Hi Roger,RogerW wrote:Too much reliance is put on technology, especially a GPS. You do realize that at any time the US military can mess with the accuracy of the satellites and your GPS would become an expensive paperweight.
I come at this as an open ocean and coastal sailor. For many years after GPS became available for civilian use, older members of the sailing community, for the reason that you state along with the more generic “what happens if all the satellites go down”, argued that one still needed to know how to use a sextant. I don’t think that anyone has taken that argument seriously for 20 years. Nor, in the marine world, does anyone seriously argue for the return of radio beacon navigation (LORAN-C), which was closed down years ago.
If you’re going to go to bat for this stuff, you might as well argue that pilots should own an aviator sextant and learn celestial navigation. At least celestial navigation is interesting, and indeed educational, which is more than I can say for VORs/DMEs.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the U.S. armed forces announce potential interference with GPS in advance of exercises.
To me, it is just bizarre that most of the YouTube videos on the CAT-1 and CAT-2 exercises ignore GPS and treat radio navigation as the natural adjunct to pilotage. Radio navigation for aviation is headed for the same fate as marine radio navigation - the dustbin.
P.S. I happen to own, and occasionally use, a marine sextant. I enjoy it, but mostly it’s a great reminder of why GPS is light years better.