Earlier posts going on about the GPS in the centre stack breaking up the scan.
I did a lot of IR training in PA28s with the old Bendix King KR86 - the one with the tuner and dial in the same bit of kit. That was placed neatly in front of the co-pilot's seat. Now that didn't exactly help your scan!!!:rolleyes:

I could never quite wrap my mind around this " Scan " thing.

What is the time frame between interrupting your scan to look at something not directly in front of you..??...Will the airplane suddenly just go completely out of control if your " Scan " gets interrupted?

If they were all in the same place and of the same make displaying the same format it would help.

But you have to look for it then hopefully it will have a make the numbers match.

If its stable winds no it won`t go anywhere in that period. If your wrestling with the sod since you went below MSA with rotar and itblowing a gale its just easier a bit lik getting fully reconfigured before your decent point.

And our gps is usually on the vertical line of the fo`s left knee so its a definate head turn not just a move the eyes job. Sometimes at the top sometimes near the bottom.

My difficulty with understanding the focus on a " Scan " mad_jock comes from the way I was trained to fly by reference to instruments only.

We were not taught a " Scan " we were taught to control the airplane by checking the picture the instruments as a group gave us, in other words the picture was not focused on any one instrument for the information we needed...we were taught to use peripheral vision of the other instruments to note any change of the airplanes attitude we had not commanded.

Therefore to me " Scan " really has no real meaning.

For example if I am looking at say an approach plate in level flight and in my peripheral vision I note the altimeter needle is not straight up I know the airplanes flight path is changing and I then quit reading the approach plate until I correct the reason the flight path has changed.

Chuck,

A great story about your Banks Island trip. For a moment or two, I thought you were supplying "my" seismic crew, but then I remembered that the seismic data I worked on was from Prince Patrick Island.

I never got that far north, but I once jump-seated in a 748 from Calgary to Inuvik (with intermediate stops at Edmonton, High Level and Norman Wells - it was a long trip!). I was very impressed that when we got to Inuvik, the Omega display was only 1 nm out. Not bad for a trip of nearly 1200 nm.

Chuck, thanks for the story! Makes me want to go back and re-read Les Maike's online memoir The Big Chill, Tales of an old aviator. Any pilot who hasn't will probably find Les' stories to be enjoyable reading, even though the circumstances under which they were written are rather sad.

I have never felt I did as well as I should have at shooting NDB approaches. I did well enough to pass check rides, but honestly, every time a runway appeared at the MAP I was a little surprised to see it there! The NDB at Sun Valley did get me below the clouds a couple of times in the Westwind before we had GPS though, so it has it's utility. The ADF also got us into some Latin American airports that didn't have any other navaids too...

These days the only way you'll ever have to do an NDB approach on an FAA check ride for a rating is if the airplane you use is equipped with a functional one and the examiner has a thing for ADFs. Any other navaid that can be used to fly an NPA satisfies the check ride requirements.(GPS, VOR or LOC) My last company still had NDB approaches in their approved training manual so we had to demonstrate at least one at each recurrent. Observing other pilots as a check airman taught me that I wasn't the only pilot who had to work harder at maintaining proficiency at NDB approaches. If you don't do very many, they don't get easier. I agree with the poster above who said it's good for your skills.

As for the "scan", I was initially taught the two methods the FAA instrument flying handbook recommends, but later came to think of it differently. To me it's all one big picture that you have to look at in pieces. Each bit of information as you need it. A constant updating of the big picture you "see" in your mind. But I promote the idea of teaching students by the recognized "book" methods and suggesting to them that their scan will become less "mechanical" and more intuitive as they build experience. PFDs have made this allot less work than it was on round dials, even with the FD and AP off. Fixation on one parameter to the exclusion of all else is still the biggest challenge to overcome for the trainee instrument pilot.

The ADF and the NDB approach won't die as quickly as some people think (or wish!) so it's a good idea to continue training it (even in the USA) if for no other reason than it "works" your "scan" or "information gathering" skills to a high degree and gives a pilot abilities beyond that which will usually be required to shoot GPS and ILS approaches. And in many parts of the world, that still may be all you have available or are authorized to use.

So enjoy!

westhawk

Might add a third condition - there is an NDB approach anywhere in the area.

True enough porterhouse!

