NDB approaches in light aircraft
I think the GPS message does get through amongst some CAA examiners. On my last SEP IR renewal I was allowed to use all the a/c aids. For all ADF tracking I used the Garmin 750 touch screen GPS / moving map obs selection, and flew the magenta line. I of course had the ADF needle displayed for 'legality'.
Exactly as the airlines carry out an NDB app if ever needed.
Exactly as the airlines carry out an NDB app if ever needed.
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[QUOTE][ and flew the magenta line./QUOTE]
Cessna, I know it is very pedantic, and I fully understand, and indeed would share the view, that the reval/examiners should shoot into the 21st Century, but I still come back to the issue, particularly for GA, Glass cockpit flying, that to follow the magenta line, with not much ref to anything else, not inferring here, could get some people into difficulty.
A lot of anecdotal evidence about, that a reliance on GPS only, glasss technology, very likely linked to an AP, flying, can lead to trouble, particularly for the low houred, individual. The initial discussion has brought out a lot of good and detailed dialogue, relating to the outdated NDB, but, the fact remains that the cockpit has a number of tools and navaids, that require to be fully understood, and practiced. The NDB, as stated earlier, can be a real aid to understanding SA, and flying them, sharpens exponentially the skill set for IR flying.
Cessna, I know it is very pedantic, and I fully understand, and indeed would share the view, that the reval/examiners should shoot into the 21st Century, but I still come back to the issue, particularly for GA, Glass cockpit flying, that to follow the magenta line, with not much ref to anything else, not inferring here, could get some people into difficulty.
A lot of anecdotal evidence about, that a reliance on GPS only, glasss technology, very likely linked to an AP, flying, can lead to trouble, particularly for the low houred, individual. The initial discussion has brought out a lot of good and detailed dialogue, relating to the outdated NDB, but, the fact remains that the cockpit has a number of tools and navaids, that require to be fully understood, and practiced. The NDB, as stated earlier, can be a real aid to understanding SA, and flying them, sharpens exponentially the skill set for IR flying.
It falls over above 65N especially when there is moderate activity and above.
Also we do polar grid nav during the ATPL's. I believe they use laser INS's these days and portable NDB beacons for the strips. And if your operating commercially there is qualification you need to have I believe which kicks in at 70-75 N/S.
Also we do polar grid nav during the ATPL's. I believe they use laser INS's these days and portable NDB beacons for the strips. And if your operating commercially there is qualification you need to have I believe which kicks in at 70-75 N/S.
Cirrus doesn't need a ADF it has a Handle in the ceiling in cases of a NDB approach requirement.
G
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The NDB, as stated earlier, can be a real aid to understanding SA, and flying them, sharpens exponentially the skill set for IR flying.
On long oceanic trips the least valuable aids we had were the ADF and HF transceivers.
We maybe should wring our hands wishing we had the radio ranges back...after all, all you need then is a cheap portable AM receiver stuck to your ear.
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Sod that Chuck get decca back
I don't know of you read this story I wrote a long time ago but what the hell here it is again.
Arcturus, Missing Hours and Fate - By Chuck Ellsworth
Finally after over a week of just plain tough flying weather the stars came out and we would depart Johnston Point on Banks Island for what should be an easy flight. This flight would turn out to be remembered forever as one of the closest calls I have ever had in almost fifty years of flying. The year was 1975, late February. We were flying supplies to a cat train that was shooting seismic lines for oil exploration on Banks Island in the high Arctic.
Johnson Point, an oil exploration base camp with a paved runway, was the main airport for supplying the western Arctic. In these very high latitudes winter means total darkness for months and navigating in that very hostile environment is difficult at the best of times. We had just gotten our first twin otter equipped with a new navigation aid called Global Navigation System. G.N.S. was based on very low power radio transmitters located in various parts of the world. In order for the computer to be able to navigate it had to acquire at least three G.N.S. transmitters.
Latitude and longitude had to be entered, for both our departure and destination points, in the computer. This entry was done with little wheels to select the numbers and other information for each trip. A further limiting factor with G.N.S. was that we had to have accurate positions or the computer to navigate to wherever we set it. Cat trains are always on the move, consequently requiring a navigator with each train to take celestial shots whenever he could to accurately keep track of their new location.
