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Old 12th August 2006 | 16:00
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zerozero
 
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 518
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From: Chicago, IL, USA
Never been down there!

Sorry to say, I've never visited Australia or New Zealand so I don't know what you've got for navaids.

But in the US we've got:

TACAN (TACtical Air Navigation)...military
VOR (Very high freq Omnirange Radio)
VORTAC (VOR with TACAN)
VOR/DME (VOR with DME)

I'm keeping it real basic for the neophytes.

TACAN provides range (DME) and azimuth (course) on UHF.

VOR provides azimuth only. (VHF)

But a VORTAC (a VOR station co-located with a TACAN station) serves two masters: civilian and military.

Civilian guys get their azimuth from the VOR portion.
Military guys get their azimuth from the TACAN portion.

But *both* get their DME from the TACAN on UHF.

Since civilian guys don't have UHF equipment the UHF DME freq must be "paired" with a usable VHF freq....and it's real convenient that they use the same freq as the VOR.

And of course a VOR/DME is just a VOR station co-located with a DME station so effectively it operates the same as a VORTAC for a civilian operator but there's no TACAN available for military.

It's a little bit of mix and match but it works well. I hope that helps answer your question.
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