Not a bad collection of sentiments The only thing it seems to be missing is any sense of which body its views represent. Once downloaded, any connection to EuroGA is lost (I assume it is a EuroGA paper?)
It isn’t – the writer is an instructor and it was originally published by Gasco; see the links above.
The late Dave Philips also wrote, a number of times, that GPS can legally be fully incorporated in the PPL, with the mere exception of ~ two exercises. You then “just” need an examiner who plays ball with that, which means the CAA has to officially sanction it (and they have always refused).
Nigel it is my individual view and doesn’t necessarily represent any specific organisation I’m involved in – it is intended as a discussion piece and shared here and other mediums – I’d be delighted if any organisation wished to issue it under their own cover though.
Might be worth incorporating your name and qualifications on the paper – just a thought. Seen as a disconnected PDF, it has less value.
Great paper!
I would add one more item to the argument for change: Because the effective use of these aids is not taught, bad habits can develop – the main one being “heads down” and flying the aircraft symbol on the map, instead of maintaining a good scan which includes outside, some instruments, and the moving map.
On the practicalities – I would make one change: The “visual leg” should remain the first leg of the skills test.
So all that would change is that now GPS is allowed during those legs in addition to / instead of legacy aids.
Other than that this is slightly simpler, I would back this up with the following
Reading few recent threads related to GA in the UK, I have a feeling that some things are lagging behind the rest of Europe. Discussing GPS usage in 2019 seems a bit odd, especially when agency and instructors object it. GA in Croatia has suffered serious decline from 2008 mainly due to financial reasons but at least regulation doesn’t make things harder. CAA sometimes is not easy for 9A (Croatian) registered aircrafts but the problems are usually easy to resolve. Visitors usually witness cooperative ATC with full service delivered to all traffic (even during busy summertime) and friendly airports. Even (rare) ramp checks are done fast, professionally and without much hassle.
Emir wrote:
Reading few recent threads related to GA in the UK, I have a feeling that some things are lagging behind the rest of Europe
Agree. Looks like the whole idea in the UK is to keep GA “out”, while other countries figure out ways to integrate GA. One has to wonder; is this what the UK GA really wants, or is this something the “others” want, or is it simply something that has “happened” slowly over time and everyone thinks this is how things shall be ? Or is it a result of too many patches on patches to kind of fix things somehow ? It doesn’t look very healthy.
From here
Peter wrote:
Instructors keep a satnav “covert” because the PPL syllabus doesn’t (officially) teach GPS.
Yes it does. AMC1 to FCL.210, Exercise 18c. It is actually listed before both navigation with VOR and NDB.
If instructors don’t teach GPS then they are not following the syllabus.
Well, yes, one can always make brief and narrow-context statements to show somebody is “wrong” 
GPS can be used in practically the entire PPL course, except 1 or 2 specific exercises.
Unfortunately, these include the skills test (the checkride). You can’t just pull out a satnav and fly the skills test with it…
And this is one part of the problem. It usually takes such a lot of time to teach dead reckoning and the silly circular slide rule, and with the PPL not having any specific ground school time, and with the nav exams having questions which rely on the slide rule being used (i.e. generating appropriate rounding errors), a lot of time is wasted on this part, so instructors are forced to not encourage GPS.
Throw in a lot of PPLs “being of a generation, or background, which is not familiar with IT concepts” and you have a lot of GPS users who make mistakes with it. The people on EuroGA are mostly IT-savvy (if they weren’t they would not be on a forum) but they are not the entire PPL demographic (in terms of either/both age and general involvement with IT).
But, anyway, I am sure that nearly all infringers would not have infringed if they were doing the flight in their armchair at home.