Once the G.N.S. stations were acquired and the trip was set up it was so accurate we could fly several hundred miles and then return to our parking ramp at the airport without a hitch. To us G.N.S. was like having died and gone to heaven. Being able to navigate so accurately in the high Arctic, where the magnetic compass always points strait down, was a "god send". This particular trip to the seismic train was uneventful with no cloud cover at all just the stars from horizon to horizon. After the last week of flying all our trips from takeoff to landing on solid instruments while relying on two radar altimeters one in front of each pilot for our landing decision height this one had been easy. The only visibility restriction we had was the complete loss of forward visibility in the snow which blew up when we went into reverse to stop on the short runway, which had been ploughed for us, on the ice.
Sometimes these strips were not much over 1000 feet long due to the location of the cat train at that time therefore, reverse was a necessity to stop before we ran off the landing strip. With clear weather and no rush to get back to Johnson Point we went to the cookhouse, had a leisurely meal, listened to the tape recorder playing music such as North to Alaska, which we of course changed to South to Alaska. Finally, off to the airplane we went where we decided to hell with waiting to reset the G.N.S. Instead, with such a clear night, we would fly back to home base using the astro compass. After lighting up the two P.T.6's we taxied back to the runway and lined up with the flare pots. We got the almanac out and shot Arcturus. It is one of the easiest stars to identify and shoot due to its position and brightness in the sky. Arcturus is the first bright star out from the handle of the Big Dipper. We read our heading on the astro compass, set our direction indicators (gyros) and off we went for Johnston Point. Once leveled off in cruise there was nothing but the sound of the engines and the big canopy of stars that ended in a faint white blur which was the endless Arctic snow just barley visible below us in the faint starlight.
Sitting in the warm cockpit with only the sound of those dependable turbine engines and no sense of movement through the dark night I slowly became aware that something was wrong but could not quite figure out what it was. I remember asking the co-pilot to see if Johnson Point was showing up on the A.D.F. After a few minutes he had no luck, now I came wide awake and said, "This doesn't look right. Let's get another shot on Arcturus.". Once more I gave him the time and he read the almanac to set the astro compass. Again there was no change in our D.I. settings. All of a sudden a possibility came to me and I asked him what time he had. When he read his watch we both knew we were really in trouble as there was almost three hours difference between our watches. I will never forget the feeling of real fear when I realized that we had departed the cat train with a D.I. setting that was almost forty-five degrees in error.
The sudden realization of just how serious our position was made it very difficult to convert the position of the stars versus what I figured they should look like. Now there was no doubt, in my mind, we were far off our track for Johnston Point, so far in fact I knew we might never be found.
Time was now critical. We had to decide which watch was right. Making a quick position guess based on nothing but the time we had flown on this heading and instinct we turned ninety degrees to the right starting a slow cruise climb for better fuel burn. All we could do now was wait and hope.
In this part of the high Arctic, at night, there is absolutely nothing but endless white, to try to recognize any feature below you is hopeless. Now both of us were really worried, questions and doubts started. Whose watch was set wrong? Had we turned the right way? Why had we not noted the runway heading after landing? Why had we not written the heading down so as to be able to confirm our star shot? Why did we not check both of our watches, especially in that the clock in the airplane did not work which in these temperatures was normal? Radio reception was so poor we could not raise anyone on H.F. or V.H.F. then all of a sudden the A.D.F. came alive and there was the Johnston Point N.D.B. strait ahead. Soon we could see the lights of our destination on the horizon. For some time I had been quite concerned about our fuel state. Seeing the lights in the distance was just to good to be true. However, to be on the safe side we stayed at eleven thousand until we could definitely make the airport as distances can be so deceiving at night in the high Arctic.
Descending through one thousand feet the low fuel light came on telling us we had eleven minutes of fuel left in the front tank. I really don't remember how much fuel remained in the rear tank. Of course, how much fuel there was in the rear tank is now a mute point. It really doesn't matter, because like in Earnest Gann's great book "Fate is the Hunter", that night so many years ago the hunter did not find my young co-pilot, whose name I cannot even recall, and me. Had we turned left instead of right we would have been so far off course it is possible no one would have ever found the airplane or us in those millions of square miles of ice and snow. After landing and going into the Atco Huts, that were our accommodations, we finally found out it was my watch that was wrong. To this day I do not really know why I chose to make the decision it was my watch, even stranger the damn thing worked just fine after this what should have been an uneventful trip.
