Originally Posted by
rickair7777
Not really. If you do not have any sort of RNAV on board then you should be filed /U. In that case the controller should not offer you direct to anything but a in-range VOR.
Southwest Airlines was probably the biggest offender of this 15 or 20 years ago. They always just asked for a heading to a fix. There is NOTHING that prevents a controller from using radar monitoring and giving a /U aircraft a heading to any fix. I did it for many years, without incident.
Should the controller just say, "cleared direct Podunk", and you're a /U, a simple reply of, "can you give us a heading for that?" would work wonderfully.
The navigation is the IFR, 100 year old whiskey compass... and ATC radar monitoring with video displayed fixes. Your portable mount GPS is just for situational awareness.