I know this is an old and huge thread. But I do get tickled at how many people have commented they like to fly VFR "seat of the pants." In the 60's we didn't have GPS & lot of other things everyone takes for granted today. We always flew VFR seat of the pants, there really wasn't an option, especially in a helicopter.
One of my favorite flying memories was the various trips I was able to make ferrying CH-46s from Morton Pa. (Philly International) where they were built to Santa Ana California (MCAF Santa Ana). Remember these planes weren't actually accepted by the Corps yet so we had very strict ferry rules. No passengers, daylight VFR only, a 500' to 1,000' above terrain hard floor & ceiling, etc. There are many places in the US that didn't have VOR or TACAN coverage at only 1,000' above terrain in the 60's so we really flew with Seat Of The Pants Navigation. Often with a Road Atlas more than with our VFR Supplements.
If you were out in Texas, Arkansas, Arizona, etc. during the mid sixties and saw one or two CH-46s flying in circles around a water tower, you probably saw me or someone just like me trying to read the Water District or town name to orient our VFR Supplement and Road Atlas to figure where we actually were. We always claimed we could do better if allowed to fly at night because so many "Clear Channel" AM radio stations could be picked up on our ADF receivers and we could do more accurate triangulating of our position. And yes, a couple of times we literally set down in a field by a gas station and walked up and asked the attendant, where we were. And did he have a decent highway map so we could spot exactly where we were and which highways to follow to get within Tacan range of our next fuel stop. We weren't total leeches however, we always at least bought soft drinks at the gas station.
Oh yes, one other quirk. Between the mountains and all the restricted zones we had only one route we could travel to the West Coast and that was across West Texas. We would fill up at Midland Texas and then fly to El Paso if the headwinds weren't too strong. There were times we spent days in Midland waiting for the wind to die down so we didn't run out of JP-4 before we got to El Paso. Even then we almost always started out from Midland at sunrise & landed at Biggs AFB with low fuel lights burning on both tanks.
Now that I can only sim, I like to go to Weather Underground and find some of the worst flying weather I can find in the world. I then "fly" VFR through that weather as downloaded from the web. It's a lot easier to fly VFR in IFR weather in the mountains when a crash won't kill you!!
