Because I Said So, That's Why

Mafoo said:
If I chose to land, and I unfit to be a pilot?
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I don't think it matters. This is early on in your training. If you learned something from the experience regardless of your decision, then yes you are probably fit to be a pilot.
 
Ghery said:
Mafoo, I'm not that old in my flying experience, but I learned in a plane that didn't have GPS. We (the club) added it a few years later. Are you saying I shouldn't have flown without it? Three of our four planes don't have approach certified GPS receivers installed and the one non-approach certified GPS has some annoying habits that cause me to not even play with it. I shouldn't fly our 182 or Arrow because they don't have GPS? I don't think so.

You've heard from a number of very experienced instructors in this thread. Listen to a non-instructor. I'll parrot some words from the DPE I did my instrument ride with when I said that the 430W was almost like cheating - "Use all the tools aviailable in the cockpit". He was right, don't be dependent on any one of them, know how to use all of them. BTW, that DPE was a former F-4 driver. He knew what he was talking about. Your GPS fails? So what? You have other tools at your disposal. A GPS failure should be nothing more than an inconvenience, not a reason to land and figure out where you are.
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I am not saying that at all. If was flying cross country, and my GPS was the only thing that failed me, I would have kept going, and not really cared too much. I would continue to fly to my destination. If you read the post I responded to bruce on, you would see my first response to how I would conduct myself if Jesse put me in that situation, had nothing to do with GPS, and his characterization of my skill set, and how I would react to the situation was grossly inaccurate.

My respons to lost GPS, was in the context of the post where I am lost, have yet to locate myself using all the other methods we all should know, and GPS as a system goes down. My concerns for the loss of GPS, was because I was worried how everyone else in the airspace I didn't know I was entering was going to react without it.

Maybe everyone would react just fine, and I have nothing to worry about. But that was the reason for the line.
 
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Mafoo said:
I dial in traffic for each one, ask for a mic check, and get nothing.
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Who are you asking for a mic check? Where would you get the frequency if you don't know what airport it is? Not to mention that many uncontrolled airports share the same frequency.

Mafoo, I think the problem is that you don't have enough experience to know what you don't know. People are trying to help you but you are not making it easy by arguing.
 
Argh... all this argument about the SCENARIO.

Mafoo, the scenario, as set by the Instructor, was "Take me to Seward."

The student in this situation isn't flying a "real" flight. They're not lost without an instructor in the right seat, they're not lost with a mystery failing aircraft, they're lost with someone saying "You're lost, take me to Seward."

What you're hung up on is trying to make the scenario into something that would happen in real life. It was NEVER intended to do that. It was intended to STRESS the student and push their limits.

The goal was "Take me to Seward." You don't get to land. You get to figure out HOW TO GET THIS AIRCRAFT TO SEWARD.

Is that making it clear enough?

Get over being hung up on the scenario. Fly the airplane to SEWARD. Airports below aren't fair game. They have zombies on the runway, okay? Whatever BS story the instructor wants to make up... doesn't matter. You're going to figure out how to navigate this aircraft to Seward.

If you have to fly around for an hour lost before you figure it out... so be it.
 
Mafoo said:
I get that what I think makes me want to not be flying, is less then others. I get that there is a good chance even I will feel differently about the situation someday. But let me ask you a direct question.

I have, for whatever reason, flown 30 minutes in an unknown direction. At the same time I realized I was lost my 430 goes dark, I climbed and looked for landmarks to reference against my sectional. I could not find anything obvious. I pull my iPhone out of my pocket, but no GPS single. I look over at my iPad, and I get the same response. Now I know the grid id at least locally down. I slow down, and then calculate how far I have traveled, adjust for wind, and draw a circle on the chart. I know I am somewhere in that area. I look over at my compass, and realize my gauges are off far more then they should be. I then adjust them, and consider I might have a vacum problem. I assume my VOR is down (mistake, I know). I bring up COM 2, and call flight services. No response. I look for lakes, rivers, roads, and all I see distinguishable is a road. I follow it for 10 minutes, and come to a small town with an airport. I fly over the airport high enough to be out of the pattern, but low enough to read the numbers. It has one runway of 36-18 with no X's on it. I look on my chart (expanding my circle to include 10 minutes of flight) and see I have 7 airports this can be. I look around, and realize this could be any of 5 of them. All of them however are uncontrolled. I dial in traffic for each one, ask for a mic check, and get nothing.

