I am fundamentally a track-up person; when holding a map, I always orient it track-up. Unfortunately, I’m not that helpful as a navigator, except on foot, because I tend to say left when I mean right and vice versa, and east when I mean west and vice versa. (I think these concepts are linked in my slightly defective brain.)

When navigating for my wife (who does drive, and has flown but not in many years) I say “my side” and “your side”, which I seem to consistently get right; these also avoid the homonymy between “right” (opposite of left) and “right” (correct).

In Englisn and French, we usually use relative (track-up) location references to describe our personal space: we say something is ahead or behind, to the left or to the right of us, and likewise that person A is on the left of person B. In Hawaiian and Navajo, however, absolute directions are used: someone in Hilo or Tuba City is north or west of you, at least when speaking in the native language. There are also languages where the basic spatial directions are things like “upriver” and “downriver”, which are absolute directions but not oriented to the compass.

As an experiment, I tried holding my chart track-up on a recent flight that couldn’t have been easier (following a big river eastwards), and I still got confused about where exactly I was along the river until I turned my chart north-up — then it quickly became obvious to me which bay, towns, and islands were which. Maybe with more practice I could learn to navigate track-up, but it hardly seems worth it when north-up already works well for me.

How about this: when you’re flying somewhere that pilotage is easy (such as along the sea coast or lakeshore) then it might not matter what approach you use. When you’re flying somewhere that pilotage is more difficult (featureless farmland, forest, etc.) it’s much more important to use the technique that works best for the way your brain is wired — in your student’s case (and yours, I’ll guess), the right approach was clearly track-up.

I don’t think it’s so much a matter of how one’s brain is wired.
I think it has more to do with two other factors:
-Where you fly
-What you use the map for.

If you fly mostly on coastal areas, it doesn’t really matter as much, there just isn’t much of a navigational challenge. If you leave in California and you can see the ocean, you know you’re looking Southwest and it all makes sense in one sweep of the eye.

Try that in certain parts of the midwest…

Pure contact navigation, if you aren’t using a “moving-map” device, just isn’t effective with a north-up map. It is much better when the picture out the window matches what you see on the map (right on the right, left on the left as opposed to “up is left… or is it just kind of left”).
If you find yourself in unfamiliar territory and terrain looks the same in every direction, the only way to figure it out is by finding landmarks and their relative positions.
But if you hold the map north up, their relative positions will all be very confusing (unless you happen to be heading north). Otherwise, good luck trying to untie that knot.

I once was flying with student who got lost that way on a 150NM trip which was severe visual.
He was holding the map North Up and confused a city that should be on the left of a road with one that was on the right… when I turned the map track up, voila, he found himself real quick.

You can’t perform contact navigation by just “looking at the big picture” if you know what I mean.

I was pleased when the airlines adopted track up on the EFIS, that definitely makes more sense to me.

I’ve become used to the GPS set up for North Up (it’s too much of a pain to reset it every time we switch) but I can’t stand not rotating the map to match my track — I find myself twisting my head into unnatural positions when I try to hold it north up.

Personally with the EFIS nav displaying track up it makes sense when flying especially on a GPS approach. Doing a GPS approach with North Up would take some getting used to but once I was used to it I am sure I would argue its the only way :)

I leave the IHAS with North Up because to me it represents a planning screen for me as I can zoom out to 2000 NM and when I am flight planning I don’t move the chart to track up when drawing lines on it. The IHAS also shows TCAS traffic so it might take an extra second to figure out where the plane is but the IHAS displays an iconic airplane so if its off the right wing tip then that’s where I will look.

But if your a North Up guy David flying with EFIS Nav displays would convert you in at least the flying portion :)

Cheers,
FD

I’m a “north up” guy and don’t understand the track up people, but they don’t understand me either. I believe you’re right, that it points to some pretty fundamental thing in the way the brain handled spatial relationships.

I think about the world in a north up way, not a track up way. Geez, that would change all the time! Very confusing.

Today I have the GPS show track up unless it’s zoomed out quite a bit and I have a print out from Jeppesen FlightStar that shows the whole flight on one page, north up. So I guess my answer is really both.

Anthony

But occasionally I’d use track up when trying to match up ground features with map features.