by Ron Levy

The advent of GPS has created a two-pronged revolution in aircraft navigation. One is the increased positional awareness GPS brings to the pilot; the other is the ability to fly instrument approaches into small airports that heretofore haven’t been reachable when the weather is IMC.

Getting into the IFR outback is certainly a major reason to have approach-capable GPS in an airplane and with each passing month, more GPS approaches are coming on line. The FAA plans to publish at least 300 new GPS approaches with WAAS vertical guidance in 2004 and the Mitre Corp. – which provides technical consulting services to the FAA – estimates that about 80…