Jay Honeck wrote:
Yep, Loran was the first "great leap forward". The plane I learned
to fly in had a Flybuddy Loran, and it was always a comfort knowing it
was there to double check my position, if needed.

But it was still nothing but a fancy "pointer". Moving map GPS
changed everything about situational awareness, IMHO.

I've flown across country with my Northstar M1A LORAN... It is great...
I've had a handheld GPS beside it and it agreed to 1/10th of a nm on the
distance to whatever I had for my destination / waypoint... When they
completed the mid-continent chain, it truly made it an acceptable
aviation navigational device... These days, I still use it, but I'm
likely to either have a handheld PDA with GPS running PocketFMS or a
laptop with a non-aviation GPS feeding coordinates to Delorme
StreetAtlas... Of course, if I would write a virtual serial driver that
converted the output from the Northstar to NMEA 0183 GPS data, I could
use the LORAN to drive the Delorme StreetAtlas moving map... Hell, I
might even be able to run PocketFMS on the laptop and thereby have a
1024x768 aviation moving map...