Flight Lessons

Exactly right. And therein lies the crux of the problem (e.g: GPS is
pretty much seen as the ONLY thing to hit navigation since the
invention of bread).


I go camping inna middle of nowhere and it never ceases to amaze me the
geniuses who take a GPS and no map. Can you imagine getting on your cell phone
and telling someone "I broke my leg and I am at xxxxxx,yyyyyy, no, I don't have
a map, I don't know where the nearest road is.."

I am happy with my lensatic and maps.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

Of course some of it is pure English arrogance, but my favorite
example of how differently the Brits viewed an American degree was the
Rhodes scholarship program at Oxford. The Rhodes Scholar came over
with a bachelor's degree and four years of academic and athletic or
other success at a good or excellent American university. He joined a
class of Oxonians on their three-year courses. And he spent two years
getting the same degree they were working toward!

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

In message , Cub Driver
writes
Isn't Cranwell (the RAF equivalent of West Point) still a two-year
course? And aren't most UK bachelor's-degree programs still three
years in duration?

Cranwell is the Royal Air Force College, where our officers are trained.
It's a 24 week course, followed up by further professional training on
graduation. With regards to earning a college degree, are you thinking of
Cranfield, in Bedfordshire, where the UK Armed Forces send many people per
year to study for engineering qualifications?

BMFull

Pardon my ignorance, but what's a "lensatic?"

-Mike Marron


It's a military personal land navigation compass.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

Subject: Flight Lessons
From: "Paul J. Adam"
Date: 8/7/03 10:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

I agree with you. It is amazing that every post in this NG on GPS has been
negative; talking about difficulty of use, failures, inacuracies and time
consuming operations.and also making it seem as though every one who used
GPS
was untrained and just generally incompetant.

The problem with GPS is that it works too well while it works. Because
it's quick and easy to program and follow, less care often goes into
checking and planning the route, and often less care gets taken in
double-checking that the real world conforms to what the GPS says.

That is not he fault of the GPS.

the GPS acts up or the information it provides isn't used wisely.

That goes for anything and everything. Not just GPS.

I guess if we had GPS in WW II
we would have lost the war.

With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)

Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy

..

Of course, if the GPS co-ordinates are wrongly calculated, wrongly
entered, or the GPS battery fails midflight, that's a very lost
formation... with no navigators to rescue them.

If you keep the trained navigators and their equipment "just in case",
what benefit is GPS providing?


--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam








Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

[snipped for brevity]

If you keep the trained navigators and their equipment "just in case",
what benefit is GPS providing?

Countless benefits too numerous to mention. Say you're in IMC and
lose your electrics. Dark clouds, no radios, your head is bouncing off
the ceiling in the turbs and just when you thought things were bad
enough and your heart starts beating again, you lose your vacuum
instruments as well. In this situation, even an el cheapo, $300
handheld GPS can help you keep the dirty side down literally
saving your life! In other words, besides just navigating, you can
actually FLY an airplane via GPS alone since even most of
today's handhelds have an altimeter, vertical speed indicator,
airspeed indicator, turn coordinator, and HSI. The only thing missing
is an attitude indicator!

Also, supposedly VOR, ILS, NDB approaches will all go away in
the future and there will be only the GPS "Basic T approach."
Supposedly, feeder routes will go away, too. GPS also does other
things that old-fashioned navigators and their equipment can't. For
example, if you don't know the lat/long of a location but you do know
the distance and bearing from your present position, you can project
a waypoint using a GPS. You can program the GPS to alarm you via
visual and audio alarms when you arrive a given waypoint. You can
zoom in and "see" powerlines, smoke stacks, etc. on the ground not
depicted on a sectional or WAC chart (and certainly not on an IFR
enroute chart!) when flying low-level in the soup, at night, or if
scudrunning is necessary during an emergency. In other emergency
situations, the "nearest airport" feature can get you on the ground
quickly and safely.

It's true that GPS is the cat's meow, however, as you know the
importance of basic pilotage and dead reckoning skills cannot be
over-emphasized.

-Mike Marron

In article ,
ArtKramr wrote:
-Subject: Flight Lessons
-From: "Paul J. Adam"
-Date: 8/7/03 10:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time
-Message-id:
-
-
-With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
-little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
-training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
-(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)
-
-Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy
-

I gotta wonder: would the bean-counters have figured that out before or
after they removed the navigators and then sent out bombing missions?

