It's true DR works in IMC because one is flying a wind corrected heading for X minutes, etc.
However, where does the wind forecast come from?
The old pioneering navigators of centuries past (well, those who lived to tell the tale; probably a tiny minority) got to where they got partly because if you sail west from Old Europe, along the equator plus or minus about 40 degrees of latitude (easy to manage by measuring the sun's angle at mid-day) you can hardly not hit America, so long as your food holds out, the wind keeps blowing, and the crew doesn't do a mutiny. But I think above all because they were really very very good at it. We would all be great navigators if we did it for just 10 years, 24/7.
The WW2 pilots who could fly 200nm across open sea and find an unlit aircraft carrier (well, again, those who made it) were also very good at it. They could tell the surface wind by looking at the sea state...
But I think that these people
I remember reading a blog (in Flying magazine, or plane and pilot, I guess) about ferrying a Malibu across the Atlantic using just dead reckoning (and an A/P) and just being off the track for about 10 miles when they crossed the coast.
just got very very lucky. 10nm after 2500nm is, if my trig is right...
arcsin (10/2500) = 0.229 radians = 1.43 degrees.
(one gets the same answer by using the small angle approximation of x = sin(x) i.e. simply doing 360/250=1.44)
There is no GA autopilot and slaved compass system, at any price, which can hold a pilot-specified heading to 1.4 degrees.
In fact it is really hard to calibrate a compass system to within 1 degree. You need only a hangar half a mile away, or a forgotten cable in the ground, and it's off. And that's before one gets aircraft effects; for example my liquid compass swings a few degrees between engine idle and cruise RPM; presumably due to the alternator charging current change. There is little point in swinging a GA compass with the engine at idle. The KCS55 slaved compass system is better because the magnetometer is in the wingtip and I normally swing that on the ground very very carefully and then adjust the liquid compass from the EHSI, in flight.
There is no wind forecast which will be similarly accurate enough, unless one is flying at 10000kt in which case no possible surface wind can matter 
I have no issue with people flying as they wish (and all nav methods are legal for VFR) and for practical reasons to do with the PPL being a "basic general purpose product" I can see DR/pilotage need to be in there, but if I was running a business whose customers all have to fly somewhere reasonably far and which gets paid according to how many make it there, I would teach them to use GPS
Not only would I not like to fly without GPS, even with a GNS430W I wouldn't fly without my Aera...in case of electrical failure...
AQ
I never said they didn't do it.
I just said they were lucky
A couple of other bits in there:
It was pretty simple stuff. When the radios weren’t obliging, DR/pilotage worked most of the time, and it even directed Lindbergh to Paris 83 years ago.
83 years ago, there was no CAS and you got a hero's welcome just for landing somewhere, anywhere (on dry land). That is not relevant today.
I never said this was hard. To hit Ireland from the USA, for example, you need to hold a heading within about 10 degrees. The biggest risk was an engine (or other mechanical) failure. That is not relevant today, either.
It even routed me to Shannon, Ireland, from Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, 33 years ago on my first ferry flight.
33 years ago, flying was very different too, with much less CAS and, from what I hear, almost no enforcement.
As I said, I never said that visual nav doesn't work. It would be pretty easy to just fly from the UK, across France, Italy, Croatia, to Greece, for example. Just pick good weather, climb to 10k feet (can see about 50 miles on a good day) and off you go. Especially anywhere where is water/coasts, navigation is dead easy. The Alps... you can see them from the moon without binoculars
What will get you today is enforcement of airspace. You never hear any mention of this in the old flying reports. Why? I reckon it's because there was no enforcement, or the pilot didn't give a damn, and by the time they started looking for him he had landed in another country.
Or he had some "encounters" but isn't writing about them. There is a great bloke I know who tells great stories about his heavy jet flying career ("interesting" cargos, mostly). All 100% true, I am sure. What he doesn't talk about was the little bit which terminated his last employment.
The other aspect of all this, which I feel fairly strongly about, is that GA shares its airspace with a lot of people who have a lot of political clout. If it wasn't for ICAO (which is not without its faults) the airlines would have just killed GA in most countries. GA lives on borrowed time. That time will hopefully outlast all of us but it would be better to not abuse it. Every time somebody ends up overhead Gatwick, etc, "we" end up looking really stupid. ATC in N Europe are normally quite professional but the stories about the daily exploits of selected GA clowns are pretty depressing. And ATC are very powerful in the regulatory establishment. We all have a duty to not do things which make life hard for everybody else in GA.
By all means, dress up in a WW2 leather jacket, goggles, gloves, but you have to have a reliable means of keeping yourself laterally and vertically in Class G.
It would also really really help if you didn't fly through the ILS path of a Class G airport...
Things aren't as simple as they used to be, which is why I use the best tools for the job.
One point has not been mentioned. When the excrement hits the fan, the "nearest airport function" of the GPS can literally be a life saver. A friend of mine had a partial engine failure with the result that there was not enough power to maintain level flight and there was no nice landable areas anywhere near. As soon as the engine starting gagging he hit the nearest airport as he started the cause check. The GPS said the nearest airport was 90 deg to the left. The next nearest was 90 deg to the right but 4 miles further. Since the wind was on the nose when the engine started acting up, the GS to either would be the same. He immediately turned to the closest airport and just made it. If he flaffed about with a "traditional" navigation diversion he figures by the time he figured out which was closer and done the math he would have been out of range. Additionally because he got continuous instantaneous distance, time to waypoint and GS he was able to keep continual situational awareness and evaluate the probability of coming up short and planning for it.
Another low time pilot I know got caught in some sudden ugly weather. With vis down to 1 mi a few turns trying to decide what to do got him disoriented and starting to panic. Again the nearest airport function showed an airport he could not see but was only 5 miles away. It allowed him to fly straight to it and get on the ground.
Also interesting that 20 of the 396 reports cited "over-reliance on GPS" as a cause...I hope this data isn't interpreted at face value...as if use of GPS somehow increases the likelihood of a bust...
Does this mean they think that had they been reading a map they wouldn't have busted the airspace? I would suppose that those who cited this as a cause should have more correctly cited "incompetence in using a GPS"
AQ
Of course, five minutes after I pressed Submit below I realized that I may have been a bit harsh given that some GPS units don't display Class A the same as other airspace (or even at all)...in which case reading a map is most definitely required!
The traditional non-depiction of Class A on GPS maps that run Jeppesen data might indeed be the reason, but they haven't said so, so one can only guess.
I am always suspicious of phrases like that, because they tend to indicate the writer is not a pilot in the "modern" era (late 20th century or later).
BTW you can edit your post for up to 1hr afterwards, or something like that.
I am always suspicious of phrases like that, because they tend to indicate the writer is not a pilot in the "modern" era (late 20th century or later).
Exactly, as if compass and stopwatch provided more SA.
More likely lazy navigation taking place with an active GPS unit in the plane.
Personally I would now be uncomfortable flying GA in the UK without a GPS (and have two fitted for redundancy). It is an admittedly romantic notion to fiddle with a CRP computer and calculate 1 in 60 drift during flight, however new technology should be equally embraced. In particular the increasing decommissioning of en route VORs and airfield NDBs in the UK makes IMC navigation without a GPS haphazard.
The ability to read a chart, especially for landmarks, is a wholly different argument. That remains an important skill for the GA pilot.
