It's my latest obsession. Pilots using GPS and using it wrong. I've been on a mission for the last few newsletters to try to give reasons on how to use GPS correctly and not let it become your only form of navigation. So here's my latest installment and it's one that I think drives the point home.
When you think about using a GPS in a car that same logic doesn't carry through to an airplane. For example, if you set the address wrong you'll just go to the wrong place and probably nothing else will happen. Maybe the database isn't 100 percent correct and you take a turn to a dead end. Again, probably nothing bad will happen. You set where you want to go in the GPS and you "allow" it to take you there. You can eliminate all sense of direction if you want and just follow the voice commands from the GPS. You are an operator of the GPS and really you don't need to know anything else about how it works or the errors it may have or really much of anything else. If the GPS makes a mistake, or you do, the consequences aren't that bad. It's a time penalty and that's about it. So you can truly just be an operator of the GPS and get by just fine.
GPS in aircraft are different than GPS in your car. The consequences of making an error using the GPS are higher and because the GPS is not just going to an address, gas station or following a single road etc. there are many more choices of flight plan routes to consider. The car only has a few choices, we have many more.
Terrain, what to do if the engine fails over this area or that, weather, choice of airports for fuel stops etc. are all extra things to consider when we use an airplane GPS that don't exist when we use the car GPS. It's important to be a pilot first and a GPS Operator second. We must use our judgement when selecting routes, airports etc. without just letting the GPS do it for us. Why? Because in an airplane you don't want to be just an operator because the consequences are too high. When we allow the GPS to tell us where we are and where we are going we become operators and we are no longer pilots.
So how do we fix this? Well to start we challenge ourselves to know where we are first then let the GPS confirm that we are in fact there. We ALWAYS use a different form of navigation other than GPS to back up data that the GPS is giving to us. We begin thinking that the sky is one big canvas that we can navigate in any way we choose and not as a series of IFR airways and intersection to intersection flight planned GPS routes or VP this or that. When we begin using the GPS as a pilot first we allow ourselves to consider all possibilities and not just the pink line. IFR Flying is a slightly different story as there may only be GPS data available.
So in summary, learn to tell the GPS where you are, then affirm the GPS is where you know it to be. A last thought is that GPS can be a powerful tool to help you navigate to a nearest airport in case of trouble or to take a more direct route.
Use the GPS as an aid in navigation and it will be yet another powerful tool for you to select to use as a pilot, not one you MUST use. This simple approach will help take you from an Operator to a Pilot.
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