint is so soon visible – I must train myself to include less of them in my prepared routes.
Sorry for not being english, but what exactly is “Dead Reckoning” ? Is it visual look out the window VFR, or flying “on top” with no or few visual clues (to the ground) ? Also, what is “hand swipe” ?
bq.The safest place will probably be a light aircraft flying at low level, even if temporarily unsure of it’s position.
The safest place is always a light aircraft flying at low level, and it’s always unsure of it’s position
QuoteHave to disagree here. It’s essential that you really know your kit. Starting to learn to operate a 530 a few miles from the LHR zone inbound is, errrrr, not such a good plan. IMHO DR should be the fallback of last resort. It is for me.
I don’t have a 530. I have an Airspace Aware. You turn it on and it shows you where you are on a vfr chart, grumbles if you’re about to infringe airspace and not much more. When I had a working cigarette lighter I used it all the time in conjunction with dead-reckoning – best of both worlds.
sooner or later some die-hard fundamentalist will bring up the “but this is how they do it in the RAF
There are many differences:
Road traffic will come to a complete standstill, not even taxi drivers can find their way nowadays without GPS, the ships with food and other supplies will no longer find their harbor, millions of trucks and shipping containers will be lost forever without their GPS coordinates being updated, Armageddon!
100% right, which is why the USA is never going to turn off GPS unless we have a WW3 or similar situation.
I seem to be totally useless at DR, but I’d like to say that for RobertL18C and alioth in slow planes, pure DR (holding headings etc) is harder than in a fast plane. Crosswinds have longer to blow you off track. Pilotage (flying between landmarks) might be easier at lower speed.
If the USAF turns off GPS I’m pretty much doomed and will head to the nearest ocean shoreline for reference. On Sunday I was coming home across some Class B airspace, talking to en route ATC at low altitude having already descended in preparation for switching to tower and landing. I got visually disoriented because I’d actually never been there before! It’s an area on final approach to another airport, a major military field with lots of jet traffic. At that point, with airspace delineation on all sides, GPS was helpful.
what next wrote
I will secretly peek at some device that contains a GPS receiver (iPad, cellphone, …) just to make sure.
Some examiners don’t even peek.
On my rotary PPL skills test, I got the customary diversion on the second leg.
So as I flew to the nearest obvious landmark, I dutifully talked through my estimation of the distance, and the bearing and the wind-correction.
The examiner told me to give him an ETA when I was established on my heading.
Once I did that, he leant forward, punched a direct to into the GPS, looked at it for a moment, and said “That’s fine, let’s get back to the airfield”.
Oh, the irony.
but I’d like to say that for RobertL18C and alioth in slow planes, pure DR (holding headings etc) is harder than in a fast plane
Slow? I prefer the term “good timebuilder” :-)
I don’t think anyone chugging along in a vintage “good timebuilder” does pure DR, it’s more like DR from checkpoint to checkpoint and use each checkpoint to figure some kind of wind correction (of course in an area which you’re familiar with such as near the home airfield you can often get a pretty good wind correction in before you start getting away from where you’re familiar with).
