Gig 601XL Builder wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Gig 601XL Builder wrote in
news:13prvb8h2m12219 @news.supernews.com:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

What if you are VFR over a cloud layer? There are lots of times
that GPS, VOR and even ADF are the primary navigation aids for VFR
pilots.

Well, there are other, more traditional, methods that are really
pretty essential if you're going to do that. 1 in 60 rule, for
instance. Determinging drift from aircraft ref points and celestial
bodies, that sort of stuff.

Bertie

Last time I checked celestial navigation wasn't in the PP
requirements and use of a VOR was.


I know, but going vfr on top is kinda heavy territory for someone
with a fresh ppl anyway.

How many know the 1/60 rule?


Bertie


I didn't say anything about someone with a fresh PPL. The person I was
responding to (a student) was saying that a non-instrument rated pilot
shouldn't be using GPS, IFR... as primary navigation.

I've heard the term 1/60 rule but don't know what it is.


Well, what I'm advocating is a bit more nuts and bolts nav sense if
people are going to start dicing with weather, rather than just rely on
GPS, so I think we're on the same page. The one in sixty rule just
means, for example, that every sixty miles you are from a navaid, each
degree is about one mile. So, if you're sailing along roughly abeam a
VOR with no DME, and you know your groundspeed is about 2 miles a minute
and you cover two degrees in about a minute, well, you know that that
VOR is sixty miles away. If you cover four degrees in a minute, you're
thirty miles and so on. It's rule of thumb, but it works well.
Likelyise, if you are dead reckoning on top and there is one quick
visual reference and you know how far it is off your dsired track since
our last known position, you can calculate your drift quite accurately
for your next leg. There's a thousand and one uses for it.

Cool eh?

Bertie