Ibra wrote:
So you will need GPS or DME+VOR to fly Cub VFR over open water in Class D under Part NCO?
There is not definite answer to that as EASA regulations have gone away from imposing specific equipment and moved to requiring “adequate” equipment for each flight.
Practically you are most likely to plan such a flight along GPS fixes and put them into the flight plan. In that case you need a GPS equipped in the plane to be compliant as soon as you can’t navigate with visual reference to the ground.
If your plane does not have a GPS but a VOR and DME (or even VOR/VOR only) it might still be possible to plan the flight with fixes defined by those and even file a flight plan with these – but that might be unpractical these days.
I would definitely have an ILS capability – even if there is no autopilot. One day it may save your life.
If using tablets for navigation, make sure the satellite signal is solid. Too many tablet scenarios are marginal, with people losing the signal. I use a tablet for VFR flight but it runs via a rooftop antenna feeding a bluetooth GPS receiver and the tablet connects to the bluetooth.
I had my iphone put me all over the map during a 2hr straight flight. Really strange. Garmin was receiving perfectly.
Yes for the low vis day/over water legs/on top legs, I would rather have a VOR. It gives you a localizer too for the really crappy days.
And there will always be VORs and ILSs. Less but some will remain.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Ibra wrote: Why one can’t use a paper map for primary VFR above the clouds?One could – at least in Airspaces in which ATC doesn’t give you a track to a fix (i.e. Golf and Echo). However, the art of navigating with ASI, Compass and Chronometer alone has become somewhat rusty over the last decades …
But how would I navigate with a map when I can’t see the surface features? Take for example the situation that I depart in VMC, encounter a solid cloud deck below enroute for an hour or so, and land again in VMC: as far as I understand the equipment requirements, I need something that is adequate for my planned flight path, and out of sight of visual landmarks, the only thing left is either an accurate INS, or radio navigation (be it land- or space-based).
Jujupilote wrote:
I have a few hours now of VFR XC with a GPS175. It is nice, but 0% needed for VFR. Or maybe 1% when you phone/tablet looses GPS. The Garmin reception is rock solid. When on top, having a VOR or aviation GPS is a plus.
How happy are you otherwise with the device? Practically speaking, I think that having two different tablet devices each running a moving map (and I would throw the Aera into the same basket as my Nexus or iPad) should be redundant enough apart from actual GPS outage or jamming, in which case the 175 would not provide any advantage either.
Jujupilote wrote:
If you can get a 430 for the price of a new 255, I would go for the 430. That’s 3 capabilities for the price of 2. And its 8.33.
They’re getting rarer these days it seems; I found an offer for a 28V one which is of no use unfortunately …
The GPS175 has a great look, map is super fluid, touchscreen is very good quality etc… The autofill in the FPL page is smart too.
But first the screen is really small, you can see the plane symbol, the magenta line, sea and land, and that’s it. It is barely a moving map, more like a 430 in color. I guess the GTN650 is the same.
Second, on the map page, you only have 4 configurable fields. There is no default nav page. So you get limited information.
Basically, it was designed for US IR pilots who have 2 nav/com units and want to get GNSS with LPV, or to act as a position source to a G500 or G3X.
For the VFR moving maps, they did the aera series. Are they worth the money, I am not sure.
My personal conclusion is that VOR+tablet is the best combination.
Getting VOR today is probably best done with an old unit. As an example, in this plane, with the GPS175, they kept the KX155 for its VOR and added a trig for 8,33.
King KN53. Would be cheap and can come with glideslope ability. The later ones can look quite clean and are FM immune.
But then I would also want a DME.
Garmin GNS400?
Sebastian_H wrote:
But how would I navigate with a map when I can’t see the surface features? Take for example the situation that I depart in VMC, encounter a solid cloud deck below enroute for an hour or so, and land again in VMC:
Call me an old guy, but in my flight training I’ve learned to fly with compass and stopwatch only. If you take the wind before you loose sight of the ground and don’t change altitude so much, wind is quite predictable even over an hour time (if your plane is not too fast). And if you really fly accurately, you might wonder how precisely you end up at the pre calculated spot. You obviously need visual landmarks and highways/rivers, etc. when you see ground again to make sure you know where you are. But can be done!