At this point I can do one of two things. Leave this airport and search for landmarks to help me figure out which one it is, or land at it.

My question:

If I chose to land, and I unfit to be a pilot?
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Mafoo,

I may be going out on a limb here, but I think much of the issue has been what many perceived to be your over reliance on GPS and your complete unwillingness to acknowledge that if you lose GPS it is not a disaster and certainly does not qualify as an emergency requiring you to land at an unknown airport, in unknown conditions. You should be able to extracate yourself out of being lost with what you have available in the cockpit with you.

At the end of the day, you are PIC, and you need to make the decisions that you think will get you on the ground safely, and home safely. If you determine that landing is the answer, then do it. That is not only your right, but also your responsibility to yourself, your passengers, and your family. However, I would suggest that you try to avoid a tunnel vision approach, where your first response to getting lost and not having GPS availability, is landing whereever you can first without exhausting other options that are available, such as dead reckoning, ATC, etc. Landing should be your last option, unless you are running out of fuel or conditions conducive to a safe flight.

Doug
 
Everskyward said:
Who are you asking for a mic check? Where would you get the frequency if you don't know what airport it is? Not to mention that many uncontrolled airports share the same frequency.

Mafoo, I think the problem is that you don't have enough experience to know what you don't know. People are trying to help you but you are not making it easy by arguing.
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The frequencies are on my sectional. Here in NH, if you are 1000 feet AGL, you can really tell what's close, and what's not.

If I see 15 airports in the area I could have flown, I would dial each one in, and ask for a mic check. If I get a clear response here in NH, I know I am pretty close to that one.

That was my first response, and I accept that might be the wrong solution. I was just throwing out ideas hoping to learn something. What I got in response, has been very different.
 
Mafoo said:
If I see 15 airports in the area I could have flown, I would dial each one in, and ask for a mic check. If I get a clear response here in NH, I know I am pretty close to that one.
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Look at your sectional. Fifteen airports are not going to have fifteen different frequencies. Many uncontrolled airports share the same frequency.
 
douglas393 said:
Mafoo,

I may be going out on a limb here, but I think much of the issue has been what many perceived to be your over reliance on GPS and your complete unwillingness to acknowledge that if you lose GPS it is not a disaster and certainly does not qualify as an emergency requiring you to land at an unknown airport, in unknown conditions. You should be able to extracate yourself out of being lost with what you have available in the cockpit with you.

At the end of the day, you are PIC, and you need to make the decisions that you think will get you on the ground safely, and home safely. If you determine that landing is the answer, then do it. That is not only your right, but also your responsibility to yourself, your passengers, and your family. However, I would suggest that you try to avoid a tunnel vision approach, where your first response to getting lost and not having GPS availability, is landing whereever you can first without exhausting other options that are available, such as dead reckoning, ATC, etc. Landing should be your last option, unless you are running out of fuel or conditions conducive to a safe flight.

Doug
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Sigh....

I will say this again, because it seems due to my detractors, yet another person feels I am something I am not.

Thank you for the well thought out response, and one I can tell was given with the intent to help me. I thank you for it.

However the issue, is I am not reliant on GPS, or favor it more then anyone else who thinks it's a useful tool in ones toolkit. I realize people locked onto one line I wish I had never said, and think I now only care about GPS as a tool, and that if it went down, I overly worry about how I would navigate.

The reason for that line, is I was worried (right or wrong) about entering extremely busy airspace where a bunch of planes just lost GPS. That might be a silly thing to worry about, and I might be completely wrong for even thinking it, but that's what was in my head when I said it.

I have now been defending that line, as everyone who read it thinks I know nothing about dead reckoning, pilotage, or VOR's, and think if I lose GPS, I instantly want to land.

Time to go watch a movie or something. I grow tired of this argument. It's been going on for a day now.
 
Everskyward said:
Look at your sectional. Fifteen airports are not going to have fifteen different frequencies. Many uncontrolled airports share the same frequency.
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Right, but if you are 1000 AGL in NH, you can tell the one that's 5 miles away, and the one that's 15.

That might not be true in Nebraska, so it would have been a useless thing to do.

Again, it was just an idea.
 
Mafoo said:
Right, but if you are 1000 AGL in NH, you can tell the one that's 5 miles away, and the one that's 15.

That might not be true in Nebraska, so it would have been a useless thing to do.

