writes:

Wrong, I said NYL, which is a VOR, and said nothing about GPS.

NYL is a TACAN only. You'd have a hard time tuning it in your small civilian
aircraft. And it's low-altitude, so you'd have a hard time receiving it
outside the standard service volume, which isn't big enough to provide you
with en-route navigation.

You could try BZA, which is just to the north, and is part of V66 (meaning
that reception is fairly well assured along all parts of the airway for which
it is used--another advantage of airways).

Actually, if you want to fly V66 until BARET, the route is
KCHD-GBN-MOHAK-BZA-IPL-BARET-KMYF

Uh, that's what V66 means: all of those intermediate fixes are on V66.

Wrong, NYL is a VOR.

No. See above.

Big woof.

You don't need any authorizations to fly V66.

I never said anything about going direct as the real world likelyhood of all
those areas being cold is about the same as hitting Lotto.

So you'd have to fly around them, anyway, making your route even longer, and
rendering your navigation more complex.

What I said was, if I were using GPS I would plan a waypoint roughly between
BZA and NYL. That would avoid all restricted areas.

So would BZA, if you're on V66.

Then enroute I would check if it were possible to transition any of the
restricted areas and change course FROM THAT POINT.

To gain 90 seconds of flight time?

And, looking at it closely, the GPS waypoint would be set just slightly
south of where the R-2307 area turns north, thus avoiding all restricted
areas for a total distance of about 272 nm.

A three-mile savings.

The main reason to avoid V66 is the other traffic on the route.

How much traffic is that? If you're VFR, you can ask for flight following,
and see and avoid. If you're IFR, you're better off still.

The main reason to use V66 is it keeps a less than accurate pilot well away
from the restricted areas.

Ah, so only the _bad_ pilots use the airways, eh? Good pilots spend an extra
hour planning and navigating a more direct route so that they can save 60
seconds. Right.

If you have GPS, know how to use it, and are uncertain of the state of all
the restricted areas, the GPS route is the shortest possible IF you wind up
being unable to transition any of them.

The savings is insignificant, hardly enough to justify the effort--and you'd
better be certain that your GPS is right on the money.

If you don't have GPS and are a low time pilot with marginal navigation skills,
I would then suggest taking the slighly longer VOR to VOR route.

A big part of real flying is planning alternatives and flying in a manner
appropriate for your equipment and skill level.

Uh-huh. A big part of safe flying is learning the procedures and accepting
them, instead of always trying to be Maverick with home-baked shortcuts. A lot
of people have worked really hard to build a network of airways with
guaranteed navigation performance and safety--why the insistence on rolling
your own?

It's a bit like trying to calculate fuel to the last drop in order to save a
few cents, rather than calculate it fairly accurately and then allow generous
safety margins. And we all know that fuel exhaustion is one of the most common
causes of accidents in general aviation.