I did my flight training (PPL/CPL) in the 1990's.

I built my hours by renting clapped out C150s/C172s from my flight school. Back then, of course, the planes didn't have GPS on board, and while i had heard of the handhelds, they were still a thing of the future.....but man did I wish i could get one.

While building hours for my CPL, armed with a pencil, EB6 and a line on a map, I set out to visit as many Ontario airports as I could. I did x-countries to Sarnia, Collingwood, Oshawa, Owen Sound, North Bay, Muskoka, Peterborough, Dunnville, Hanover, Timmins, Kapuskasing, St. Catherines, Lindsay etc....and it was fun! It was rewarding, challenging flying, and although I got lost a few times and scared myself more than once, I learned a ton.

Then one day, my wish came true, and I bought a handheld GPS....and just like that my x-country flying became a BIG FAT BORE!! Hit a few buttons, follow the line, why my dog could figure it out (mind you he's a quick study and Hedley could probably solo him in a few hours ).....but my point is the handheld took the fun and challenge out of things......now i keep it in my flight bag and do things the old fashioned way.

I realize of course that there's a place for technology, and I wouldnt leave the ground now without the handheld, but punching in a course and following it is way less rewarding than completing a forward slip at the end of a well-planned, map and pencil x-country flight.

Anyway, thank you for listening....this is just the rambling of a middle-aged guy who fears he is on the backside of his own personal power curve.

What??!! Doesn't doing the work yourself invoke Newton's Fourth Law: "A constructive thought applied to an individual situated in a cockpit, either in constant motion or a state of rest, will result in an equal but opposite effect of loss of machoism"

Excuse my probably terrible humor. I'm just a little bored. Great writeup otherwise!

I have a Garmin 296 in a panel mount, really nice piece of kit that after the novelty ended has been left off for some time now.

It does make for a nice tool in the mountains though, not really something you'd have to contend with in Ontario.

-Grant

Funny GPS story (really).

I'm doing an airshow in Honduras. The 396 in the Pitts S-2C was great because it had XM radio, which was really nice across the Gulf of Mexico.

Which is to say, the audio output of the 396 was plumbed into the intercom music input. Cool. We would be flying down the coast of Belize, and on the center frequency Freddy would sternly call, "9 Fox Charlie, go company". I flip over, Freddy says, "Go to Channel 159! Larry the Cable guy is on!" and back we would go to center.

So here I am in Honduras, coming over the top of a vanilla inside surface loop, and as I'm pulling through the vertical downline, some woman starts shouting in my ear, "TERRAIN! TERRAIN!"

It surprised the hell out of me, given that I was the only person in the Pitts. But the screaming woman in my ear, er 396 GPS, was right that we had to do the right thing then, to pull out level at the surface

I think I wheel landed out of a surface 1/2 reverse cuban-8, at the end of that sequence. You can do that if you have enough runway. I don't at my home airport.

But the screaming woman in my ear...

Did it make you feel like you were at home????

Compass - Pilotage - Wind Estimation
I've flown across Europe and around Switzerland NORDO, no transponder, and no DI/DG/HI or whatever else you want to call it!
Compass and map and satisfaction

GPS
I got airborne and above the solid clouds over the Seattle area in an old Cessna 172 enroute to Dallas.
I'd been loaned a GPS, fantastic... Up there above the clouds I turned it on... Groundspeed 57 Knots I turned it off... I'll get there when I get there!

Today I ran a G1000 course for three of my instructors and an ex TC inspector... The latest gizmos
But there's always flying without GPS, with a map, doing it the old way, honing a skill and an instinct long practised.
Done in at least equal quantities, one can have satisfaction and efficiency.

Anyone here tried map reading between Niamey,Niger and Zouar, Chad?

I did the same thing only with Loran. Return trip from east coast to Ontario, hills, weather failing and so did the Loran.

Cat Driver wrote:Anyone here tried map reading between Niamey,Niger and Zouar, Chad?

I haven't flown that route with map alone, but I have flown around that area a fair bit just over a year ago. However we were in a DASH-7 with GPS and there are quite a few navaids around relative to a while back. Reminds me of a story though, I heard from a guy who used to survey in the desert. It was the 70s and 80s in the Sahara desert, and they were navigating along their survey lines using 20 year old photo survey pictures. Basically they had the sand dunes to navigate by. However sand dunes are quite mobile over the span of several years, so their 20 year old photographs provided little help to navigation!