Right to the end.. you've still got this fixation that it's modern VS old.. when it should be, modern AND old... right back to a compass/eyeball/chart too. These are all important tools.. one does not mean that you foresake any of the others..EDIT: .. as for what's mysterious to me ? I'm an instrument rated pilot with gobs of IMC time :rolleyes:EDIT EDIT: .. if you understood how to plot and fly a direct course by radial intersection waypoints.. you wouldn't keep making references to VOR "hopscotch".

They can learn all they want. I don't care. But if all you learned was from a flightsim forum, and a few instructors who frequent these forums to push old school............then you'd never know about a better method. Afterall, within flightsim forums, GPS is just a toy, a bore, and a backup. In the real world, this isn't the case at all.L.Adamson

Who said anything about NOT teaching GPS usage? Who said GPS was not a better, newer, fancier way of doing things? You need to be capable of competently using everything that you may be faced with. From pilotage to LNAVing if that is the scope of equipment that you may use. If you fly a plane with a moving map and don't know how to use the box, you are just as unsafe as a GPS cripple who is forced to use pilotage and ded reckoning. The owner of a Seminole I used to instruct in would send people who were interested in the KLN89B aspect of that plane my way because he said I was his "guru" on the GPS. Ironically, I am probably the only person in this discussion who is actually *required* to use the GPS when he flies. It's the primary means we use to navigate by in the EMB-145. I use it everyday. We fly IFR routes that require GPS or some form of area navigation, like RNAV SIDS, RNAV STARS and approaches. So I am actually required by the FAA to use GPS. So do I ignore my VOR skills? No, because our minimum requirement is radio navigation. We are allowed to fly if the GPS is inoperative and use conventional radio navigation instead. So when we take our recurrent checkrides, we spend the first few minutes proving to the instructor that we can punch something correctly into the box and then point the plane in that direction before the real fun of the session begins...the non-precision approaches using the old school conventional radios. Why bother? GPS is easier, safer and primary, right? Because the regulations allow us to operate at a more rudimentary level. We need to ensure that we have the proper skills to operate at that rudimentary equipment level. Now, we don't practice pilotage beause we are required to be capable of at least radio navigation, or the plane does not fly.You however, operate under Part 91, where all you are required to have is a compass and a map. An instructor will be remiss if he did not turn off your moving map so that you can prove to him that you are capable of finding your way home without it. You need to have pilotage skills. Because the regulations allow you to operate that rudimentarily. You need to be able to operate your plane from the most rudimentary level that the regulations allow, to the most advanced level that you choose to equip it for, equally safely and competently.So you need to stop jumping into these threads where student pilots are asking about what they should do and then asserting that they need to know nothing but GPS. You've been warned by the moderators here before about that. It is irresponsibly bad advice that you give, L.Adamson.

And then theres this....gives new meaning into 'CFIT" LOLhttp://www.msnbc.msn...ce=home_oneline

Exactly the point for using mark 1 eyeballs "supported" by map and then GPS. Just how many times has your car based GPS told you to turn right when there is no right turn. Told you to turn into a one way street in the wrong direction.I have never said that I would never use GPS. But I use it in the legal and common sense manner as prescribed by the UK CAA and Euro Control. In VFR I use my eyes first. Does what I see correlate with my map? If there is some doubt then I can check the GPS. In the UK I can be put in prison and the keys thrown away just for having an out of date chart. Your GPS? how often is that updated? And does it really clearly match in detail what one sees on the ground?Certain people in this thread would clearly have difficulty in navigating if their trusty GPS companion decided to go on holiday. Pilots are trained to fly and navigate by the seat of their pants because it is necessary. Almost total reliance on electronic sources is a recipe for disaster. Many airlines are rethinking their pilot training programmes just because of this. And this lack of pilot retraining is just one of the many factors that may have contributed to the Air France disaster over the Atlantic. We may never know for sure, but one theory clearly suggests that whoever was at the controls may have forgotten how to fly the plane without IAS information. Beeing too busy sorting out the computer error messages (as were the Qantas crew out of Singapore!!).vololiberista

Fine............I know how to fly without a moving map. So do many others. But, why would I choose to? If it's for the sake of "old school", and being less informed, then I choose not to. L.Adamson

Because chummy IT'S THE LAW!!!! You choose to use your GPS as your principle navigation aid. That would put you in deep deep sh one t in the "rest of the world" You simply don't seem to understand that a "pilot" flies the aeroplane. Not a computer! Said pilot is allegedly a human being which means HE uses his senses. That is eyes, ears touch etc. "His" primary computer is the gunge between his ears. Everything else is an aid and is secondary. Until a human pilot is taken completely out of the loop, the law of common sense will prevail and will never change however many fancy satellites are put into orbit waiting to be disabled by malfunctions, terrorists, foreign powers or aliens!vololiberista

Beeing too busy sorting out the computer error messages (as were the Qantas crew out of Singapore!!).vololiberista

There was nothing wrong with what the Qantas crew did. Yes, you do have to "sort" them out. But none of them are to be thrown out as irrelevant. When we sort out multiple EICAS messages, it is to determine which one is the root problem and which ones are a result of the root problem. Not only did they lose an engine, but they had also lost a hydraulic system and fuel transfer capabilities. All of which had to be dealt with. In a situation like that, haste will often not only result in waste, but most likely death. As a result of the engine failure, they lost flight control capabilites and had CG problems. And before attempting physical contact wiht something hard, such as the ground, they needed to ensure that each of those problems are addressed so that a safe landing can be made considering all things that need to be done differently in their reduced state of functionality. If they landed immediately and went off the runway and balled up the plane, the first question they would have been asked will be why did they not run all the appropriately checklists? Not to mention that only after 110 minutes airborne, did they finally burn off enough fuel so that their landing roll was within 100m of the runway they had available to them. Unless the plane is actually uncontrollably falling out of the sky, you stay up at altitude where it is safe, where you are not rushed, and where you can take time to think about everything that needs to be considered, that you enlist the help of all those people on the ground who are there to help you, so that when the aircraf actually makes physical contact with the earth, it becomes a non-event. Just this last week, on approach descent, we had ding-ding-ding and about half a dozen eicas messages appear when one of the boxes failed on me. My FO pulled out the QRH and flipped to the message that was listed at the top of the screen and began to run that abnormal procedure. I told him to wait. Look at those messages. What just happened? I pointed him to the message in the middle of the stack, which in my judgement was the cause of all the other messages. So he ran that procedure first that directed him to switch to an alternate capability. Several of the other messages disappeared at that point and we were left with just one other message to deal with. Then he ran the procedure for the remaining message and we were done. The messages do not lie. They do tell you what is wrong. Until the planes get smarter, the job of the pilot is to interpret the messages to determine what the root problem was and how many actual issues need to be dealt with. Unless the plane is falling out of the sky there is no need to rush through or ignore the checklists.

I'm not saying they didn't do the right thing. Though, they did have to manually decide which computer messages were relevant and which were not. In a more urgent situation I'm sure they would have concentrated much more on the flying. They were also lucky if I remember correctly to have extra crew to help with the computer error messages!!As was a recent Alitalia A330 returning over the Atlantic at night. Their supernumary was able to concentrate on the flight manuel whilst one flew the a/c and the remaining crew tried to sort out the problem by torchlight. The glass cockpit having turned itself completely "off" for 15 minutes!vololiberista