Have we stopped teaching VOR skills?

There needs to be a balance between reliance on Gee-wiz boxes and knowing
how to use ALL of the installed & legal equipment. My DE (no longer active
as of May 31) wouldn't know what to do w/ the nav pages of a GNS 4/530. She
failed an instrument student for not being able to nav to an intersection
w/o the gps. (Agreed)

But the same student can have same gps and not know anything beyond direct .
Forget about flight plan or select approach, OBS, CDI. You get the picture.

--

Thx, {|;-)

Victor J. (Jim) Osborne, Jr.

VOsborne2 at charter dot net
"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
gonline.com...
William W. Plummer wrote:

GPS is easy to learn after full training on the
standard instruments.

I don't see the logic behind this. You'll learn to fly an ILS; why not a
GPS?

Yes, you absolutely should learn to fly w/o the GPS. Similarly, you
should
learn to fly w/o the ADF, the AI, etc.

But I'd not put off GPS training any more than I'd put off VOR training.
It's a part of instrument flying, so learn it.

[Of course, if you don't have a GPS or an ADF, that's a different matter.
There's little reason to learn to fly a 2005 GPS if you don't think you'll
be flying a GPS for several years. Sadly, there's enough difference in
the
UIs to make that less than fully efficient.]

- Andrew

In article , William W. Plummer wrote:

When I get back to my instrument training, I'm simply not going to have
a GPS in sight. GPS is easy to learn after full training on the
standard instruments.

I appreciate the attitude. If you can mentally translate from keeping
the needle centered to your position along an airway, you can do it
whether the needle represents a VOR signal, localizer signal, or
GPS. That's the basic IFR nav skill to master.

Once you have the basics, though, don't underestimate the complexity
of current GPS interfaces. I swear, you need a degree in computer
science to operate those things (fortunately for me...). I've had
the plane for a year now, and I'm still learning things about the
GPS.

On today's trip, I used the flight plan for the first time since
my flight home when I bought the plane. That time, I had another
pilot flying, so I could have as much heads down time as I needed.
This time, I did the flight plan on the ground before starting the
engine.

Despite the complexity of the capabilities, it does make things
easier once you get comfortable with it. Anyone can use the moving
map and direct-to feature right away, particularly for VFR flight,
but the more advanced features take practice to master.


Morris (just a direct-to kinda guy)

Journeyman wrote:

If you can mentally translate from keeping the needle centered to your
position along an airway, you can do it whether the needle represents a
VOR signal, localizer signal, or GPS. That's the basic IFR nav skill to
master.

Well, but maybe that's the real question? Is visualizing location in space
by interpreting a CDI needle indeed a basic IFR skill? It certainly was
when I did my instrument training, but is it still? Will it always be?
The moving map GPS gives so much more information. Right now, we're in a
transition stage where a well-stocked GA panel consists of a moving map GPS
backed up by a conventional nav/com. Maybe 10 years from now, the standard
will be two moving map GPS units (or something more exotic), and the CDI as
we know it today will be as obsolete as the ADF is quickly becomming?

Roy Smith wrote in
:


Well, but maybe that's the real question? Is visualizing location in
space by interpreting a CDI needle indeed a basic IFR skill? It
certainly was when I did my instrument training, but is it still?
Will it always be? The moving map GPS gives so much more information.

I think it's a basic skill for now. I've never flown with a moving-map
GPS, so I still rely on the HSI needle. The interface of the Trimble
2101+ is very primitive, and gives little more than what you see on the
DME and CDI. A moving map, with more information, more clearly
presented, would be very welcome, though. Why make things harder than
necessary? If the FAA has its way, the VOR network will go away
entirely. It's too expensive to maintain, and it's certainly obsolete.
Especially for a pilot flying alone, who doesn't fly that often, anything
that helps reduce complexity and the need for interpretation is going to
be safer.

--
Regards,

Stan

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." B. Franklin

In article , Roy Smith wrote:

Well, but maybe that's the real question? Is visualizing location in space
by interpreting a CDI needle indeed a basic IFR skill? It certainly was
when I did my instrument training, but is it still? Will it always be?

Yes. Probably not.

We can expect the VOR to eventually go the way of the A-N radio range.

The moving map GPS gives so much more information. Right now, we're in a
transition stage where a well-stocked GA panel consists of a moving map GPS

"Transitional is exactly the right word."

backed up by a conventional nav/com. Maybe 10 years from now, the standard
will be two moving map GPS units (or something more exotic), and the CDI as
we know it today will be as obsolete as the ADF is quickly becomming?

Possibly. I'm not expert on ergonomics, but everyone agres the CDI needle
is simple to handle and it's failure modes are well understood. The GPS
interface is complicated and nonstandard. Long term, I expect them to
figure out the ergonomics. It will probably take more than just another
decade to complete the transition.


Morris

"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...

Well, but maybe that's the real question? Is visualizing location in
space
by interpreting a CDI needle indeed a basic IFR skill? It certainly was
when I did my instrument training, but is it still? Will it always be?

