I’ll just confirm that our community is overly conservative regarding GPS. I mostly fly final checks with PPL students, and most tell me that they consider using the GPS cheating – a view that can only come from their instructors. One student asked to use to Aero 500, I said go ahead, but in two seconds he was lost in the “nearest” menu and gave up flying the plane while fighting the GPS. Apparently he knew the G430 and thought he could transfer straight to the Aero. And he had never had real instruction.
Apparently our ATO have had our EASA lesson plans approved by the national authority without any mention of GPS in either theory or flying syllabi.
CKN wrote:
During training, the 152’s only had a super basic GPS
I learned at the same school as CKN (more or less at the same time) but with different instructors. One of them was eager to show me how the GNC250xl worked in the 152s, the other frowned when I mentioned anything regarding GPS.
One question I have is… are you allowed to use GPS for your solo cross country exercises? For me this was quite a stressful exercise, basically because the airfield was in the busy airspace around London. At the time I wasn’t even aware some of the 152s had GPS. I was only shown how to use it afterwards. If I was allowed to operate the basic 250 it would have been a safe fallback option.
In reality using the GPS is really easy and shouldn’t even take much instructor time. If I was the instructor I would tell my students something like:
“This is the GNS430. It has the worst UI ever designed, but it’s really simple to follow the magenta line once you enter the waypoints.
This is how to switch it on, this is how to enter an waypoint. This is how you follow the line.
You can download it’s manual online and you can even download the simulator. Study it at home and next time show me how to use it”
There… problem solved!
Peter wrote:
If an aircraft is GPS equipped, how can you send a student off on a basic solo nav trip and trust the to do it traditionally rather than turn on the GPS and cheat?
Is really the purpose of “a basic solo nav trip” to test students traditional navigating skills? Does it really matter how he did it (besides how he did)? I would expect any installed equipment to be a fair game. And if you want to evaluate these skills, you can do it while you’re there. Or you can place a camera in the cockpit – not a bad tool for debriefing. Anyway, such issues (banned equipment installed in an aircraft, intended for other uses) are encountered in competitions and there are solutions (besides removal, which is undesirable).
@geekyflyer – indeed and it’s thanks to our flight to Old Buck that I got to “play” with the 430, but I think you picked it up more readily than I did!
I think the question put to me
Can you back this up with some recent data? I have a problem imagining UK FTOs all violating Part FCL training requirements. It’s clearly spelled out.
has been very adequately answered 
Actually I have never met anybody ever who was taught GPS in his/her PPL – in Europe.
There is a well known UK instructor, who I know reads EuroGA all the time so he might pop in and post, who once posted on one of the UK sites a detailed breakdown of which nav exercises in the JAA/EASA PPL could not be taught using GPS. It was only 1 or 2 of them. So nothing legal prevents the full incorporation of GPS into the PPL training.
Pilots still need to demonstrate dead reckoning during the training and during the skills test.
I think the training business is doing GA a huge dis-service by this. It is very difficult to fly anywhere non-trivial using dead reckoning. Obviously it’s possible (yes, Lindbergh managed to find the W coast of Ireland, from the US east coast, so he held the heading to within about 10 degrees for god knows how many hours) but it is such a high workload process that most new pilots will not enjoy the flight. So no wonder they chuck it in. We have had so many threads on this here already (“who do people give up” etc). So no wonder GA is shrinking… People are being taught near-useless skills.
How to solve this is not trivial however. The Ipad products are too opaque (too feature-packed and too “paradigm”-packed) for most people I meet. They could learn it but from what I see, few bother. They could be incorporated into the PPL, but which one? It cannot be legislated because it would be unfair to the others. The only nice and clear one is JeppFD-VFR which is about 300 quid/year which is a LOT.
I think the slide rule and the many hours spent teaching it should be dropped totally. It is straight out of WW2. That would free up maybe 10hrs of ground time for GPS training.
As ever, mentoring is the way forward but you have to find the “customers” before they chuck it all in.
BTW, I didn’t write
If an aircraft is GPS equipped, how can you send a student off on a basic solo nav trip and trust the to do it traditionally rather than turn on the GPS and cheat?
and the other text I posted in italics. They were clearly intended to be quotes from others – people who for whatever reason didn’t want to get into posting them here.
The FAA deals with this by allowing the PPL examiner to require the demonstration of all equipment installed in the test aircraft. So if there is a G1000, you have to show you can load a route into it, etc. This has enabled the US PPL scene to modernise, gradually. I suggested this to the previously mentioned CAA head of licensing (adding that it would be a smart move which would introduce GPS into PPL training without the flight training industry giving the CAA a hard time 
) and he just smiled and said he will “take it away”… He retired soon afterwards, no doubt with a fat performance bonus and definitely with a massive pension.
Martin wrote:
I would expect any installed equipment to be a fair game.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to limit the student to “guaranteed to be installed” equipment?
The logic being that the PPL allows me to fly any plane, which may, or may not, have a certain “above standard” piece of equipment installed. Yes, I know, I can always only pick planes with a G1000, but that is not realistic. I, for what it’s worth, don’t feel I was unfairly penalized by not having the “right” to use a GPS, I’d rather have the school teach me to use the minimum stuff well, than the extra. It has been said that getting the PPL is really getting a license to learn… Am I ever…
If regulators want people to learn GPS, then add it to the private pilot practical test standards. Micromanaging syllabi as always is a waste of time. Once the schools (or independent instructors under those most enlightened regimes that allow them) figure out that the examiner has a PTS and is using it, the ‘problem’ will be rapidly solved. If the examiner doesn’t test to the PTS, fire him.
As for using different kinds of GPS, as with an transition training the pilot has to take responsibility for flying the plane. If he needs help he should ask for it from others in his community. It’s not the communities responsibility to delve into his business, only to help when asked.
If regulators want people to learn GPS, then add it to the private pilot practical test standards
I was editing the above into my post above while you typed this
THAT is the only way to do this.
There could be some issues with promoting and preserving the ability to take the Private check ride in any plane, including those with minimal equipment. The simple solution to that is to let the student demonstate GPS use with any type of unit, portables included. Once a new private pilot is flying the same or similar planes around VFR, he’ll likely be using a portable anyway because they are best for that job. It took me probably 15 minutes to learn the basics of Foreflight, and I think students can learn it easily.
I do think it’s very important for private pilot test standards to maintain the cost to learn flying as low as possible, and avoid driving towards an ivory tower of plane and pilot capability that a substantial fraction of people won’t have use for again. OTOH I think students including broke teenagers and the like can reasonably buy a tablet and suction cup bracket much like they bought an E-6B, and they will use it. The issue then becomes paying for the GPS software but a one year subscription is not that expensive.
I learned to fly in three aircraft.
Two Robin R2112s – one of which didn’t have a GPS, the other had a 430
A Robin DR400 which had a Skymap III.
GPS use was demonstrated informally but didn’t form any part of the syllabus.
geekyflyer wrote:
are you allowed to use GPS for your solo cross country exercises?
How would anyone ever know, and what could anyone do to stop you?
