In defence of deduced reckoning

so my challenge to DR fanboys still stands.

Your treat?

I would consider that dead reckoning is a basic piloting skill. It can be used for cross country flight, but is standard requirement for relatively short distances for IFR flight. For example, a hold involves three legs that are DR and one that uses course guidance. In the US, some of the longer airways and Jet routes have portions which navigation is unavailable (Called a Navigation Gap) and DR is used to the next segment where course guidance is then provided. The US TERPS permits gaps of up to 65 NM at FL450. The WAAS GPS navigators also support a dead reckoning mode during Enroute and Oceanic modes. The aircraft position is based on the last valid GPS position and then estimated from that point onward. Obviously, changing true airspeed, altitude, heading, or winds will effect the estimated position in this mode.

Interesting… so he didn’t have a sextant and used DR entirely:

As What Next points out, a lot of selection bias in these accounts. It was amazing how so many pilots navigated on what now would be seen as almost no nav instruments. But a ridiculously large number died.

They did such a lot with so little in the way of nav aids.

Maybe. But as was said before: for every pilot who succeeded and lived long enough to write a book about his adventure, ten nameless ones (*) eventually disappeared without a trace over the ocean or some wilderness.

I have come late to this thread so I am not going to go through the fors and against arguments over “Ded” reckoning.. I would ask you to read “The flight of the Mew Gull”, by Alex Henshaw. Ok it was the 1930’s and airspace restrictions didn’t apply, but the basic concept of DR is vividly potrayed in this gripping account of his epic flight to South Africa and back. If that whets your appitite you could also try “Solo to Sydney” by (Sir) Francis Chichester. They did such a lot with so little in the way of nav aids.

Following that argument, it is interesting to note that Amy Johnson was an excellent mechanic.

As I’ve written before IMHO Lindbergh’s biggest challenge was the engine running for long enough (MTBF was tens of hours in those days) plus staying awake. Not navigation, on that route.

While Lindbergh did manage to do it the number of other people who died attempting it would indicate he’s rather the exception to the rule… so my challenge to DR fanboys still stands.

This Link suggests that Lindbergh was lucky with his winds aloft.

Even so, he was an exceptional aviator by all accounts, and must have been flying a very accurate heading.

edit:
Actually, if he was on a Great Circle route, I suppose that should read “… flying his headings very accurately”