Let me offer a different perspective. In Europe we have to have an IFR GPS
to fly at 10,000 ft+. Because most IFR traffic in Europe is commercial and
pressurized, it becomes a practical requirement at any level to be able to
fly direct to ABCDE immediately on ATC's request, because they just expect
it. So we've almost all got IFR GPS (and even those who don't have a
handheld). It's becoming rarer to spend much time tracking towards
waypoints defined by VORs, let alone actually using the raw VOR data.

We have very few VOR approaches -- most are ILS or NDB. So I get very
little practice at using the CDI on a VOR -- it's either "make TRK = BRG" or
I'm tracking a localizer, which is similar to a CDI in principle but with
vastly different sensitivity. GPS approaches aren't widely authorized (none
in the UK for example), and when I fly an NDB approach, my use of the GPS to
"monitor" :-) is to put the GPS waypoint as a pointer on the RMI (EHSI, in
fact). I don't set up the CDI at all, because it's a pain to get a useful
sensitivity setting.

As a result, when I try practising VOR tracking using raw data and the CDI,
I'm very bad at it. I'm used to having a TRK readout. I've never really
been a great fan of CDIs anyway.

Is that a great loss of skill? Perhaps. It depends on your reliance on it
after a single failure, of the GPS, I guess. In an environment where a
vector is always available and usually more practical for ATC than going
back to tracking VORs, it's unlikely to be critical.

Julian Scarfe

Journeyman wrote:
In article , William W. Plummer wrote:

When I get back to my instrument training, I'm simply not going to have
a GPS in sight. GPS is easy to learn after full training on the
standard instruments.


I appreciate the attitude. If you can mentally translate from keeping
the needle centered to your position along an airway, you can do it
whether the needle represents a VOR signal, localizer signal, or
GPS. That's the basic IFR nav skill to master.

Once you have the basics, though, don't underestimate the complexity
of current GPS interfaces. I swear, you need a degree in computer
science to operate those things (fortunately for me...). I've had
the plane for a year now, and I'm still learning things about the
GPS.

On today's trip, I used the flight plan for the first time since
my flight home when I bought the plane. That time, I had another
pilot flying, so I could have as much heads down time as I needed.
This time, I did the flight plan on the ground before starting the
engine.

Despite the complexity of the capabilities, it does make things
easier once you get comfortable with it. Anyone can use the moving
map and direct-to feature right away, particularly for VFR flight,
but the more advanced features take practice to master.


Morris (just a direct-to kinda guy)

What has emerged is that there are two skills to be learned: Instrument
flying and GPS operation. My choice is to do the former in the plane
with an instructor and the latter on the ground with a manual.

In fact I do quite a bit of "Geocaching" using the GPS to find hidden
treasure. And after a year I'm still finding out stuff about the
simple little Garmin 12.

In article , William W. Plummer wrote:

What has emerged is that there are two skills to be learned: Instrument
flying and GPS operation.

Exactly.

My choice is to do the former in the plane
with an instructor and the latter on the ground with a manual.

You pretty much have to play with the GPS on the ground. RTFM and
run the sim. But that's generally not enough. Unless you're really
using the GPS in flight, and even if you're particularly imaginative,
you won't come up with enough scenarios.

How many people here have had an approach controller tell them to do
a right 360 to *re*join the localizer? It only happened to me once.
How many buttons would you have to push on your GPS?

This is a very good idea for a workbook or training softwa unusual
GPS scenarios. Most of the oddball things occur in the terminal
areas, but even enroute, reroutes happen.

BTW, if I could do one thing to improve the interface on the sims,
instead of clicking to turn the knobs, I'd have you drag the mouse
to turn the knob.

In fact I do quite a bit of "Geocaching" using the GPS to find hidden
treasure. And after a year I'm still finding out stuff about the
simple little Garmin 12.

If the simple one has so many surprises, the more complex moving maps
are going to have that much more.


Morris

Journeyman wrote:

How many people here have had an approach controller tell them to do
a right 360 to *re*join the localizer? It only happened to me once.
How many buttons would you have to push on your GPS?

Trick question. Everyone knows that the GPS cannot be used for primary
navigation while flying an ILS approach.

--
Peter













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William W. Plummer wrote:
In fact I do quite a bit of "Geocaching" using the GPS to find hidden
treasure. And after a year I'm still finding out stuff about the
simple little Garmin 12.

Aint it a great little gadget? It was the firt GPS I owned. I'd turn
it on, toss it in my bag in the backseat for every lesson. When I
got home, would dump the track to the computer and print it out.
Made it *so* nice to see how I did stuff right and wrong. Steep
360s were nice and round. Slow 360s -- not great. In fact, pretty
rotten.

We've got an exhibit on GPS at the museum right now (I'm a volunteer)
but no working GPSs. So I brought my G12 and the Pilot III. Turns
out that there's too much structural stuff -- can't locate any
satellites. So we took them both outside to the parking lot to
amuse the folks standing in line. I think we converted at least
3 people to geocaching!