"CB" wrote in message
...
I don't know about other students, but I'm certaily learning about them.
We're just starting cross-countries, and we're starting with pilotage.

Quite right too. Radio nav aids are useful when you're flying VFR, but even
when I'm flying along a radial I like to know where I am, partly out of
interest (helps you get to know useful visual features for future VFR
flights) and partly because if the engine quits it's nice to be able to tell
ATC that you're doing a forced landing "two miles east of XX" instead of
"28.3DME on radial XXX from VOR YYY".

Looking out of the window is also useful in our club C152 which, I'm told (I
don't fly it) has radio nav aids that are so poor, a magnetised pin dangling
on a bit of string would be more use.

D.