Are there pilots who've never used paper maps?

I'm sure at some point stone etchings were considered the renaissance in aviation mapping.
 
Clip4 said:
When AOPA pushed the FAA to 56 day cycles for sectional charts that was the end for paper in pilot training.
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Paper today is like NDBs back in the 2000s. You train with them a few times not to regularly use, but solely as an "if everything else fails" type of skill.

Besides, unfolding a giant map to ask "where are we?" is the best way for a CFI to subtly get their student into a UA.;)
 
If you don't mind people flying around without really understanding the factors involved in a cross country, I guess that's ok. I don't know how you learn that by plugging numbers into an EFB.

Just more questions to memorize the answers too on the written?
 
I suppose it's a bit like using a GPS vs a book of street maps when driving around.

Back before GPS, I would use a book of street maps to get to customers. The paper maps are still better than a tiny GPS screen to provide a high level view of the overall situation. Even more so when comparing alternative paths. At least in the Boston MA area.

How many people would be helpless in the woods with a topo map and compass?
 
I was working on my Private in summer 2022 at a small-ish Part 61 operation, and it was a mix of paper and modern tech. The CFI had me use a paper sectional to plan our cross country flights and I calculated paper nav logs, but I arrived at wind correction angle, speeds etc. with an electronic E6B. The airplane had a GTN650 and I became proficient at operating Foreflight and always had an iPad and iPhone available when flying. It was valuable to understand what the computer was doing behind the scenes, but we didn't really use the paper charts for navigation. I did keep one in my bag in case the three electronic devices failed.
 
Pugs said:
I flew 2200 hours as an NFO with nothing but paper charts and a numbers only INS and eventually a numbers only GPS. That included thousands and thousands of miles on low levels at 480 KTS and 200’. An EFB is a wonder and would have made life a lot easier and allowed me to focus on other things that were going to keep us alive.

At some point a student needs to understand the benefits and pitfalls of the EFB. First X/C paper? Sure. Chart to ground correlation is important but students are being trained to be complete pilots. By the time the time they’re headed to the check ride they should be very familiar with their EFB. Same with geo-referenced approach plates when you move on to an instrument rating. I have not shot an instrument approach since the Navy with a paper plate. The EFB is another part of the scan and needs to be integrated into training.
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I Know the services have gone EFBs but I don’t think they will ever get rid of paper. Especially for VFR nav. Gotta have back ups to fall on. Nav with a 1:50,000 map sux.
;)
 
Got my Private in 2019, didn't touch an EFB until after the check ride and only used paper maps, which I would highly recommend for all students. Haven't used a paper map in the cockpit since then but do keep copies with me and still do use them for initial planning occasionally and just to look at sometimes. It's fun to lay a few out on a table and just "explore" all the airspace. Better than looking at the small ipad screen and constantly two-fingering around on it. But all my final flight plans come from an EFB, no reason not to utilize the technology and all the near-instant info it provides easily. If absolutely needed (highly unlikely but who knows), I'd be confident in my abilities to navigate in the air with paper charts and an E6B. Not sure how likely it is I lose all GPS sources and radios/VOR (I carry a handheld and extra batteries too) but certainly helps to have multiple backup plans.
 
Why? What's the point of learning paper and passing the checkride and then switching to EFB. It seems that a 41'ish hour pilot is not the best candidate to self-teach a whole new nav approach. Wouldn't it be better to train like you're going to fly in the real world.

And the "what if you lose GPS" is trite. The EFB charts do not require GPS at all, not a bit, and most people would just pull out their phone anyway.

In the before days when I used paper, I had a door pop open and out went my chart...and I didn't have a backup!
 
T Bird said:
Got my Private in 2019, didn't touch an EFB until after the check ride and only used paper maps, which I would highly recommend for all students. Haven't used a paper map in the cockpit since then but do keep copies with me and still do use them for initial planning occasionally and just to look at sometimes. It's fun to lay a few out on a table and just "explore" all the airspace. Better than looking at the small ipad screen and constantly two-fingering around on it. But all my final flight plans come from an EFB, no reason not to utilize the technology and all the near-instant info it provides easily. If absolutely needed (highly unlikely but who knows), I'd be confident in my abilities to navigate in the air with paper charts and an E6B. Not sure how likely it is I lose all GPS sources and radios/VOR (I carry a handheld and extra batteries too) but certainly helps to have multiple backup plans.
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I seem to always be flying near the edges of the page. A real PitA to flip the paper chart over everytime I go north of my home field and then back south.
 
KE5BM said:
I seem to always be flying near the edges of the page. A real PitA to flip the paper chart over everytime I go north of my home field and then back south.
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Try refolding in an open cockpit. ;)
 
Velocity173 said:
I Know the services have gone EFBs but I don’t think they will ever get rid of paper. Especially for VFR nav. Gotta have back ups to fall on. Nav with a 1:50,000 map sux.
;)
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I hope they still teach studs how CHUM and to make strip charts and radar predictions but that’s just part of the pain package. :D
 
Pi1otguy said:
A few weeks ago I had over of those "oh crap, I'm the old guy" moments when a another club member asked "Have you ever used paper maps before?".

