Who makes C172 radio stack?

[Rodent1982]

While everyone else goes off on a tangent...

TomTom the most important thing at this stage is learning to fly the plane, not how to operate the radio's etc (apart from PTT and changing frequencies, which needs little more than a couple of minutes to learn).

Don't get caught up learning stuff you needn't learn. Get the flight manuals, read up on upcoming lessons, and practice for your Air Law exam or others if you've already taken that.

Hell, if you've taken all your ground exams then go for it. I'd personally prefer to practice flight planning than reading radio manuals, but each to their own.

[Katamarino]

Check your navigation. Your artificial horizon suggests that you may be in Australia.

[Rodent1982]

Honestly, people will start saying "Look's like you've broken the 500' rule there" next.

[Katamarino]

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[Big Pistons Forever]

I think that the KNS80 remains a good reliable and sturdy VOR/LOC/GS/DME (at least in North America where we do not have the FM imune sillyness). The main drawback is the waypoint selector button (aka the suicide switch). It is very easy to inadvertantly have different nav data displayed from the frequency shown. I had this happen one day while flying IFR and started off flying in totally the wrong direction. After that I always left it in waypoint one and never used the RNAV function.

[IO540]

I am sure it works well in the USA, where for VFR purposes the CAS base is 18,000 feet, and the airways are nicely designed to have the MEAs based on continuous VOR/DME reception, with midway changeover points etc.

Here it isn't quite so good, hacking under the LTMA at 2400ft

Incidentally, has anybody found a KNS80 hack for France? One old pilot told me there is a hack whereby you can make use of a DME located away from the VOR, which would allow the use of a TDME on somebody's ILS. Short range though...

[n5296s]

I think that the KNS80 remains a good reliable and sturdy VOR/LOC/GS/DME

I don't disagree with that, and it's reasonably easy to use as such. It's just if you try to use it do all the RNAV stuff which is presumably the reason people bought them in the first place, c. 1980.

I guess you COULD (illegally) fly a GPS approach with a KNS80, but you probably wouldn't get a chance to kill yourself flying the illegal approach since you'd in all probability already have flown into something while twiddling the knobs to set up the waypoints...

n5296s

[IO540]

I guess you COULD (illegally) fly a GPS approach with a KNS80

I don't think this would work well because the accuracy is no better than that of the real physical VOR/DME being transposed, and from say 20nm away you would quite possibly be way off the airport - say 2 miles. Perhaps even worse than an NDB approach

The other weird thing is that you can get a KNS80 installation approved for BRNAV and fly airways with it. On practically every IFR flight I've done, I've been sent to waypoints which were 100nm and occassionally 200nm away, so anybody trying to fly such a DCT with VOR-based RNAV is going to have their work cut out because they will have to pick off a number of navaids along the track. But that would be 100% legal IFR GPS is the only practical way to fly IFR nowadays.

[BackPacker]

IFR GPS is the only practical way to fly IFR nowadays.

I've been wondering about that. Of course if you file your aircraft SG/S, you're going to get "Direct XXXXX", where XXXXX is a lat/long-only waypoint 200 miles away. But what if you just file S/S? On the one occasion I flew IFR (with an instructor, in an S/S aircraft, no GPS) we were neatly cleared from VOR to VOR. Do controllers pay attention to the equipment field in your FPL, and base their instructions on them?

[tomtom_91]

Ill stick with the Air Law manual.... lol

[IO540]

I've been wondering about that. Of course if you file your aircraft SG/S, you're going to get "Direct XXXXX", where XXXXX is a lat/long-only waypoint 200 miles away. But what if you just file S/S?

This Q was asked in the ATC forum years ago; I recall.

The answer was the expected No; IFR controllers don't care for the declared equipment. I used to declare S/S for all IFR and got long DCTs then. That's how traffic is managed these days. The whole thing is an RNAV point to point nav exercise. Occassionally the waypoint is a real VOR (or NDB) but this means nothing as they are freely handed out even if you are way outside its reception range.

Also, above FL095, BRNAV is mandatory and the only way this can be achieved is either INS (inertial navidation) or GPS. So there you are: GPS is de facto mandatory...

IIRC, Australia was the one place where ATC cared for what you declare in the equipment list.

On the one occasion I flew IFR (with an instructor, in an S/S aircraft, no GPS) we were neatly cleared from VOR to VOR.

What level was this at, and where? If it was a short and "obviously" training flight, they might have done that.

[BackPacker]

What level was this at, and where? If it was a short and "obviously" training flight, they might have done that.

Indeed. Rotterdam-Antwerp, at night, at 3000 feet to Antwerp and back at FL60. In an S/S airplane, flight declared as I/X, as I recall.

[A and C]

Enough Time!?!

All this talk of Area Nav and what you can use is dependant on the time you have available.

I have flown direct to an entry point for the Helsinki FIR from just north of Norwich with just VOR/DME fixes. But this was with two pilots, + me running the Flight Engineers panel and taking "fixes" from abeam radio aids an updating the heading.
That is a low workload situation, so very safe because we had the time to give to the navigation.

I would not try it single pilot in the London TMA!

The KNS80 is still usable if you have good VOR/DME cover and a low workload but in today's busy IFR ATC environment give me GPS any day (preferably two GPS+ two FMC's with DME (X5) update).

In short the KNS80 is now only good for short range RNAV not because it cant find a point in space but because the ATC environment has moved on.