Hi, Daphne! So glad it was helpful after all these years. Once he’s started, you might be interested in taking a short “co-pilot” course that will teach you just the basics of handling a plane and landing it in an emergency. You’ll almost certainly never have a serious emergency when you’re flying with your spouse, but the course would help you understand what’s going on when you fly with your spouse, and even help out a bit.

Who knows? Maybe you’ll like it so much you’ll want to go on and become a licensed pilot, too.

I’ve seen two general approaches to building hours after the PPL:
1. Go straight to your CPL and instructor rating, then try to find an instructor job and build hours that way.
2. Stay with PPL for a while, buy a share in a partnership for a cheap plane like a Cherokee 140, and use it for your CPL, instrument rating, and general time building.
Personally, I’m happy to stick with my PPL. I use my plane to fly myself on business trips, but I have no plans to become a professional pilot (and at my age, it would be a pretty short career anyway).

That’s not to say that they shouldn’t also learn pilotage, dead-reckoning, and radio navigation, but they need to know how to fly with tools invented after 1950 as well, and our flight-training system has done a horrible job at that.

While I don’t see GPS as cheating, I do see that the other facets of learning
the basics of navigation well, and practicing them to keep your skills
up to par, are essential to safe flight.

Here is why.

First, electronic devices do fail.
Usually, at the wrong time.

When you are relying on a gps to navigate, in an area where you are
not familiar, the loss of the GPS can cause some very quick and
very disturbing consequences.

Now, this will vary somewhat depending on your level of experience,
but lets say that you are a fairly low time pilot, weather is not bad
but not really good either.

If you are anythng like me, who finally learned to navigate to get
an instrument rating, being lost, at night, or in the day, in poor
visibility can cause a high level of anxiety………almost instantly.

A case of the “dry mouth” for a newbie pilot can be very disconcerting
and if, because you were relying on your GPS, because it is so
accurate, you really don’t need to pay much attention to detail,
that you plan your VFR fuel reserves pretty close……

Suddenly, you have a dead GPS. (Did you charge your backup
set of batteries……all 3 backup sets before you left?……or forget
them in the car with the other junk you didn’t want in the plane)

If this happens when you are not over familiar landmarks,
(which is most of the time between checkpoints), and your
maps are not neatly folded where you can get your hands on
them, perhaps tucked in the side of your flight bag in the
back seat……..)

And your ability to hold a heading is something less than perfect,
as it is for many pilots………. Can you consistently hold a heading
within 1 degree? 5 degrees? 10 degrees? 20 degrees?………and
while you are reaching for the map the heading drifts even more.

A lot of things can go wrong very quickly, while you are trying to
figure out what to do next, where you are, where you want to go….
and a 45 minute fuel reserve (or 30 minute one ) can get consumed
a lot faster than it does when there is no reason to sweat and
the GPS is working………at night the anxiety problem can be made
rough when the auto rough on your engine kicks in, and if it is
at night, over one of the lakes, where you might be out of sight of
land, auto rough is even rougher.

Good navigation habits take practice to build and make into a third
nature.

GPS and glass panels provide a lot of information and contribute,
over time, to sloppy flying habits

Yes they are nice. Neat toys.

But really, the only instrument that works consistently in
an airplane is the compass.

Knowing how to use it and being able to know it’s quirks so
you can turn to headings precisely as if it were a Directional
Gyro, is a worthwhile skill.

Gyros fail…….
Airspeed indicators fail……..
Altimeters fail…….
Vertical speed indicators fail……
Batteries fail…….
Radios fail…….
Autopilots fail…..
Landing gear motors fail……….

Keeping a paper flight log with up to date, hand
written position reports and a current chart with times
passing each checkpoint written in black ink is
a worthwhile habit to build. It takes practice.

Relying on the GPS, as a beginning pilot is a
dangerous crutch. Yes it helps develop
situational awareness.

But, it also pulls out the laziness in all of us.

Last……..when things are going wrong……
the anxiety factor (dry mouth experience) can,
almost instantly, can and will make the accurate
pushing of various (correct) buttons on a GPS or a
Glass Panel, more difficult.

With a mistake having much more serious consequences.

Regarding the consequences……….

A recent study by the NTSB said that aircraft
having glass cockpits had a considerably higher
FATALITY RATE.

Why?

This is only an educated guess, but it is my
2 cents worth.

Early in a flying career……..usually the first
50 years qulify as “early” normal problems
can cause anxiety.

Where navigation is concerned, situational
uncertainty will create ansiety quickly.

This makes it more difficult to sort out the
right button to push…….and if the thing
with the buttons is dead, and you didn’t
do the other things to stay on top,
things will quickly go from bad to worse.

The comfort that comes from having the
latest and greatest can be deceptive
and people who program these things
do make errors…..as recently was
apparent with the Airbus over the
Atlantic.

This creates complacency, the willingness
to tackle more difficult weather, and
the liklihood that whne you hit something
it will be hard enough to break the airplaner……
with you in it.

As a case in point………….
I had a friend, an instrument rated lawyer,
I fly with.

He always carries 2 GPS devices.

I carry my paper and pencil, chart and
stopwatch…….

We had an electrical failure which took
out all of the plane navigational devices.

He picked up GPS #1 which promptly died because
the batteries had run down during the flight

He picked up GPS #2 which would not turn
on because he had not charged the batteries
recently.

The other batteries were dead.

He says that any pilot who doesn’t use a GPS
is negligent.

We maintained a compass heading until
we broke out then flew the remainder
VFR using my ETA’S and paper charts.

What would Christopher Columbus do?

Moral: We train for the worst case and
hope it never happens.

Sometimes it does happen………sooner
than you wish…….

I agree with the fact that you need to know pilotage and dead reckoning. These are important skills you need to know IN ADDITION to knowing how to operate a GPS. I had to learn how to use it on my own (and I still mainly just do “direct to”).

One resource that I use that I discovered on my own are the weather manuals that Nav Canada publish about each region in Canada. They are invaluable when it comes to interpreting METARs and TAFs. (http://www.navcanada.ca/NavCanada.asp?Content=contentdefinitionfiles%5Cpublications%5Clak%5Cdefault.xml)