NavList:

 Gary,

I was in the US Air Force for 20 years and then flew for several US airlines fo another 20 years.  I have flow over and navigated across Every ocean on earth and have flown to and landed onto Every continent on earth.  I have never used a Mercator chart.

Take your own test and make a small area plotting chart using a Lambert conical projection and see how it compares to your Mercator chart.  Better yet take a piece of graph paper and use each line as one nauitical mile.  Draw a horzonital line across the middle of the paper and call it 34 degrees north.  Would you call that piece of graph paper a Mercator map ?  Would you call it Lambert ?

Not trying to be a wise a** but I think for small scale plotting sheets the main thing should be conformal.  If I draw a line from my AP say 5 NM long that line on my plotting sheet should be the same length in any direction ( any azimuth ).

I agree that your Mercator plotting chart and Frank's plotting chart would be, for all practical reasons the same.  But that begs the question:  why would anyone go to all the trouble of using mecatorial parts to make a Mecator chart?

John H.