Crescent Wrench or Co-Pilot?

As a licensed commercial pilot and one that often feels that government agencies stick there nose in where they don't belong...I have to say that the Federal Aviation Administration seems to be making an incredibly smart move, and one that we in the marine world might consider taking  a lesson from.


After a number of airline tragedies over the last few years, the Federal Aviation Administration has started taking action and identifying that the new generation of pilots may not be developing their baseline fundamental skill-sets adequately, and instead, are relying on high-tech automation and electronics from day 1 in the cockpit.  It appears as though numerous crashes of major airliners recently have had the root cause determined to be the failure of the crew to recognize a developing situation is going bad, to disengage automated systems, and to take immediate manual corrective action in order to prevent a tragedy.

Even though I don't actively fly anymore I get to be around airplanes quite a bit, being stationed at an airport.

This is not necessarily a good thing for me as I cannot afford to fly them anymore, but it is still a lot of fun.  That being said, I have seen some things I find a little disturbing directly related to the above comments. Take for instance a fella flying through that I got to meet. He is very successful and decided he wanted to learn to fly.  So, he did what any aspiring pilot would love to do. He bought a single engine aircraft to learn to fly in. But...he didn't buy just any aircraft. He purchased what arguably could be called the ultimate single engine aircraft. This thing is high powered, high performance, and high tech. How high tech is it?  It is so high tech it has synthetic vision. It literally has CRT displays that should you lose all visibility (as in Instrument Flight Rules in the clouds) this large screen in the instrument panel will provide you with a deadly accurate and realistic view of what you would be seeing if the cloud was not there. It literally is like looking out the windshield with all the terrain synthetically recreated. It truly is amazing.

Gone are the days of navigating by chart, plotter, and an E6B cardboard "computer".  GPS is the norm now. This tiny little plane (which costs $700K used!)  has a three axis autopilot coupled to the GPS. For me...I don't get it. You really don't even fly this plane.... it flies itself. It makes me wonder.."If I stuck this guy in a Piper Cub (the aircraft I solo'ed in) with only an altimeter, compass  an airpeed indicator, chart, plotter and E6B....could he fly to Kingman (60 miles away from here)??


While this technology is totally awesome, it is only awesome if it is used as a tool, an adjunct,  to good solid basic flying.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to be sitting in the passenger seat when the guy who spent his formative years learning to "fly by wire" doesn't know what to do when the circuit breaker blows on the nav circuit and he is left to pick up the pieces and navigate by good old dead reckoning, time, speed, distance, and heading.

Seriously???  LOL 

The parallel to this are those of us that use similar tools on board our boats. I am not anti-technology at all. In fact, quite the opposite. I LOVE "techy things" and there are no shortage of them aboard when I sail.  I personally feel that if I am going to do coastal or offshore sailing a GPS should be aboard. Why? because it is an extremely cost effective tool that I can use to increase the accuracy of my navigation and safety of my crew.  However, that being said....if the GPS should fall overboard the skipper should in no way be totally screwed. He should have the basic chart-plotting and navigation skills to pick up the pieces and move on....safely.

I just started working with a buddy of mine, a new sailor,  on some basic navigation skills. The GPS did not even come out on the table so far. We have talked about charts, headings, magnetic bearings, true bearings, relative bearings, dead reckoning, fixes, running fixes, lines of position, magnetic vs true, magnetic variation, latitude and longitude, finding your location on a chart using a provided set of coordinates, determining your Lat/Long from the chart, various formats that Lat/Long can be expressed, displayed, and input in, using parallel rules, using dividers, using chartplotters...and a ton of other things.  It was a very enjoyable evening sitting around the table covered in charts,Coast Pilot books, and chartplotting tools... and a very very good review for myself. With all that I was able to show him, I still had to add in that I am not professional and really only know the bare minimum compared to what I would like to know. There is always more to learn.

We are going to meet again to go over the same stuff some more, do some practice problems, talk about set and drift, and a few other topics. Some of it I really needed to re-read myself to make sure I pass the info along correctly. He is very anxious to get into the "complexities" of GPS.  Wait until the curtain is drawn back and he sees the "wizard of gps" for what it is. It's not so much the mystical magic box so many give it credit for.  It's a incredibly easy machine to use, when you have a solid background of understanding in place before you start pushing buttons and choose to allow some flowing electrons to determine your fate.

Confused??  Learn the Language! 

What I feel a lot of people miss is the GPS is speaking to you in a language. Just like Spanish, Italian, Greek,  "language of Navigation". If you speak it you can give, receive, and understand information in it. If you rely on a half-baked understanding of a language, you may get in a cab in a foreign country thinking you are heading for the airport....only to find out on arrival you were  headed to the landfill. Imagine the ramifications of not clearly speaking and understanding the language of "navigation" with your GPS might be.
etc.....it is speaking in the

We are not geo-caching here, where you can always walk back to the car totally bummed out that you didn't find the Tupperware container with the plastic monkey in it. As the intensity of our adventures increase, so do the risks and ramifications associated with lack of adequate skills. I think the computer guys use the technical term of :
                     "Garbage in = Garbage out". LOL


I hope that when we are done with the limited training I am able to give my friend, he will find someone that can take him to the next level. I also hope that he,  like me, will think a GPS is an incredible tool and something he should have aboard. I hope he will feel confident that if a GPS is available he is using it correctly. And I hope that he will have the confidence and skill set that if the GPS is not available, "the sky will not be falling".  I guess I just hope that when when we are done.... and he is on his own,  he really buys into the fact that a GPS (and all the other electronic gizmos we use) are more like a Crescent Wrench than a CoPilot. The mind set he chooses will be up to him.

As for me?...  Well.....

It will be a cold day in hell before I allow a crescent wrench drive my boat.  :-)