Mark S. Holden wrote:
David wrote:

Shutting down GPS would create a lot of chaos. Do airplanes not come
with tunable RDF any more? VOR?



With a GPS, you don't need to know much about navigation - you can go to your target, tell it to remember that spot, and then the GPS will give you an arrow pointing back to that spot from wherever you are so you can get back there. (handy for finding a
favorite fishing hole, or for not getting lost in the woods)

I'm not an expert on aircraft navigation, but I imagine fifteen or twenty minutes of life without a functional GPS would cause less chaos than having a jet smack into a crowded building.



On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:41:17 -0500, "Mark S. Holden"
wrote:


David wrote:

The enemy uses box cutters, not missiles.


They also use airplanes, and as I recall, news reports indicated the terrorists of 9/11 used GPS to home in on their targets.

Turning off the GPS system if a plane gets hijacked may buy enough time for a military intercept. Seems like a good idea to me.
A licensed pilot will not have a major problem if the GPS is turned
off... they are required to be able to navigate without it. A half
trained terrorist on the other hand may have to rely on the GPS
technology instead of the other, more difficult to master navigation
methods.