Don't know about up there in near Paso or elsewhere in the Norcal area, down here in SoCal there's still a couple.

westhawk

Could you name just one, I am curious.

EDIT: there is one at El Monte and Alamitos.

I am not aware of a single one anywhere in the NorCal (could have missed something)

porterhouse:

I looked up all of Cali just to be sure. I may have missed some but here's what I found.

Airports currently served by NDB approaches (according to the NACO terminal procedures) in Socal include: EMT(El Monte), WJF (Lancaster), SLI (Los Alamitos Army Airfield) and SBD (San Bernadino,formerly Norton AFB).

Up your way, it appears you'll have to fly all the way up to SIY(Siskiyou county) to find one. Yeah they've really cleaned out NorCal of NDB approaches!

westhawk

This is getting a bit US orientated. The UK has many NDB approaches. My nearest is 5 miles away where I fly to get my fuel.
PS my Jodel doesn't have an ADF!

As a pilot who is not based in either the UK or US, I have been reading this thread, and in particular the last few posts, with interest.

The fact of the matter is the that ADF/NDB way of doing things is dated, crude, unreliable and basically a pain in the arse.

I respect those who've mastered NDB holding patterns and approaches just as I respect our predecessors who mastered celestial navigation.

However the fact of the matter is that this is the 21st century and there are better ways of doing things.

I know of no valid reason why every airport on the planet should not have a published GNSS approach procedure.

I know one - cost!

On track

Sadly in the UK historically nothing changes fast :{
Even the JAA ATP exam structure was based from the past and there is a reluctance to change anything from overhead joins instigated in non radio days right through the whole system! Yes we still have a lot of NDB approaches and a resistance to change anything !
I agree with other posters that they are old hat and unreliable but still hold that if you can master the NDB approach you can master any IFR procedure because it is a demanding approach to fly accurately and requires a lot of spatial awareness and reading of winds and descent points!
Much harder than getting radar steers until two needles cross :ok:

We also have a lot of procedural approaches too which means the pilot has to work much harder and think much harder ! Not a bad thing :E

Pace

Cost? What cost?
You mean a cost of bureaucrats who should be doing their job and not sitting on their arses finding excuses of not charting approaches. If there is already an NDB approach charting a simple overlay approach over it is very easy, doesn't even require getting up from the desk.

westhawk - I tip my hat to you for this find!

India Four Two, cost is usually the reason given for shutting down NDBs.

In relative terms, an NDB costs about 2/6d a week to maintain. I did it as a lad when the Tx1154 was used.

Over here on this side of the pond we lost one of the best airways marker systems ever invented sometime around 1960 when they shut down the airway marker beacons that were put there for the early mail pilots....

...for me it was quite traumatic to lose both the airways beacons and the radio ranges......but I can still close my eyes and see the airway marker beacons ahead of me in the night and know soon the flight would end successfully when I skillfully hit the cone of silence in my headset..

Aahhhh the good old days.......but we still have the ADF to bring us back in time...:D:D:D

No-one does an NDB approach by choice. Those who have to do one use a GPS which effectively makes it an LNAV.

Yes
25 renewals
from class 3 in 80s through to CIR SEA.
I think I fly a pretty good approach but with advent of flight tracking I notice that I am not as good as previously thought!
I often look at the truncated approaches and out of tolerance aircraft who fly out here from Melbourne and shoot the HML ndb approach in a quartering tailwind…it’s complicated.
but as is stated GPS RNAV negates the need. That is like in gulf war they de rated the GNSS and a friend ferrying ended up 200 miles off track.
I also saw debate in the news of derating the Norfolk Island NDB back to half power.
I find myself wondering about the backup nav systems and how people will fare?
Could not help noticing the lawsuit arising from flight into non vmc…by a vfr pilot…
wondering if gps is giving a false sense of situational awareness..
certainly my training on ndb and vor approaches developed my sense of winds, drift and accuracy.
which served me over my lifetime of flying..
I flew many approaches for real down to the circling minima and learned aircraft low level circling approaches in poor vmc below cloud.
never had an issue in 8000 hours 1000 approaches..,
my old green license is signed by past CASA and CFIs some long since passed
it reads like a who’s who.
every renewal involved completing an ndb approach as mandatory to pass..
but I am now an old not so bold pilot 1980-2020 single engine ppl IFR..