The question was so foreign to me. Are there actually pilots who've only used electronic sectionals? How does one do the whole pilotage and DR stuff with a moving map? What about the handful of times your tablet will fail due to being in direct sunlight too long?
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Yes there are pilots who have used only an EFB. (I’m an old guy. I used paper charts all the way until 2011!)

Up to the instructor, but things like turning off ownship or, in the extreme, location services, will force pure DR and pilotage (once you turn off the panel mount GPS too :D). At best, I’ve seen EFBs as a potential benefit to pilotage. When you use a moving map, you are sure about the ground feature you are looking at. That teachees quite a bit for those times the moving map is not available.

The handful of times it craps out isn’t much different than losing your sectional under the seat. And preventing the most common one, overheating, teacher good cockpit management. And not that big a deal VFR. Much more fun IFR (I’ve seen it happen during an IPC :devil:).
 
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MauleSkinner said:
Try refolding in an open cockpit. ;)
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I’m sure I’ve told this one before.

My club had a group fly-in. My wife (a non-pilot) and I shared an airplane with a member who, very experienced, had just returned to flying and wanted to treat it as a practice IFR flight, hood and all. Using paper he did the usual routine of pulling out and replacing the right charts, unfolding and unfolding en routes, flipping though approach plates, referencing them AFD.

Watching from the back seat, my wife's post-flight observation? "Wow he seemed to do an awful lot of work on the flight. No wonder you love your iPad."
 
In the cockpit of a Cessna 150 paper charts can be a hassle.
 
I have my iPad, my iPhone, and my Garmin 430. If they all fail, I guess I can probably find an airport.

I hate sectionals so much, I don't even have them turned on when using Foreflight! I use the GPS mode "Aeronautical" view, which I feel provides all of the information I need without all of the clutter.
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Lowflynjack said:
I have my iPad, my iPhone, and my Garmin 430. If they all fail, I guess I can probably find an airport.

I hate sectionals so much, I don't even have them turned on when using Foreflight! I use the GPS mode "Aeronautical" view, which I feel provides all of the information I need without all of the clutter.
View attachment 124244
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I'm on the fence. Definitely Aeronautical in flight when IFR. But VFR, I prefer the Sectional precisely because of all that detail. Related to my earlier comment about the benefits of using it for pilotage, I like looking at something on the chart and seeing it out the window. I just feel it gives me better situational awareness.
 
midlifeflyer said:
I'm on the fence. Definitely Aeronautical in flight when IFR. But VFR, I prefer the Sectional precisely because of all that detail. Related to my earlier comment about the benefits of using it for pilotage, I like looking at something on the chart and seeing it out the window. I just feel it gives me better situational awareness.
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I think you're in the majority. I find all of my friends I fly with use the sectional view. In the GPS view, I see cities, roads, lakes, towers, etc. This gives me a pretty good visual reference.

Another thing I do is keep my iPhone zoomed in to 10 miles so I see more detail and airplanes on ADSB that are closer. My iPad is also on, but I keep it at 25 miles so I can see airspace or planes further out.
 
Velocity173 said:
I Know the services have gone EFBs but I don’t think they will ever get rid of paper. Especially for VFR nav. Gotta have back ups to fall on. Nav with a 1:50,000 map sux.
;)
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USN dropped celestial nav. Then decided, hmmm, what will we do is someone takes out the GPS sats??? So they are back to teaching and practicing it.

I did a bridge tour of a cruise ship. They had a sextant. I asked if they ever used it. Yeap, they did a sight a day to keep in practice.

Backups are good.
 
I'm sure there are, but not if you were one of my students.

I use paper sectionals for training PPL. My philosophy is you need to understand the process before relying on the electronic. Otherwise you may not recognize when the electronic gives you rubbish.

I ran into this recently using Foreflight while planning a trip. I was planning about a 1.5 hour cross country in a Citabria on Foreflight, and noticed my expected fuel burn was 96 gallons. That obviously is problem when the Citabria only holds 36 gallons. It took a little digging to find the performance numbers for the aircraft in Foreflight, either a bug or fault of my own not sure, had an extra zero on the taxi/takeoff numbers.

I can tell you my students seemed to actually enjoy the experience though. Many are amazed to fly a cross country with a compass, a stopwatch, and a map, and it actually works. They get excited to see the next landmark come into view, and even more when they nail the timing between landmarks. Certainly more fun than direct-enter-enter, follow the magic line. Maybe less practical, but more fun.61f8cb7a-b480-43a4-ae6f-ba793aef533c_text.gif
 
Pinecone said:
USN dropped celestial nav. Then decided, hmmm, what will we do is someone takes out the GPS sats??? So they are back to teaching and practicing it.

I did a bridge tour of a cruise ship. They had a sextant. I asked if they ever used it. Yeap, they did a sight a day to keep in practice.

