A few weeks ago we were flying our RV-6A from Fayetteville, Arkansas to Charleston, South Carolina. It was IFR all the way and we made a fuel stop at Muscle Shoals (ILS Rwy 29). As we continued on our way I had filed on airways via Gadsden VOR and eventually Atlanta and Charleston via a lot of intersections etc. I filed with equipment suffix /U. There were thunderstorms to the south around Lagrange and north around Chattanooga with solid clouds and light rain everywhere. I'm cruising along at 7,000 ft between Muscle Shoals VOR and Gadsden VOR on V325 when the controller says they are not allowing any overflights at Atlanta today proceed direct to NELLO when able. I am navigating by IFR Enroute Low Altitude Chart L-14 which is the chart for this airway. I scan the chart and no NELLO intersection (thank goodness for TRU TRAK) and do not see such an intersection. The controller comes back with some urgency asking if I have located NELLO yet. I said no and requested an initial vector to relieve his tension. He gave me the vector and I turned approximately 90 degrees to the left entered the identifier in the SL60 GPS and located it electronically then I found the intersection on L-20 chart. The weather was actually pretty mild IMC for us at that time but it could have been severe and without a vector I would have had no clue which way to turn to intercept and airway proceeding to NELLO intersection with only IFR /U equipment onboard. I think this is evidence that we have a defacto GPS required IFR navigation system in place already because of controller operations that do not recognize the full IFR system. Any thoughts?
Bob Axsom
Bob Axsom