Navcomm Noise
I read your article on navcomms in the December 2011 issue with interest. However, I think there is a bit of a slant toward the all-in-one avionics box with your magazine and I don’t really agree with it. While I admit that glass is wonderful to replace the attitude and heading indicators (electronic HSIs are even better), I’m not a big fan of GPS-only navigation data. GPS can be jammed, even if it hasn’t happened yet. There is no backup to GPS if the system goes down.
Plus, if an all-in-one box goes down, you have lost your radio, nav radio, GPS and your moving map display. Maybe this never happens, but I think having a navcomm as a backup is essential and I also think having DME as a backup is a good idea, as well.