By: Brandon Jones
Certified Flight Instructor
Pilotinside.com Magazine Volume I : Issue 1
Aviation, like our daily lives is ever changing. A hundred years ago there was no such thing as General Aviation. Seventy years ago aviation began it’s first steps into instrument flight with the installation of the first radio navigation system. From the 1930’s through the early 90’s, modifications to this simple radio navigation system gave birth to navigation directional beacons (NDB’s) and VHF Omni directional Receivers (VOR’s). In 1993 the Global Positioning System (GPS) was first put to use by the United States Military. While these amazing inventions have been created to make our lives safer and easier, sometimes they produce inverse results. For instance, while the GPS may allow us to navigate more precisely, and easily, what happens when the batteries die or the GPS suddenly goes out? You’d be surprised what happens to some pilots when a GPS suddenly fails; it’s not a pretty site.
To many of us, a pilot’s license becomes our license to stop learning. This false notion plagues us at the worst possible time and that's when the instructor steps out of the cockpit. Learning is perhaps most important during the post-training portion of our piloting careers. Now we have effectively traded two pilots on mistake watch, for one pilot in cut-loose mode.
Flying, like life, is all about how you allocate your resources. The better you are at organizing and allocating your time in the cockpit, the more beneficial your flight will be in building skill.
 We get into trouble when we stop thinking of ourselves as student pilots. Being a pilot is a lifetime learning process that never ends. When we lose that justification to continue learning, flying becomes a process of adding one bad habit after another, until we become those pilots who never do a preflight or fuel inspection. Many pilots look to the GPS as their only method of navigation. Some even include it as the deciding factor in their Go/No-Go decision. The GPS should be like every other form of navigation. It should be used with every other means of navigation available. Consider the following two scenarios.
Scenario 1: You own a GPS, but keep it in the back seat, in your flight bag most of the time. When you fly, you spend your time refining your dead-reckoning, pilotage, and instrument techniques you learned from basic training. Every flight you make is a practice in map reading, course tracking, wind correction, and VOR/ADF intercepting and tracking. Occasionally you use the GPS to make sure you still remember how to use it, and also to verify that it still works properly.
Scenario 2: You own two GPS’. One is built into the radio stack on your aircraft, and you’ve got a handheld as backup in case the other one goes out. Your handheld is strapped to your yoke and both GPS’ are in operation at all times during flight. You don't bother reading maps, planning cross-country flights, or even trying to hold a straight-and-level course since you have that dual axis autopilot.
Now you may laugh at Scenario 2, but we all know somebody who falls all too easily under this category. That somebody may even be you. But let’s face it, anybody with an elementary level education can plug in four letters into a GPS, read the course, and match it to the heading indicator. Now you may have two GPS’ and you may even carry five pounds in extra batteries, but nature has a fantastic way with proving to us that what can go wrong will go wrong. All it takes is a large storm, strong solar winds, or even a badly placed antenna to destroy that GPS signal. You may not even know that all it takes is a nice little grain of sand floating through space at a couple thousand miles per hour to destroy a satellite.
Time is an extremely valuable resource in the cockpit. It is virtually your only time to improve piloting skills. Organizing your methods of navigation from most complicated to least is the best way to keep your piloting skills in check. It will also condition you for that unexpected emergency situation. Using a GPS is by no means a poor decision. GPS’s are a fantastic invention, more accurate than any other means of navigation in the cockpit. It’s efficient, and easy to use. Practicing other forms of navigation will keep you on top in an emergency situation. It's easier to switch from dead reckoning to a GPS than GPS to dead reckoning.
Always try to keep one thing in the back of your mind: Inventions are designed to make our lives easier. They are designed to help us accomplish goals faster, and more efficiently. While we enjoy these luxuries of doing things faster and more efficiently, when this system of electronic reliance bites the bucket the whole building comes crashing down. I’m sure you’ve all had a couple of computers crash in the office before and we all know what kind of a mess thats like.
In Retrospect, make every flight a training flight and be careful with how much you rely on any individual system. In problematic situations, the foundation of your training is what will be put to test. Divide your time in the air between using the more favorable GPS and basic navigational skills. This will prevent your foundation from deteriorating and make you a much more capable pilot during problematic situations. Organizing your systems of use in order of most complicated to least can save your life many times over with the experience and knowledge you’ll gain. Most importantly, if it’s been a while since you’ve practiced these conventional techniques, don’t be afraid to stray from that GPS for a day. Grab an instructor and ask for a review course in ded-reckoning and conventional VOR/ADF navigation. Its benefits are priceless. |