Backups are good.
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Ah but that's not quite accurate. They (we) all use STELLA...a computer software that does the math for you. You select which object you're shooting, you enter the time of your observation and your azimuth and it draws the line. Once you have enough lines, it draws the oval and gives you the lat/long. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY who isn't an old-school QM is doing the math on paper. I'm only speaking for the Navy and Coast Guard. I'd be shocked if the Merchant Marine doesn't have something similar.
 
midwestpa24 said:
I'm sure there are, but not if you were one of my students.

I use paper sectionals for training PPL. My philosophy is you need to understand the process before relying on the electronic. Otherwise you may not recognize when the electronic gives you rubbish.

I ran into this recently using Foreflight while planning a trip. I was planning about a 1.5 hour cross country in a Citabria on Foreflight, and noticed my expected fuel burn was 96 gallons. That obviously is problem when the Citabria only holds 36 gallons. It took a little digging to find the performance numbers for the aircraft in Foreflight, either a bug or fault of my own not sure, had an extra zero on the taxi/takeoff numbers.

I can tell you my students seemed to actually enjoy the experience though. Many are amazed to fly a cross country with a compass, a stopwatch, and a map, and it actually works. They get excited to see the next landmark come into view, and even more when they nail the timing between landmarks. Certainly more fun than direct-enter-enter, follow the magic line. Maybe less practical, but more fun.View attachment 124245
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My favorite scene in that whole movie.

I used to get really excited when one of the bridge watchstanders would come to me on a night watch and say something akin to "Chief, can you teach me about the stars?" They were, of course asking about basic celestial nav. My Navigation Division guys had to deal with a lot of kidding from the other crewmen about "arts and crafts" when it came time to correct charts and do voyage planning. That is, until we actually laid out the charts on the mess deck to do work and then all of a sudden I'm putting on a clinic about what we're doing and why. It wasn't uncommon to have about a dozen junior personnel standing over my BM2's shoulder as he plugged away at routes with headphones on blasting his favorite music. :)
 
I'm sorry if I'm hijacking the thread but I just remembered that one of my favorite aviation books is by Bob Buck called North Star Over My Shoulder. A great read about a guy who learned to fly when Lindbergh was still around and retired in the 70s as a 747 Captain. He learned to nav a plane on celestial navigation. There's a line in the book about how on the long Oceanic flights, he would occasionally take his charts and a sextant to the aft lavatory where there was a clear dome that allowed him to take shots. Apparently, the looks he got from the few passengers who would be awake at that hour were quite concerning.
 
JOhnH said:
I used paper charts for the first 30 or 40 years but I have not touched a paper chart in the last 10.
My biggest gripe about EFBs are that when you pinch the screen to make the picture bigger so you can see the tiny print, the print adjusts itself back to tiny. I hate that.
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Thank you! I have exactly the same gripe, and even more so with phone mapping programs - zoom in to see the street name. The street and surrounds all zoom in, and then the name is refreshed in the same tiny font! The base map in FF will zoom in as it's a digital representation of paper. So you can read the ASOS and so forth off the chart after zooming. But the "aeronautical" layer will not, so zooming in on the drop zone to see what it's extents are just gives a bigger circle with the same tiny fonts on the periphery.
 
I carry the current sectional and tac. There are too many failure modes in the electronic ones to not carry the paper charts. But, then, I worked for a computer company back in the day that was all about fault tolerance and I haven't gotten out of the habit.
 
Pi1otguy said:
A few weeks ago I had over of those "oh crap, I'm the old guy" moments when a another club member asked "Have you ever used paper maps before?".

The question was so foreign to me. Are there actually pilots who've only used electronic sectionals? How does one do the whole pilotage and DR stuff with a moving map? What about the handful of times your tablet will fail due to being in direct sunlight too long?
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Yeah, it’s a new age. My daughter started fly awhile back and of course everything was on her IPad. One day while thinking I’d see what she knows, I said , hey go grab a sectional and let talk about some of the things on there. Her reply, “what’s a sectional?” We decided to go to the mall and shop instead….
 
Airmunn said:
Yeah, it’s a new age. My daughter started fly awhile back and of course everything was on her IPad. One day while thinking I’d see what she knows, I said , hey go grab a sectional and let talk about some of the things on there. Her reply, “what’s a sectional?” We decided to go to the mall and shop instead….
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It's funny cause I carry them solely as a backup, but usual go through cycles without opening then even once
 
When I tell my kid I flew in Germany with 1:50,000 terrain maps for the whole country, made into map books per region…also posted all the wire hazards and towers by hand she just rolls her eyes and laughs…Children of the magenta line have no clue how often we were lost…and won’t ever admit that part…but it is a skill (using a map) that is lost on new pilots.
 
Dave Theisen said:
What really bothers me is that there are instrument rated pilots that never had to do a paper Jeppesen chart revision. :)
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I remember doing an IPC with the chief instructor of the flight school at my home base. I stuffed the latest Jeppesen revision in my binder that morning.

"The first thing you need to do, is organize your Jepp!"

Two hours later...
 
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