NDB approaches???

[Timebuilder]

Books are a good place for any instrument student to spend time. Trevor Thom (The Pilot's Manual, #3), Peter Dogan's The Instrument Flight Training Manual (he came up with the Professional Instrument Course) and folks like Richard Collins and Richard Taylor are all good bets. I think Trevor Thom explains the NDB as well as anyone.

One tip I have for you is to DRAW THE PROCEDURES on paper at home, and on the whiteboard at the flight school. Since you are doing more of the "work" to use the NDB, you need to clearly visualize what is going on. With a little practice you will begin to associate what you see on the panel with what you drew on the paper. That's the beginning of Situational Awareness. You're setting up neural pathways in the brain to combine information about the direction of the plane's nose and the angle from the plane to the station. When you have done enough of this, it starts to become a "flow experience", where you act smoothly and naturally, as opposed to intellectualizing every step as you struggle along.

One more thing: the key to intercepting an NDB course line is to recognize that the course line has an associated heading, and the angle of interception of that course line is the same angle as the angle between the nose and the station when interception happens, with no wind. For example, let's say you are on a heading of 045, and you want to intercept a course line that represents a heading of 360 to the station, meaning you are going to intercept the line while south of the station, join the course and head north toward the station. Your angle of interception is the same 45 degrees as the heading you are flying, a common angle to use in a single engine airplane. How do you know when you have intercepted the course? The ADF will show that the station is to your left side, 45 degrees off your nose, and the ADF needle will be pointing to 315 on a fixed card, or 360 if you have set a moveable card to your heading of 045. Draw it out in several stages if you like. It's really the simplest geometry once you understand what is happening.

 

[tarp]

RM7599:

I don't think anybody answered your question, they just started teaching.

The reason NDB approaches are hated is because pilots forget they are flying airplanes in a body of air that is usually moving. By that I mean its a rare day when you have calm winds in the strata of altitudes that you would be flying the approach.

Because the ADF installed in the plane is a "dumb" instrument (only points to the station) it requires your discipline to fly an approach path accurately. Think about it in VFR terms. If it was a calm day and you had to fly down final to a landing, its a piece of cake, right? But if you add a 12 knot direct crosswind, it becomes a job for you to hold the centerline. The same thing occurs on the NDB approach but without any visual cues. You must "crab" into the wind to hold a course line, but you determine the amount of "crab" not by looking outside at a big old runway or mountain but by comparing the values on the DG and the ADF head.

This requires all those concepts the guys were teaching above. I personally love the NDB approaches because it teaches a pilot to respect and calculate the winds. Anybody can fly a VOR or ILS approach where the "needle" is the course line - only real pilots can draw the line in their head and force the plane to fly a path with precision even when no precision instruments are in the plane. Food for thought!

 

[avbug]

I think we answered his question just fine. The reason pilots hate NDB's is that they make it too complicated, and don't understand the most basic of navigational instruments. Pilots seldom fly the NDB; they're used to flying an ILS and anything else causes sweat to bead.

The point of the previous posts was simply that the NDB isn't a nightmare; it's user friendly, reliable, and proven (and the only thing going in many locals, GPS excepted; even GPS has it's limitations).

The origional poster asked why people hate NDB's (some do, some don't), what makes them so complicated (they aren't; pilots complicate the issues themselves), and how it works (asked, and answered). Sounds to me like everyone answered the topic thoroughly.

 

[Goffer]

It has been said the NDB will be phased out for quite some time now. On a windy day it might be hard to find a better way to practice tracking than with an good old NDB.

 

[Vik]

NDBs might be phased out but AM stations will always be there

 

[boscenter]

NDBs might be phased out but AM stations will always be there

with xm, that might not be the case . . .

 

[bobbysamd]

NDBs

Still quite a few little U.S. airports have NDB approaches. In other parts of the world, where the system is not as well-developed as ours, NDB approaches are very much alive and living. When I was teaching Alitalia students nine years ago, we put a great deal of emphasis on NDB and VOR approaches, and even had turbojet profiles we taught to the students for these approaches. That blew my mind at the time until I realized that Alitalia flies to less-developed parts of the world. I read once that Air Canada turbojets fly NDB approaches regularly because there is nothing else where they fly sometimes.

Still a valuable skill to hone. NDBs are indeed your father's instrument approach procedure.

 

[jsoceanlord]

since you asked about NDB approaches, here's a tip;

(this may be a little off); if you turn 30 degrees onto your procedure turn and fly that heading for a minute and then start a standard rate turn to your final approach course, you'll have intercepted the approach course perfectly, assuming no wind.

 

[Goffer]

NDB

I hope the NDB equipment isn't phased out in the US for quite some time. Finding news/talk radio on AM stations was half the fun of my cross country flight training.