Um, the label saying “For situational awareness only” and “Use in VFR day only” as required by CS-SC052a called “INSTALLATION OF MOVING-MAP SYSTEMS TO ENHANCE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS”?
They are just silly disclaimers. If you were not supposed to look at it, why spend money on it?
And these days you can use GPS instead of dead reckoning and combine that with pilotage.
How would you do that?
The only scenario I can see of navigating purely visually (no plan) is if following some blindingly obvious land feature e.g. a coastline. Anywhere else, you can and do find ambiguities e.g. a lake which looks like the one you are looking for but isn’t, a canyon (likewise, and a lot more dangerous), a town (likewise), etc. There is no certainty in that which is why a % of people have got lost (and countless pilots and passengers died when they got lost in remote regions) and continue to get lost today.
These days, airspace and regulations aren’t made for pilots using dead reckoning and pilotage. For example, finding this recommended VFR corridor that passes between two nuclear plants without a GPS becomes a 50.000 € question:
https://www.sia.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/dossier/supaipmetro/SUP_2016_011_FR.pdf
Martin wrote:
these days you can use GPS instead of dead reckoning and combine that with pilotage.
100% of my navigation is done that way today, as it is in 2016 for virtually every flight that isn’t IFR, by everybody I know. Obviously the way you do it is to follow the magenta line on the GPS version of the VFR chart, note some features along it, and match them along the way to features you see through the window. If the GPS quits you fall back on the hard copy chart with the same features. At that point if it wasn’t fairly obvious how to get from charted feature to charted feature by looking out the window (minus the benefit of magenta line), I’d land and sort out the GPS. I haven’t used dead reckoning since my minimal exposure to it in training, and wouldn’t bother with it now.
In 2016 it’s virtually the same process as navigating on the roads in an unknown area with GPS. I guess one difference is making sure you have enough fuel to combat winds aloft, and verifying progress against fuel reserves along the way, but that’s not exactly rocket science. I plan 1.5 hrs of fuel when landing to reduce stress, with 2.5 hr legs, but that’s just me. I also land if the VFR weather looks marginal along my route. I’m able to fly in good weather, don’t need to make flying a highly reliable mode of transport, and in the US you don’t pay for landings or face hassles on the ground.
These days, airspace and regulations aren’t made for pilots using dead reckoning and pilotage
Were they ever?
At the proverbial CAA “interview without tea and biscuits” you never got any credit for emulating a WW1 pilot, after you shut down Heathrow Airport for half an hour 
A fairly common outcome was that you got so scared that you tore up your license and never flew again.
Peter wrote:
How would you do that?
I can easily follow rivers, highways or railroads, for example. Smaller roads among fields are also easy. You obviously want to fly above a canyon, not inside it. And you have the GPS to make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be.
Martin wrote:
Simply put, dead reckoning is about calculating your position relative to last known position (which you can do from course, speed and time), pilotage is visual navigation (using features, landmarks, that sort of thing).
Ok, then I got it backwards
Silvaire wrote:
100% of my navigation is done that way today, as it is in 2016 for virtually every flight that isn’t IFR, by everybody I know
The concept of Rally and Precision flying started in the Scandinavian countries between the two world wars. The object was to create a set of skills that combined hunting, flying and cross country skiing.
The sport included flying to some remote location, landing in the mountains, skiing to a predetermined spot, shooting a target and then flying off to the next spot, to repeat the exercise.
Today, only the flying aspects remains, here and here. For people getting bored of flying, this is one way of creating some purpose and fun. Precision flying is a single pilot operation, while rally flaying is a two crew operation (pilot and navigator).
But we are talking reasonable, and most of all very common conditions here. In a place like the UK, surface winds of 15 knots, ceilings of 1500 feet and isolated showers are simply very common, normal weather. Not training for these, and cancelling 9 out of 10 lessons (never heard that anywhere else than in the UK) is simply stupid,
Bosco most schools would be providing dual instruction VFR under these conditions, where have you experienced otherwise?
I have never. In fact, as I said, it looks like it’s yet one more of those UK things (I trained in Germany).
I was saying that pilots ought to be “allowed” (read: trained) to go solo in these conditions…oh wait, I forgot… that instructor’s “exposure”…
I for one respect a young instructor without any financial net worth sticking to common sense rules, it does strike me as financially irrational if a high end PPL with a part time instructor role signs off solos in marginal conditions, but perhaps I need to get out more to appreciate the real world.
… and it strikes me as irrational to hand out pilot licenses to people who have never been exposed to some “every day”, mediocre kind of weather conditions. That would be an exaggeration of the “it’s a license to learn”-mantra.
