Wintertime and navigation...

Ahhhh...Â* The good old days.Â* Way back then, before I even knew about
soaring, I was flying all over the Arctic with nothing more than a
single VOR and TACAN.Â* Oh, and the magnetic variation was 28 degrees
east.Â* Somehow I always managed to find my way home.

On 1/12/2020 10:38 AM, BobW wrote:
So it's wintertime in the northern hemisphere (short days/long
nights), and on a recent thread it's (yet again) been implied out how
crucial GPS is to routine navigation (you're doomed without it), and
part of increasingly-geezeristic me gazes back fondly upon those
forever-vanished days when soaring was more about 'simply having fun'
(i.e. XC soaring 'just because') than obsessing about
electronics/batteries/the-latest-gee-whiz-bang-bit-of-kit/etc. So
here's a bit of historically-based rumination about the good ol' days
to help us (me, anyway, ha ha) through winter...

Way back in the early 1970s, I was a born-n-raised member of our
eastern coastal elite living near D.C. and recently launched upon the
adult world, wet behind my soaring ears, and still absorbing "Soaring"
mag cover-to-cover...and therefrom being exposed to all sorts of
stuff, ranging from immediately-soaring-centric to
arguably-only-peripherally-so.

I remember a write-up of the 1-26 'nats' held from the old Black
Forest, and various competitors allegedly (and likely humorously)
whining about how difficult it was to find some place by name of
Punkin Center (which was and remains a great name for a rock band).

Some years later I'd transplanted myself to that part of flyover
country, flown my first 'real contest' from the old Black Forest...and
used Punkin Center as a turn point for my first 300K triangle (Black
Forest Gliderport's sadistic contest dogs declared it as a turnpoint -
*again* !!!).

*MY* confusion was in convincing myself that the crossroads (and its 3
apparently-abandoned buildings) the correct distance/heading from the
gliderport *had* to be Punkin Center, because there was nothing else
for tens-of-miles around that could be it...that is if the hand of man
had any relationship to identifiers on VFR sectional maps. IOW,
navigation over the vast, lightly-populated/more-or-less-road-free,
high plains, was pretty much duck soup...if Joe Glider Pilot had any
faith in his ability to 'contact fly' while retaining faith in his
'critical mental faculties.'

Never since seen any reason to change that opinion.

And yet...apparently 'my take' is far from universal. Humor is where a
person finds it.

I'll be leaving now; my work here is done! :-)

Bob W.

--
Dan, 5J