Again, it was just an idea.
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For one thing, remember that uncontrolled airports are not necessarily going to answer. Many, many times they don't. They also are not going to know who you are trying to call if you don't prefix your call with the airport name, so even if they are there they will probably ignore you.
 
Mafoo said:
Time to go watch a movie or something. I grow tired of this argument. It's been going on for a day now.
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And apparently for no gain. Many student pilots are able to learn something during that period of time, but you appear to be unable or unwilling to do so.
 
Mafoo said:
Sigh....

I will say this again, because it seems due to my detractors, yet another person feels I am something I am not.

Thank you for the well thought out response, and one I can tell was given with the intent to help me. I thank you for it.

However the issue, is I am not reliant on GPS, or favor it more then anyone else who thinks it's a useful tool in ones toolkit. I realize people locked onto one line I wish I had never said, and think I now only care about GPS as a tool, and that if it went down, I overly worry about how I would navigate.

The reason for that line, is I was worried (right or wrong) about entering extremely busy airspace where a bunch of planes just lost GPS. That might be a silly thing to worry about, and I might be completely wrong for even thinking it, but that's what was in my head when I said it.

I have now been defending that line, as everyone who read it thinks I know nothing about dead reckoning, pilotage, or VOR's, and think if I lose GPS, I instantly want to land.

Time to go watch a movie or something. I grow tired of this argument. It's been going on for a day now.
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Mafoo,

First there are still a great many pilots who fly without GPS assistance either because they do not have a moving map or GPS device, or because they do not want to. I personally fly at least once a month without GPS for the practice, and when I did my PPL did not use it at all, except to know that it was there and how it worked. All my flights were dead reckoning and VOR directed.

Let's assume that a EMP, solar flare, or some other catastrophe(the gov't forgot to pay their electric bill) causes the GPS system to shut down. I can almost guarentee you, that planes will not be falling out of the sky, nor will the vast majority of planes land immediately, everyone will switch to back up. In fact except for the pilotd flying GPS guided routes most may not even notice its absence. I would venture a guess that over 50% of my cross countries either FF VFR, or IFR are done by radar vectors, and not GPS. For me and I daresay most of us it will be nothing more than a hiccough. We will continue to our destinations, and land just as we would normally.

Doug
 
TMetzinger said:
Um... he didn't get shot. He DID end up with people pointing guns at him. He did end up getting himself and his plane thoroughly searched. He did end up getting interrogated (not tortured or beaten, just interviewed) for several hours. He got fingerprinted.

Once they were confident he was what he claimed to be, he was treated courteously, and was even allowed to fly the airplane off the field at a later time.
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Okay so maybe not as dramatic as I thought. Hopefully, none of those MP's have an itchy trigger finger, it could be a real bad ending to a real bad day.

Doug
 
douglas393 said:
Okay so maybe not as dramatic as I thought. Hopefully, none of those MP's have an itchy trigger finger, it could be a real bad ending to a real bad day.

Doug
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Camp Peary is not a military facility... it's much worse, from the standpoint of dropping in unexpectedly. It's an intelligence facility.

Most military facilities would have a tower you could call (or maybe not if you're NORDO) but you'd be met by MP/SP/AP and a follow-me vehicle to escort you to somewhere where they can check you out. The stories I've heard about landing at those facilities in an emergency are pretty friendly unless the facility is in an alert status at the time.

Anyway, we're drifting far afield.
 
Fully 28% of this string are posts by Mafoo. I think his mic is stuck on transmit.

Jay, I apprecate you comment. My attitude toward Mafoo is aimed at that false " I posted here so I might learn something". How can you learn when you are stuck on transmit? It's self evidently untrue. Just as it was with HWMNBN'd, AKA red board's Whirlwind who racked up simlar statistics. sigh.
 
bbchien said:
When the military is playing with their local interruptors, all five GPS devices are gonna go Tummy up.
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On the first day of Gulf War II, I was up for a practice flight with my CFI-IA. We had no IFR GPS in the plane, but he had a handheld which we were just playing around with, for fun. That day, though, it was telling us crazy things, like we were traveling 2,000 MPH.
 
Navigation equipment that I have never had fail.

plotter, sectional, wet compass, window, mountains.

going east we keep Baker on your left, Rainer on your right. and reverse that for coming home. :)
 
Tom-D said:
Navigation equipment that I have never had fail.

plotter, sectional, wet compass, window.
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I have had a sectional, wet compass and a front windshield fail :)

I guess the sectional didn't fail, so much as it was no longer within my reach. :) But I never lost the plotter..
 
ja_user said:
I have had a sectional, wet compass and a front windshield fail :)

I guess the sectional didn't fail, so much as it was no longer within my reach. :) But I never lost the plotter..
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You hit a bird?

