What's your favourite ADF approach?
What's your favourite ADF approach?
Fair chance it will be gone/finished, never to be used again, very soon. The Nav Rationalisation Project will see the plug pulled on 179 NDBs, VORs and DMEs on May 26, 2016.
A favourite of mine is the Alice Springs NDB-A, which will be no more when the Temple Bar NDB is turned off. Looks like the AS NDB-B will remain as part of the Backup Navigation Network though.
The AS NDB-A is a tricky little approach. I only ever flew it for practice and IR Renewals, there was always a better option when the weather dictated a real approach. The fun starts descending to Temple Bar and a reversal gets you onto finals. With a station ahead and a station behind it's got a wobbly bearing in between, because of the effect of the Mac Ranges (or maybe Pine Gap... spooky stuff). Final course is conveniently not aligned with the runway and stepped somewhat to the left. Fly over the 'station ahead' and the fun continues; start the watch, descend to the minima.... MAP is defined by a time, depending on your ground speed. Missed approach is straight forward,
but circling can be interesting.
The AS NDB-A is an interesting approach that did more to hone my IF than help me land in poor weather. It will be gone soon, won't appear on DAPs or in Jepps next month and will be consigned to the history books in much the same way as VLF OMEGA, pressure pattern flying and Celestial Nav. Will someone please post a screen shot of the procedure here for posterity?
Anyone else got an approach worth mentioning that will be gone soon?
Handing over.