Or ever, for that matter.


Steve

Subject: Flight Lessons
From: Steve
Date: 8/7/03 11:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

In article ,
ArtKramr wrote:
-Subject: Flight Lessons
-From: "Paul J. Adam"
-Date: 8/7/03 10:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time
-Message-id:
-
-
-With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
-little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
-training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
-(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)
-
-Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy
-

I gotta wonder: would the bean-counters have figured that out before or
after they removed the navigators and then sent out bombing missions?

Or ever, for that matter.


Steve




Only the B-26 carried a bombardier navigator with that one guy doing both jobs.
But our nav training was purely dead reckoning, pilotage and air plot. We had
some celestial training, even had to derive the astro tables, but never had
enough hours to be both confident and proficient in celestial. Well, I guess we
could do an LOP ok.


Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

In article ,
ArtKramr wrote:
-Subject: Flight Lessons
-From: Steve
-Date: 8/7/03 11:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time
-Message-id:
-
-In article ,
-ArtKramr wrote:
--Subject: Flight Lessons
--From: "Paul J. Adam"
--Date: 8/7/03 10:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time
--Message-id:
--
--
--With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
--little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
--training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
--(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)
--
--Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy
--
-
-I gotta wonder: would the bean-counters have figured that out before or
-after they removed the navigators and then sent out bombing missions?
-
-Or ever, for that matter.
-
-
-Steve
-
-
-
-
-Only the B-26 carried a bombardier navigator with that one guy doing both jobs.
- But our nav training was purely dead reckoning, pilotage and air plot. We had
-some celestial training, even had to derive the astro tables, but never had
-enough hours to be both confident and proficient in celestial. Well, I guess we
-could do an LOP ok.
-
-

Thanks, Art. I appreciate everything you write. I'm kind of curious for no
good reason; how far would you have had to fly to get a handle on cross-winds?
Assuming the weather guys didn't have any info for you, would you know on an
on-going basis how far you were being pushed sideways, or would you have to fly
a while and compare your dead reckoning with something else? What else would you
have available on a typical mission? (I don't know anything about navigation, you
won't insult me by talking down)

I couldn't help myself, though - when I read your comment next to
the one before it I had this vision of somebody in an office somewhere signing
off on a white paper that said we didn't need navigators anymore because of GPS,
then sending out your B-26 with nobody to work the bombsight.

"Pilot to bombar... --hey! HEY!!"


Steve

In message , ArtKramr
writes
Subject: Flight Lessons
From: "Paul J. Adam"
The problem with GPS is that it works too well while it works. Because
it's quick and easy to program and follow, less care often goes into
checking and planning the route, and often less care gets taken in
double-checking that the real world conforms to what the GPS says.

That is not he fault of the GPS.

No, but it's a human mistake. It's a training issue to make sure that
when the GPS bings off a waypoint, you check a few landmarks to make
sure you're where the gadget says you should be. Currently, that doesn't
reliably happen because people have too much faith in the GPS.

the GPS acts up or the information it provides isn't used wisely.

That goes for anything and everything. Not just GPS.

The trouble is, GPS is too damn useful. Mike Marron wrote eloquently
about how a working GPS can replace most of your flight instruments...
as long as the GPS is working. But it's a low-powered signal from orbit
and it's easily jammed. GPS jamming isn't a feature of civilian life,
but it's a serious military problem. GPS offers much more than any other
navaid I've heard of, no wonder people turn to it first.

It's great kit, but the ground you're flying over / sailing past still
has to have priority - and it's harder than you'd think to make people
believe that.

With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)

Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy

With GPS the pilot can fly to a calculated release point and the
computer will drop the bombs. The bombs can even be GPS-guided (see
JDAM, JSOW et al). Replace the B/N with a machine and hope? Keep him
along for the ride?

I'm not saying "get rid of GPS", it's great kit and well worth using. I
_am_ worried that users depend on it and neglect the skills that would
let them double-check what the GPS display tells them.


(How _did_ B-26 formations bomb? I just realised that I really don't
know. Every aircraft flying final attack with its own bombardier, "hold
formation and drop when leader drops", something else?)

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam