Jay Honeck wrote:

After I got tired of that and removed the hood, I asked "so, where are
we".
He laughed and told me that I was supposed to figure it out. So I did.

This seems rather useful to me. Why eliminate it?

You figured out your position using VORs? What decade was this? ;-)

A few years (3? 4?) ago. Did I just use the two VORs or did I use a VOR and
DME? I don't recall which, to be honest. The airplace I used for the
checkride was, I recall, /A.

Who in the world uses VORs
for daily flight anymore?

Out of the "neighborhood", I do.

I know, a lot of you guys do. Despite the fact that you've probably got a
Garmin/Lowrance/AvMap on your yoke that is 500 - 1000 times more accurate
and intuitive than your old 1953 Narco 12, you feel compelled to "follow
the
needle" cuz that's what you're used to doing.

Actually, GPS was a part of my IR training. It was just annoyingly bad luck
that I took the checkride in a /A instead of /G. Fortunately, I'd a good
CFII. The /A had an ADF; the /G didn't. Naturally, though, the DE
required an NDB approach of me. No problem.

If I'd two GPSs, perhaps it would be different. But since I've but one, I
track my location with VORs too.

I'd like to think I'd do that even with two GPSs. I've the tools in the
airplane; it's silly to waste them. It's more to do, but this also means
I've some "slack" if I ever grow overloaded (and I'm "exercising" to help
avoid that).

[...]
Which isn't to say that tracking a VOR isn't kind of fun, and (for those
of us at the bottom of the aviation food chain) still necessary for IFR
flight. But for regular, VFR navigation, VORs have pretty much outlived
their usefulness.

The planes that are often rented to VFR-only pilots are often as historic as
radio ranges, no laugh?

[...]

In five more years everything will be GPS based, and
interpreting a VOR will be like knowing how to gauge your position by
listening to two tones in your headset.

That's a separate issue. I'm not entirely comfortable with GPS-only, given
the ease with which it can be jammed or otherwise impacted. Why not have
the new "GPS" units dual capable, perhaps LORAN and GPS? From a user
perspective, we'd never see a difference, but it would offer greater
resilience.

These new units could even use VORs. It's not the navaid so much as the UI,
I think, that makes it a big deal.

- Andrew