You mean I have to TALK to ATC? - long

Jay Honeck writes:

Here we are, 13 years later, and apparently little has changed. We've
got a navigation system (GPS) that is accurate to within a meter, and
yet the entire system is still built around VORs, which is accurate to
within...a lot. (Anyone know how accurate it is to be flying a VOR
radial say, 30 miles from the VOR station? Is it a mile? A half
mile? 1000 feet? I have no idea...)

I suggest it's a case of accepting bothersome but known and well-quantified
risks rather than accepting unknown and unquantified risks. The behavior of
VORs is well understood; the potential problems with GPS are not.

But I do know this: In the real world of (relatively unregulated) VFR
flying, GPS rules. The fact that the IFR system hasn't completed the
change-over in a decade is just another example of how glacial
progress can be in aviation.

In IFR, your life depends on the instruments; in VFR, it does not. So VFR can
afford to take risks with instruments that would be potentially deadly with
IFR.