On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 04:29:32 GMT, Paul Folbrecht wrote:

Hi Paul,

I'm a new IFR pilot, having gotten my ticket end of January.

One thing I've quickly picked up on is that ATC pretty much expects
everybody to be able to navigate direct. If you tell them you've got a
VFR GPS (in your remarks), they'll happily give you direct clearances
and instructions while airborne. I've learned to deal with that (by
really learning how to use my GPS), though I really still wonder about
the whole thing and marvel at the fact that they'll expect me to
navigate under IFR with this thing without a current database (I don't
keep the DB current and there's certainly no reason at all they should
expect that I do). (I am planning to do somewhat regular DB updates
from here on out, but it's not going to be every month.)

I asked this question in the rec.aviation.student newsgroup. Check out
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...ca6b1e08d0f7fe
for the responses to the exact same question I asked.

For my trip experiences, check out
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...4500b275ab3fad

Hope this helps.

Allen