Trust me, I am learning the old way to navigate. I may someday get my IPad app but I do Not plan to do before I get the basics under my belt.
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Nothing wrong with going paperless from the get go in my book. The beauty of using a EFB (ForeFlight, GarminPilot, etc) is you can have all the charts, supplements and flight planning tools right at your fingertips and not have to work to keep them all current. I will never go back to paper.
So the "new" system will be using GPS location and altitude? Looks interesting > https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...SIFSSB0X&psc=1
Wow, and did you read the Reviews on Amazon? Seems GPS Is good enough for the FAA.
BTW you did a beautiful job on your build!!
He really did.
I'm of the mind that students should be taught to navigate using Ye Olde Sectional, including both flight planning and in-air navigation. It's not that one shouldn't use modern technology, it's that the principles and ideas that drive those tools should be fully understood.
Much like the E6B, it's not that pilots are truly expected to use them routinely, but we learn it to understand relationships between different factors of flight.*
* Feel free to now tell me how you use the whiz wheel all the time, including during flight, to calculate everything from fuel burn to crosswind components - and I'll laugh, as you'd be a severe outlier in aviation.
Frank I agree 100%, I am 74 years old and I have learned things a bit more complicated than flying a plane in my life. And after semi retiring I went on to teach and head a program at our local community college. It may take me a bit longer to learn these days but so what? I can use a computer better than my grand daughters, design in Fusion 360, run my CNC machines and 3D printer build stuff in my home machine/fab shop and so on. Not ready for the retirement village yet! Yet I did just sell my off road dune buggy, making room for maybe a air craft build??
I think the right answer is that everybody is using indicated altitude adjusted for barometric pressure. Unlike true altitude which is adjusted for both temperature and pressure. So if you want to fly at the same altitude as other aircraft, the best thing is to use the same type of altitude measurement as they are.
Lots of misconceptions about GPS altitude. As noted above it is the distance above a spheroid (mathematical model of the earth). It differs from ground elevation which is based on a geoid, the lumps and bumps on the earth caused by masses (mountains) and lack or masses (valleys). When you setup your spirit level next to a mountain, the mass of the mountain pulls the bubble off level. Same phenomena happens next to a large valley. Not to worry, the government knows about this and elevations shown on the airport diagram are based on this geoid. So if your GPS elevation differs from what the sign at the airport says it's could be the difference between the geoid (lumpy) and the spheroid (perfect), plus a little error in the GPS measurements. If you have a WAAS signal, the errors are probably less than five feet.
So when you set your altimeter to the barometric pressure broadcast at the airport you should see the elevation of the airport. Keep in mind the elevation is based on the geoid.