On Mar 3, 8:55*am, "Neil Gould" wrote:
Recently, Longworth posted:

How precise were the locations your blank screen?

I consider my hand-held GPS as a convenience aiding situational awareness,
and if it went blank in flight I'd simply ignore it for the rest of the
trip rather than fiddle with it en route beyond seeing whether the power
plug was loose.

Neil,
We never rely solely on the GPS. As stated in my original post, we
use all available information (charts, maps, pilotage, dead-reckoning,
VORs and even ADF!). When the GPS screen went blank, we did exactly
what you said you would have done.
This particular trip was just a local trip for us to practice our
commercial maneuvers. We turned on the GPS just to have a visual
record of our tracks doing steep turns, lazy 8's, chandelles and 8's
on pylons etc..
There is no question that GPS is more precise than VORs, and
there is simply no substitution for the GPS to ensure no airspace
violations especially in busy area such as the doing the Hudson River
Corridor.
Of course a pilot can navigate just fine without having a GPS.
As a matter of fact, we had a Garmin GPS III before the Lowrance but
hardly used it because we had just obtained our PP certificates and
wanted to make sure that we could find our ways with just pilotage and
dead-reckoning.
The GPS is an excellent navigation tool especially in today's
flying environment with all kinds of TFRs. We plan to do a coast-to-
coast trip this summer. Of course, we can do it without the aid of a
GPS but having one with XM weather capability will make it a much
safer trip.

Hai Longworth