Hi Everyone,
recently spent some time thinking about how things were done in the old times
like the 1970s and I got somehow stuck with this question.How would you fly or have flown a NBD only approach like this one at Reno with a classic airliner like a dc-9 or 727/737?:
Probably not a big problem , but I'm stuck with several things somehow.
1.First of all, what altitude are you supposed to have overhead the IAF (SPK NDB)?
2.The next question would be ,what flap/gear configuration did they set at what point of the approach ?
3.Did you arrive fully configured above the IAF to make things easier with the timing ,so you can calculate the whole approach with a rather constant Groundspeed?
4.And how far would you fly outbound from IAF ?
No further than 10 miles thats clear,but would how do you time it?
In a way so that once you've completed the course reversal you can descent constantly with a 3degree path from 9000ft to 8200ft?
In other words so you end up at a distance of roughly 2.7 NM from the NDB?
Seems hard to do all this while at the time configuring at the plane therefore changing the groundspeed again and the time calculation all the time.
These may be stupid questions to some, but I'd be thankful if someone could provide some insight if and how this was typically done back then without the help of GPS ,FMS or DME which seem to be omnipresent nowadays.