Perhaps the thought that's not coming off clearly is to be master of a ship, one must know and be able to utilize all possible options on board. The other thing that comes out often is the "resignation" attitude which isn't overall a good pilot trait.
Many of the Instructors have been placed in situations where every last bit of knowledge they had, or imparted to a student, brought them or the student home alive. They've had the midnight voice message, "I'm just calling to thank you for drilling that stuff into my head. If you hadn't, you might be getting a call from my wife/husband asking you to come to the funeral."
There's nothing wrong with GPS as primary Nav. But hey, when the feces hits the rotating air acceleration device, you'd better not think that you'll always be able to "just land" and sort it out. Electrical failures happen. Backup GPS handhelds in the flight bag get bumped and turned on and their batteries run dead. It's a whole lot easier to just be able to calmly look at the compass and your watch and know you'll arrive safely in 30 minutes than go through the drama of "what do I do now?".
Jesse's story was one that left his student LOTS of options, and yet, the student flew around for an hour without truly knowing where he was. This is a common theme in piloting any air, land, or sea craft throughout history. Pilots get lost. It's what they do to control their emotions and think, so they can become "un-lost" that separates the prepared minds from the CFIT statistics.
It's pitch black, no moon, and you're over Eastern Colorado at night. You know the airports have been turning the lights off to save electricity these days. You have a full electrical failure. Your handheld GPS died this morning and the FBO at your departure point didn't have any AA batteries for sale. You can't key the radio for lights at those airports, or for any assistance. Are you confident that you can hold a heading with a flashlight or head lamp and time the leg and tuck right under the Bravo at home, circle the destination airport (lit up 24/7) for a light gun signal, and land without even missing a beat, which will put the airplane 300 yards from your favorite mechanic you trust on Monday morning? Or are you sent into a panic, take an hour to find yourself, find an airport that left the lights on dim, land in the middle of nowhere and hit a deer, no one knows you're there, injured, and spend a cold night wondering if you'll bleed to death before the morning guy shows up to open the FBO and sees the wreck?
Yes there are bad decisions in the above scenario before the airplane ever left the ground. But once it's up there, you gotta be PIC. It's no longer optional.
There's just so many dynamic scenarios that can happen in the real world outside of the training environment when you start flying long distances, that Instructors must impart as many skills as they can. And that's all they're doing. It's one thing to read "use the compass and a stopwatch" on an Internet message board. It's yet another to do it in turbulence in an airplane. Your ticket says you know how to Captain the ship in all circumstances. They signed the logbook and said you were ready. The DPE signed saying you were tested to a minimum standard. As Doc Bruce's avatar says, one need not accept the minimum standards when it comes to aviation, and probably shouldn't.
Or how about this? Add a smoke smell to the electrical system failing. It's pitch black and something is burning. Does this change your plan?
I think the most interesting learning experiences I've ever had in aircraft that made me think, hard... were when something unexpected happened (even for the Instructor) and the question became...
"Now what are you going to do?"
Example... The static system weirdness Jesse and I experienced in the middle of nowhere Nebraska on a well-below-freezing night. We already aborted one takeoff... How long has it been since you practiced one of those? Are you glad you had an instructor that made you do it ten years ago tonight? We've looked over the system and nothing looks wrong, but its definitely doing something weird.
Do you launch? Are we done instrument training for the night? Have we both briefed exactly what we're going to do here on this black-hole departure? Since it may or may not work correctly, have you ever had your instructor cover up your airspeed indicator and make you do a takeoff without it? Do you know what it sounds like? How many degrees nose-up on the AI is a Vy climb? Are you glad they did?
Best that could ever be determined on that was that water got somewhere it shouldn't have and froze. All symptoms and follow up checks found nothing wrong. Three different shops have confirmed that now including a fresh pitot/static check. That night, it was an unknown.
A GPS failure is, in the prepared mind, a given. It will fail. Not it "might" fail. The prepared mind says everything in the aircraft can fail at any time.
Heck, I've even had a compass fail. Damn thing sprung a leak and it was done. No more compass. Who's ever trained or heard of a compass failure in the Private Pilot manuals? "Crusty" instructors have seen it. 35 hour pilots, haven't. It ain't in the books they're reading.
The problem with Internet boards is, folks want to discuss scenarios. Instructors aren't preparing you for scenarios. They have to use scenarios because its impossible to not use them for training. But they're trying to impart a different goal altogether... the ability to think and remain PIC and not just a passenger on the way to the crash scene, when the "impossible" scenarios happen in the real world.
35 hour pilots don't have these scenarios in their heads from having SEEN them themselves, they have stories. The stories are written by the more experienced. It takes a while until you have something happen that's completely unexpected aloft.
Is that a reasonable enough explanation of the "crusty" opinion that one should prepare for as many possibilities as possible, and stress students to see if they can think up new solutions under stress?
It's not about the GPS. It's about being prepared.
p.s. I wouldn't put myself in the "crusty" category, just someone trained by "crusty" folks. It takes a lot of flight hours to realize how useful their teachings were. And a lot of flying along playing "what if?" in your head. It's hard to describe that to someone not even through the first gate of the "license to learn". I think I've seen a few glimpses of some of the things my "crusty" instructors wanted me to be prepared for, but at 500 hours I haven't even scratched the surface. Especially as a brand new Instrument pilot. I've opened up a whole new world of things that could bite me in the ass. Change the above scenario to an Instrument flight plan and IMC conditions. "Now what are you going to do?"