I had a very close encounter with a large bald eagle over a local lake a few weeks ago.
 
dell30rb said:
You hit a bird?

I had a very close encounter with a large bald eagle over a local lake a few weeks ago.
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They didn't all fail on the same flight, but there are other ways for a windscreen to fail...
 
bbchien said:
Fully 28% of this string are posts by Mafoo. I think his mic is stuck on transmit.

Jay, I apprecate you comment. My attitude toward Mafoo is aimed at that false " I posted here so I might learn something". How can you learn when you are stuck on transmit? It's self evidently untrue. Just as it was with HWMNBN'd, AKA red board's Whirlwind who racked up simlar statistics. sigh.
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This thread was started because of how someone reacted to me, most of the post are directed to me, so because I chose to reply to them I am a problem.

I guess with you, it doesn't matter what I say or do.

@Doug

Thanks for recognizing actually what I was worried about, and providing useful feedback that helps reduce my worries about other pilots who lose GPS.

Contrary to what Bruce thinks, I am here to learn.
 
wabower said:
Then why don't you STFU and listen.
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I am sorry, and I talking over you? Didn't know my typing to others on a discussion board was interrupting you.

And when you specifically have anything to say I care to hear, I will listen to you. So far, that hasn't happened.

Ron, all day. Jesse, sure. Tom-D I have learned from. Doug, and denverpilot, and many others I have learned from as well. Hell, Henning when you get past the delivery, has a lot to teach people.

You seem to just want to puff your chest and act like king sh*t, and explain how others less enlighten then you are littering the countryside.
 
You haven't learned squat from this thread because you jumped to the conclusion about what you would do with total disregard to the lesson the CFI was trying to teach his student. You repeatedly came up with the wrong answer, made unwarranted assumptions and tried to cover it over by talking about frequencies in NH when the scenario was based in NE. Then you assumed you would have passed because you tried to write the script to coincide with your screwed-up non-thinking and you wonder why nobody agrees.

Try this. Select one of your many GPS units and move the map to the area of NE in which the scenario occurred. Familiarize yourself with the lay of the land, and the re-read Jesse's post and play along as though you were flying the plane. Pay careful attention to the tactics that Jesse employed, and ask yourself why he did those things and how and when you would have caught them and if they exposed any weaknesses in your current procedures. Then determine how they would have influenced your decisions. Once you've completed those tasks, figure out how to fly home so the next student can use the plane on time rather than sitting on the ground in someplace you have no reason to be other than that you didn't understand the lesson.

The reason you haven't learned anything from me and numerous others is that you chose to argue and ignore all the hints that were passed along. I don't know if you think you're talking to a peer group of student pilots that you can browbeat by elevating the argument, but if so this ain't it. Most are several thousand hour instructors, some are check airmen, some are training center evaluators. All of us have been through this stuff with newbs, although none as argumentative, abrasive and unwilling to learn as you appear to be. If you want to learn, you need to learn to act like it, because nobody has to put up with the stuff you've been slinging today.

Mafoo said:
I am sorry, and I talking over you? Didn't know my typing to others on a discussion board was interrupting you.

And when you specifically have anything to say I care to hear, I will listen to you. So far, that hasn't happened.

Ron, all day. Jesse, sure. Tom-D I have learned from. Doug, and denverpilot, and many others I have learned from as well. Hell, Henning when you get past the delivery, has a lot to teach people.

You seem to just want to puff your chest and act like king sh*t, and explain how others less enlighten then you are littering the countryside.
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wabower said:
because nobody has to put up with the stuff you've been slinging today.
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Ditto.

I would respond to all of it, as its all complete BS (I have learned, others have agreed with me, and I understood what the lesson was about), but it's just not worth it anymore.

Goodnight.
 
Tom-D said:
Navigation equipment that I have never had fail.

plotter, sectional, wet compass, window, mountains.

going east we keep Baker on your left, Rainer on your right. and reverse that for coming home. :)
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Rainier to the left going east, and to the right coming home. I'm further south than you are. :D
 
Mafoo said:
I am not saying that at all. If was flying cross country, and my GPS was the only thing that failed me, I would have kept going, and not really cared too much. I would continue to fly to my destination. If you read the post I responded to bruce on, you would see my first response to how I would conduct myself if Jesse put me in that situation, had nothing to do with GPS, and his characterization of my skill set, and how I would react to the situation was grossly inaccurate.

