Aviator90 Episode 28

[musical introduction]

Man: [0:31] Welcome to another episode of Aviator90 from Angle of
Attack. Last time we discussed in brief how to listen to the
weather observations and very general VFR flight rules. This time
we are going to get into different types of navigation available to
you as an aviator. Keep in mind throughout that not all forms of
navigation are created equal.
[0:55] We will be talking about three genres of navigation. These
are dead reckoning and pilotage, VOR’s and ADF’s, and GPS. In
today’s world these are about the only types of navigation worth
mentioning for general aviation. So let’s get into it.

[1:17] First dead reckoning and pilotage. So what is dead reckoning
and pilotage? Dead reckoning involves making calculations every now
and again during the flight or doing all the numbers in pre-flight
and then coming up with a course corrected for such things as wind,
magnetic deviation, and much more. Dead reckoning is pretty hard to
do and although most flight schools still teach this initially, I
actually consider it to be a waste with today’s technology. But
it’s there if you’d like to use it.

[1:50] Now pilotage is basically the use of visual landmarks. Maybe
even with the help of a map to navigate. This type of navigation is
actually pretty cool and we’ll be doing this with Aviator90 quite a
bit. So pilotage is the type of navigation where you can get in and
go. It’s a ton of fun. So those are very basic overviews of dead
reckoning and pilotage. We’ll be doing pilotage later but not dead
reckoning. The less math I have to do as a pilot the better, so we
won’t be doing any dead reckoning. It’s completely unnecessary in
my mind.

[2:29] All right so now to the VOR’s and ADF’s. First of all what
does VOR and ADF stand for? VOR stands for Very high
Omnidirectional Range. Now you can see why we just call it VOR. ADF
stands for Automatic Direction Finder. The ADF is actually the
instrument that the pilot uses to navigate to what is called the
NDB, a Non Directional Beacon.

[2:58] So let’s take on the VOR first. You can think of a VOR as a
station that can get you on track on any of the 360 degree radials.
A VOR is much like an old wagon wheel, if you think of it that way.
Think of the radials as spokes of the wheel. Any one of those
radials you can dial in with your VOR instrument and track to or
from the station. So that is really all you need to know for now
because this really only makes sense once you see it in action.
We’ll be tracking VOR’s at some point during the cross country
episodes within Aviator90.

[3:39] So let’s now go onto the ADF’s. ADF’s are fairly common in
Europe but personally I don’t have a lot of experience with ADF’s
as they are being rapidly phased out here in the United States. ADF
instruments basically point to the ADF and then based on your
heading you have to track to a bearing to the station. It’s kind of
difficult but it’s just a bit of extra training. So I actually do
not plan on doing any tracking for ADF’s in this series, just so
you know. We’ll be doing a mix of pilotage, VOR navigation and GPS
navigation.

[4:19] So now we come to the final and most accurate of all the
types we’ve mentioned, which is GPS. Now GPS navigation is the way
of the future. You can literally pick a direct to way [?] point,
whether that point is an airport, a VOR, or an actual latitude-
longitude location and fly to it. In fact I said it’s the way of
the future but really the way of the future is here. You can use
GPS these days and it’s widely available within general aviation.
The great thing is there is no worry for calculations dealing with
frequencies, etc.

[4:54] For the most part, GPS covers the entire world and has
become so accurate that an aircraft position can potentially be
tracked within inches. It’s an incredible technology. So basically
a GPS system uses three or more satellites to triangulate the
position of the aircraft. It gives you all sorts of things like
actual speed over the ground and can also be used to find out
exactly what the winds are where you are if you have the correct
equipment that is.

[5:24] Also worth noting these days even weather can be broadcasted
to a general aviation aircraft via a satellite connection in real-
time, which is pretty incredible. GPS is certainly the way of the
future and as I said before, the future is already here. With that
said, the aviators of yesteryear were still able to navigate the
globe using the same kind of navigation that Christopher Columbus
used for example.

[5:51] Navigation is what you make of it. No matter what type you
use, you’ve got to be very knowledgeable about it and know the
system well. No system these days, even GPS, is without fault. GPS
is the most accurate and most reliable and it is the way of the
future. But as aviators we need to have those basic skills, those
core principles in place if we are to fly safely.

[6:18] So we are going to build our way to up to things like GPS
and we will do some pretty basic and aviator-like stuff in the
beginning. These cross countries should be a ton of fun and we’re
going to do 10 of them, I believe.

[6:32] All right guys, so that is it for this episode. Next time
we’re going to talk about fuel planning which is very important to
say the least. Until next time, throttle on.

Transcription by CastingWords