"Park your plane at the approach end of runway 24, and walk to the northeast end of the grove of pine trees along the edge of the grass. At that point you will see a path going down a steep grade towards a storage locker building. Follow the path and turn right, then left, walking around the building. Emerging into the parking lot of the Blockbuster Video plaza, turn right and Andrea's Donuts will be the first door on the right."

We live in an age of rapidly expanding technology, but those directions are little different than what a Neanderthal hunting party might have used to describe the location of the wooly mammoth they had just killed. It seems incongruous to me that pilots use strange electromagnetic signals from global positioning satellites to navigate to the airport, but then must rely on stone age technology to find food.

GPS technology has found its way into most every other aspect of aviation, and it is time to bring it into the final approach to the airport's local diner. It would be a tragedy to arrive safely at the airport and then starve to death simply because comprehensible navigation data did not exist to complete the journey to the diner. I can easily envision the pained expression on Barbara Walters' face as she would introduce the story of a family that quietly perished next to their airplane, unable to find a meal after landing.

Enter SDARS, or Standard Diner ARrival procedureS, a GPS- based tabulation of navigation data to guide the pilot and passengers on the walk from the airplane to the diner. Most pilots now have a portable GPS cobwebbed onto the yoke of their airplane, and many have become so dependent upon computer- based navigation that they can no longer navigate simply by looking out the window. The creation of SDARS might enhance aviation safety because it could trigger pilots to purchase a second GPS, a shirt- pocket unit which could back up their primary unit, but mostly serve to guide them through the SDAR.

Last week I visited Cortland specifically to gain first- hand knowledge of the restaurants and coffee shops in the vicinity. There is KFC, BK, Caesar's, and three smaller places. The closest is Andrea's Donuts, but since the most direct route crosses a trackless expanse of grass and a grove of trees, I came upon this new application of GPS. The Andrea's One SDAR starts at the parking spot at the end of runway 24 and reads as follows:

From PARKS waypoint (wpt) proceed 300 NF on a magnetic bearing of 080 degrees to PINES wpt, thence 50 NF, 095 degrees to STEEP wpt thence 185 degrees, 30 NF to ALLEY wpt thence 095 degrees, 20 NF to VIDEO wpt. VIDEO, at the end of the sidewalk that passes Andrea's door, is the final approach fix.

I envision that I could be the third millenium's successor to the venerated Captain Jeppesen, who pioneered airport approach charting in the 1920s as an airmail and airline pilot. The company he founded is the now world's preeminent source of charts for instrument flight. I could do the same. I could create and publish SDARS for every public use airport in the country and sell them as pictorial narrations with latitude and longitude references or sell the information as a database that would be displayed directly by GPS receivers.

The good Captain looked sharp in his cap, tie, and epaulets, and I'll look the part too, with a jelly belly drooping over my belt buckle and a shirt stained with coffee and dusted with powdered sugar. I'll be instantly recognizable as an expert in my field. Additionally I will be celebrated for bringing the first new unit of measurement to aviation since the dawn of the jet age: the NF.

NFs are Nautical Feet, 15 percent longer than the customary statute foot, and approximately 13.8 inches in length. There are 5280 NF in a nautical mile, just as there are 5280 feet in a statute mile. Yes, it's only donuts, but aviation is involved, and you have to keep the mystique.