That just leaves fate as the best explanation for my decision to turn right that night. Isn't it strange how words like Arcturus, Missing Hours and Fate can have such chilling meaning when flying airplanes?
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It's easy just overlay created GPS points over the NDB approach and bingo you are in business 
But I stress I am not promoting the NDB as some brilliant aid but having the ability to fly one accurately and read the winds from one track to another will make any other instrument approach a piece of cake
But I stress I am not promoting the NDB as some brilliant aid but having the ability to fly one accurately and read the winds from one track to another will make any other instrument approach a piece of cake
And what kind of business I would be in? Business of flying an approach that no longer exists in my part of the world or looking at a needle which isn't there?. Some of you simple can't get over the basic facts that we either don't care for NDB or we simply have no chance of flying one even if we desperately wanted one. There are plenty of VORs left, plenty of VOR/DME approaches, they completely got overlooked in this discussion, if I need to feel like a macho pilot I can fly one, they are still commonplace.
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you could slave a RMI needle to a GPS waypoint.
Get creative
Its what I do when the tossers have taken the airport locator beacon away.
oh and I don't have a clue about x plane. The only one I know has it is RANT. If the software is American they tend not to included it because it doesn't occur according to the FAA I believe.
Get creative
Its what I do when the tossers have taken the airport locator beacon away.
oh and I don't have a clue about x plane. The only one I know has it is RANT. If the software is American they tend not to included it because it doesn't occur according to the FAA I believe.
Last edited by mad_jock; 10th Feb 2014 at 18:40.
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Chuck
The problem with GNS is solar flare activity and bad fuselage mapping for proper antenna positioning. When we had them at the airline, it was sometimes impossible to fly Hono to the west coast. I remember having to do a lane resolution coasting out from AK on the way to Asia. We came really close to doing a turnback before the
thing resolved it's location. There were also issues with determining which one was the most accurate on the other side of the pond. Too easy to be tagged with a nav error on the coast-in.
I'll take INS/IRS with GPS update any day over GNS...or an astro compass and a cheap watch. Shoot, my iPad does better than a GNS...and I can scrape the ice off my windshield, too.
I still miss flying the Twin Otter.
The problem with GNS is solar flare activity and bad fuselage mapping for proper antenna positioning. When we had them at the airline, it was sometimes impossible to fly Hono to the west coast. I remember having to do a lane resolution coasting out from AK on the way to Asia. We came really close to doing a turnback before the
thing resolved it's location. There were also issues with determining which one was the most accurate on the other side of the pond. Too easy to be tagged with a nav error on the coast-in.I'll take INS/IRS with GPS update any day over GNS...or an astro compass and a cheap watch. Shoot, my iPad does better than a GNS...and I can scrape the ice off my windshield, too.
I still miss flying the Twin Otter.
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For $30 you can get some very realistic navigation gauges for MSFS. I've used these for about 7 years and they've never failed me for IR renewals. They also simulate dip very nicely. In fact, this was the reason I bought them!
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What is high artic definition?
We always referred to the high Arctic as anywhere north of the mainland ....the Arctic Islands.
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That just leaves fate as the best explanation for my decision to turn right that night.
[I could never really quite get my head around all this probability and/or anthropic principle stuff.]
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Anthropic principle is simple enough. The reason you are reading this is because of anthropic principle. Only a universe capable of sustaining sentient life will be observed by that same sentient life, thus any universe will tend towards sustaining sentient life otherwise it would to all intents and purposes cease to exist if there were no life forms capable of acknowledging it's existence. There would be no point to it.
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I am reasonably sure that some inner voice has compelled me to take a certain course of action on several occasions during my flying career Gertrude because there really is no other explanation...
.....maybe there is some vague middle ground between divine intervention and pre. destination??
.....maybe there is some vague middle ground between divine intervention and pre. destination??