My respons to lost GPS, was in the context of the post where I am lost, have yet to locate myself using all the other methods we all should know, and GPS as a system goes down. My concerns for the loss of GPS, was because I was worried how everyone else in the airspace I didn't know I was entering was going to react without it.

Maybe everyone would react just fine, and I have nothing to worry about. But that was the reason for the line.
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No, that is exactly what you said. In an earlier post you stated that if GPS went down you would land. What would I do? Keep on flying as I wouldn't be depending on GPS as my sole means of navigation. I'd go missed if I were flying a GPS approach, but that is an expected action. People don't just start doing crazy things in the air because something quit working.

Why would you not know what airspace you are entering if you lose GPS? There are any number of other ways to know where you are, and you should be keeping up to date on all of them. You, young grasshopper, have much to learn.
 
Ghery said:
No, that is exactly what you said. In an earlier post you stated that if GPS went down you would land. What would I do? Keep on flying as I wouldn't be depending on GPS as my sole means of navigation. I'd go missed if I were flying a GPS approach, but that is an expected action. People don't just start doing crazy things in the air because something quit working.

Why would you not know what airspace you are entering if you lose GPS? There are any number of other ways to know where you are, and you should be keeping up to date on all of them. You, young grasshopper, have much to learn.
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Sigh...

Did you read the post? I didn't know what airspace I was in, because the CFI did his best to get me lost. The whole point of the exerces was to make sure for the last 30 minutes, you didn't know where you were going. He was hoods down for 30 minutes with purposely inaccurate instruments.

The point of the exercise, was to put his student in an stressful situation, where he has no clue how long, and how far he had been going the wrong way (max 30 minutes), with no automated tools allowed to help him figure it all out. He wanted to see how he would react. This was my earliest response (#11).

Mafoo said:
Just an FYI, if that was me, I would have pulled my iPad out of my bag. If that failed me, I would have pulled my iPhone out.

Would you have failed all three?

I know I would have climbed. Not sure how long it would have taken me to realize my DG was off.

Also, odd he didn't use the sun at all as a reference. That would have told me rather quickly I was going the wrong way.

I would have also looked on the sectional, and tuned my radio, and asked for a mic check.
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I am just a student without all the answers, so no need to go into how the mic check was a bad idea. That's been explained to me, and it's not something I would do.

I am not arguing to argue, and I know I have a lot to learn. I would just like the criticism of me to at least be for my failures.

An example would be someone who is a great driver (not saying I am great) saying "If downtown NYC lost all power, I would not want to be driving it in", and interpret that as he can't drive without traffic lights.

My assessment that other people would do a poor job flying right when GPS goes down was wrong, and I realize that if it happened, and I was lost, with the possibility of entering class B airspace, I still should not be all that worried about it.

But please. At least understand what I don't know, before you start telling me I have much to learn about something I wasn't even saying.
 
I never imagined this thread would make it to 7 pages! :D
 
Jaybird180 said:
21 more posts and it'll make 8 pages
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Let's keep going...I still have so much more to learn about executing a cross-country. :D

Maybe we need a few new sub-pages in Pilot Training:

1.) Students that are not soloed.

2.) Students that are soloed

3.) Students that are nearing checkride.

4.) Students that know it all already.
 
Velocity173 said:
I never imagined this thread would make it to 7 pages! :D
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Yea. The posts where people feel I just rely on GPS to navigate, and would land if I lost it, I should just ignore.

I don't know why I feel I need to defend myself. I guess I just don't want a community I respect, to have an inaccurately poor impression of my navigation skills.

I shouldn't care so much what people here think I guess.
 
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I recall twice, at KPCM (where I was taught to fly) near Tampa we had a transient pilot casually walk in and look around in apparent bewilderment. After a few quiet moments, the guy behind the FBO desk, a "crusty old retired Air Force Guy" would say "it's Plant City Municipal, what airport are you trying to get to". And that was just the two I saw. We were pretty dang close to the TPA Class B and McDill AFB too. I never could understand how one could get lost in that area, what with Interstates 4 and 75 right there and other small clues like the Gulf of freakin Mexico and Tampa Bay right there... But they managed it.
 
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