ADF - Deactivation
 

I have just been told that Boeing is offering to deliver some new aircraft to us with ADF deactivated. I feel overjoyed as an AMT. I was just wondering if this is a new option or if your operators have had ADF deactivated on any of your fleets and how you feel about it?. Ours is B763F.

no NDB approaches in your future?

Suppose not for this fleet. Just one fleet type out of many so far. How Many NDB approaches are still there for a global carrier? Last one I was on was over a decade ago and it was Luanda Angola.

I was told a few years ago that ADF was now an option on Airbus aircraft.....

777, delivered without ADF for about 2 years now.

We had 777's delivered 5 years ago without ADF'S and Airbus delivered 4 years ago without ADF's.

Very annoying not being able to listen to radio stations over Oz..:{

How would that effect flight planning on ETOPS for "suitable" airports en route if those airports were only served by an NDB and the aircraft didn't have an ADF and also the crew were not certified to use an NDB for an instrument approach?

In the days of anything above ETOPS 120 this shouldn't be an issue - all the classic ETOPS alternates will have something more than an NDB approach. That said I still prefer to have one or better two ADFs available to me ;)

That's what also would annoy me! Almost no place has got an NDB approach nowadays, not the ones a 777 or an A32S would use anyway!

On an aircraft for a trunk route maybe but for all the Regionals & smaller mainliners ADFs are still required (try flying in northern Canada). Bombardier are still offering dual ADFs on their CSeries and the option's still part of the Rockwell Collins Vision Flight Deck.

Having no ADF's fitted doesn't effect ETOPS at all. In fact we are no longer allowed to do NDB approaches in my company.

RNAV, ILS VOR etc is all you need and has the world wide airports covered well enough without NDB's :ok:

Good thing we still make such a production of learning ADF procedures during initial IFR training and all flight testing :rolleyes:

The last time I did a for real NDB in IMC conditions with only the ADF for track information (ie no GPS) was 1994. The next time I will be required to do a ADF approach will be in my next recurrent training and pilot proficiency flight test in March 2013 :ugh:

Just did an ADF approach in Accra 3 months ago because the VOR went down.
That is not the first time that has happened to me and I am talking worldwide.

All 737s are RNAV equipped. Any airport accepting medium jets with only an NDB will surely have an RNAV approach by now? That's not a rhetorical question. Also, does anybody now fly an NDB or even a VOR without an FMC overlay using LNAV or the equivalent?

Exactly, if the Airport in question has an NDB approach most modern Aircraft can build any overlay and fly it in LNAV / VNAV.


If they don't have this capability then they probably still have an ADF receiver !

But in that case, you'd still need an ADF receiver for the raw data! We fly overlays too - occasionally we'll use HDG SEL but it's on the decrease as most of the time the map is pretty good, even in the non-GPS a/c.

Poland, non radar, many of the airports have both a VOR and an NDB at the field...
and with two separate procedures one based on the NDB one on the VOR, very handy if/when one of the two is down for MX...

there are many of the italian airports where this can be useful as well.

obviously we will be flying in L-NAV but until these places draw out some nice RNAV / RNP transitions for us to play with i still need to back up with raw data below MSA.

Me. No GPS backup means we can't.

Last NDB I flew, we were asked by ATC if everything was alright. Needles were pointing where they should, but coastal refraction had us 30 degrees off track! Sooner they go, the better.

As stated, with GPS back up you don't need an operational NDB to fly an NDB approach.

CX - 744ERFs, -8Fs and latest 777s are not fitted with ADFs, plus no longer do NDB approaches or circling for that matter.