An hour is an extreme case for that type of flying but 30 min w/o visual reference is no problem.Jujupilote wrote:
My personal conclusion is that VOR+tablet is the best combination.
The question is if you do it for practical flying or for compliance. For practical flying a tablet is obviously a great solution – but it doesn’t help you with compliance if your flight plan is defined by GPS fixes…
Of course you don’t have to fly with FPL or clerances using GPS fixes 
but this has nothing to do with being able to see the surface, how on earth will you be able to identify TUKVI on FPL or follow ATC VFR cleranace to LAVRI even when you see the surface?
On Cub, I used 2 tablets and hand held Yasu 750 (COM & NAV), flying above clouds is no issue, finding wide hole at the destination is the real problem, this easily solved by having 7h fuel endurance , if you can afford an ILS or GPS for approaches get one, navigating over clouds en-route is the same as over open water or deserted land, even without GPS (I switch mine off after leaving UK CAS) you keep cosntant heading and wait untill you see surface landmarks !
Cub while VFR only is not slippery aeroplane and can circle tight, I am not sure about RVs but I had the impression they go really fast in clouds and worth having proper ILS & GPS capability and proper IFR pannel and practice
And yes it is worth it up there ! (1000ft from clouds was WIP )
Malibuflyer wrote:
Call me an old guy, but in my flight training I’ve learned to fly with compass and stopwatch only. If you take the wind before you loose sight of the ground and don’t change altitude so much, wind is quite predictable even over an hour time (if your plane is not too fast). And if you really fly accurately, you might wonder how precisely you end up at the pre calculated spot.
I just finished with my PPL training a year ago, so I still remember dead reckoning :) And to be honest, inside the extremely easy German airspace it might even be not too much of an issue to fly EHRD-EDNX with map, watch, and compass; my “standard” route to my family in the south of Germany is just heading out of the Netherlands near Geilenkirchen, stay west of Köln, west of Frankfurt, and done; but looking e.g. at a route towards Annecy I find the Belgian and French airspace much less easy to navigate purely on dead reckoning alone.
Malibuflyer wrote:
The question is if you do it for practical flying or for compliance. For practical flying a tablet is obviously a great solution – but it doesn’t help you with compliance if your flight plan is defined by GPS fixes…
Yeah, that’s why I raised the question in the first place. Practically speaking, I nowadays draw mostly a straight line to my destination, pick some five-letter points along the path every half hour or so, and rubberband (using said five-letter points) around less accessible airspace (restricted/prohibited swathes, Frankfurt TMA). With the club’s planes that all had a 430 (or GTN750 in one case), that meant that I could easily plug the same route into the GPS as backup and stay legal if above solid cloud layer. Now with our RV-7, I am thinking how to achieve a practical and easy way to comply with the Part-NCO equipment requirements.
Ibra wrote:
Cub while VFR only is not slippery aeroplane and can circle tight, I am not sure about RVs but I had the impression they go really fast in clouds and worth having proper ILS & GPS capability and proper IFR pannel and practice
I had huge fun doing the tailwheel endorsement on a Super Cub, it’s a huge advantage to be able to go slowly and put her down in almost any spot! But as you say, the RV-7 cruises leisurely along at 155 KTAS, and I intend to use it for longer trips as well. Since I have to convince my co-owner (who is doing purely local flights) as well, it seems at the moment the most practical way forward to enlarge the cutouts of the current radio stack to accomodate our old SL-30, and buy a decent audio panel as well (I am fed up with the crap intercom of the Icom). Mendelssohn sells recertified GNS-430 (not W) for about 5k Euros; compared to shelling out around 1.5k for a new GMA-245, that is a lot of Avgas to improve proficiency.
LeSving wrote:
Might as well install MAGNAV GPS is a thing of the past.
Interesting! Probably not too easy to get high-resolution magnetic anomaly maps, though. My bigger hope is that the advances in solid-state gyroscopes and accelerometers might in a few years suffice to create a cheap and reliable INS as backup solution. Friends at my old university cobbled together something using currently-available COTS hardware that gets additional updates for an extended Kalman filter from GPS from time to time, but it could easily also use a VOR bearing (or DME lines of position if there would be an economical DME transceiver available for GA). At the moment, drift rate of the gyros is to large, unfortunately.
