Peter wrote:
Unfortunately, these include the skills test (the checkride). You can’t just pull out a satnav and fly the skills test with it…
I thought so, but on my PPL checkride the examiner pulled his 496 out and asked me if I could see the screen well enough. The dead reckoning was covered by him asking questions like “what town is that”.
Hopefully some other people will also share their experiences, especially recent ones.
Also, the reference Airborne_Again quoted is quite specific and to me sets GNSS on par, if not above, VOR/ADF – and rightly so.
See page 65 of the AMC document.
local copy
Hmm, for the syllabus for microlights, where I am instructing, navigation will now be GPS based, exclusively. I haven’t seen the new syllabus yet, it won’t be made available for another 2-3 months, but that’s the information we have got. The syllabus is about 70-80% in common with LAPL, but made less so now with GPS based VFR navigation.
I don’t know. I think paper map and compass is a nice skill to have. But if you never use it, what is that skill worth? Its probably better to focus on the skills and equipment you do use and make the best out of it.
Peter wrote:
Well, yes, one can always make brief and narrow-context statements to show somebody is “wrong”
Well. you were wrong! You made a clear statement that GPS is not “officially” part of the GPS syllabus, and even that for this reason instructors hide their own GPSes. I don’t know what British instructors usually do with their GPSs, but I know that they — officially — are expected to teach GPS navigation.
It would be helpful to mention this to EASA CPL examiners. It is still the convention in glass cockpits:
1. The first route sector is pure deduced reckoning, stopwatch, drift lines and no feature crawling, or radio nav.
2. The second sector allows terrestrial radio nav to identify the diversion using cross bearings and DME
3. The GPS flight plan is not used, and the MFD may be on the engine page. GPS bearings or magenta lines not used.
The candidate obviously has to manage the threat of controlled airspace, NOTAMs and other threats.
At least the good ol’ days’ practice of finding obscure features using a quarter mill chart seem to have evolved. The unplanned diversion sector used to be under IF sometimes, which was quite fun using just cross bearings.
