Hey guys-- Jon with fl8MA.com and today I'm
here to talk to you about how to use the VOR receiver in your airplane when you're in the
airplane. So when you're actually going out for a flight
lesson-- maybe flight lesson 6, or 8 or 10-- whenever your flight instructor decides to
introduce the VOR to you, you'll be ready to know how to use it, and how to use it to
navigate where you want to go. So for starters here, let's say we hop in
our airplane, we're flying out of Venice airport and we want to fly to Sarasota. Well obviously, we could just follow the coast,
but let's say we're in the middle of the country and we don't have a convenient coastline to
follow, we want to use the VOR to do so. We're going to use the VOR, and we're going
to use the frequency of 117.0 in that VOR box there. We're going to dial that into our Nav-radio
and make sure that's in the active part of our frequency, so if we put it in standby,
we'll switch it over to be "active." And then we can actually go ahead and tune
up the VOR and listen to it. Listen to the morse code, and make sure we're
getting the right reception from the VOR, and your instructor will show you how to listen
to the morse code since it's a little different in each aircraft. But in any case, we've got 117 dialed up and
we are down to the southeast of the VOR, so here's our little airplane, there's the Sarasota
VOR, and we're southeast of it. We want to get to it. Let's say we don't know even if we're southeast
or southwest or where ever we are, it doesn't matter, we don't have to know where we are. All we have to do is have that frequency dialed
in and then take our OBS knob, or "Omni Bearing Selector" and start twisting it around to
where we can get a to-flag. So, we have that to-flag here. Then we want to center up our needle. So we're just twisting that around, we can
see the outer ring turning and changing it's heading there. As we're twisting this OBS knob, the needle
becomes centered with a 2 indication and we simply have to fly that heading roughly about
325 or so, and that will take us to the station. We can see that we have dialed-up here the
324 radial outbound from the station. We're actually located on the 144 radial from
the station right now. So, we can see our heading. We're kind of turned off, heading to the northeast. We want to fly a heading of 325 to get to
the station, and if we just keep flying the current heading that we're on, we're going
to notice that the needs start to come off a little bit showing us the course is to your
left. You need to fly this heading, and so we look
up here to our DG, and we'll actually go ahead and turn our aircraft and start flying a heading
of 325 to get back to our radial inbound to fly to the station. Now as we make this turn, and we get roughly
towards 325 or so there, we'll go ahead and level our wings, fly straight, and then we
can go ahead and just twist this again to recenter the knob, and fly that heading. So I'm getting roughly in the neighborhood
of 330 or so. I'm going to go ahead and start to roll out
here, and as our wings are level, we're flying straight, Now, I want to go ahead and center
up my CDI again, so I'm going to go ahead and twist that around. I've got a CDI centered at about 320, that
means that I need about a 320 heading. And you can see how we slight diverging angle
there, so if I bank a little more to the left, and fly a heading of 320, I'll be perfectly
lined up to go to the station. So no matter where we are when we start, we
can always find our way back to the station just by twisting the OBS, getting a to-flag
and getting the needle centered. Then once we have the needle centered, whatever
heading we see depicted at the top here, we want to fly roughly that heading. We're about a 315 heading here, so I'll go
ahead and turn a little bit back to a 320 heading. Seeing the needle go just slightly to the
right there means we want to turn slightly to the right to go get it. So whenever you have a to-flag, you have positive
sensing. If the needle goes right, you turn to the
right to go get the needle and bring it back. So if I turn off to the left here, and we'll
speed up just to make this happen a little faster, if I turn my aircraft off to the left,
we're going to notice the needle goes to the right because it's saying, "Hey, your course
is off to your right." So now I want to go ahead and go back to the
right to center up the needle.We see it drifting off to the right there. And now I'm turning the airplane back to the
right, and as we get passed that 320, so we're not paralleling anymore, now we have an intercept
going on. We're turning 330, 340. I'll give myself about a 20-degree intercept
to it. Then we're going to see the needle start coming
back to the center. And as the needle recenters, then we'll go
ahead and fly as close to this heading as we can. Now, you may have a wind coming from say,
like you're left there, or a wind from the right where you actually have to track the
airplane and fly a heading of 350 to hold a ground track of 320 because remember the
VOR is a ground-based station, and it's really that these radials are fixed in position. So, it's a ground-track that it's referencing. So that's how we could get to the station. Now let's go ahead and say that we want to
find out what radial we're on from the station, and the instructor says, "Hey, what radial
are you on from the station," or "Where are you relative to the station?" So let's just pretend we don't know where
our airplane is right now. I'm just going to move it around here to some
random place. So, we now notice we have a from-flag and
we want to go ahead and find out where we are relative to the station-- northeast, southeast,
southwest, whatever it might be. So I'm going to twist that OBS knob until
I have a firm indication and the needle centered. If I happen to twist too much and say, we
have a to-indication, just keep on twisting until you get that from-indication. Once you get the from-indication, twist a
little slower then, and get the needle centered up. There we go. So we have a from-indication, needle centered,
and now we can say where we are from the station. Well, remember any time we have a from-flag,
the number up here is the radial that we are on. So we are on the 340 radial. If you're on the 340 radial from Sarasota,
say, you must be somewhere off to the northwest. And we can see looking at our plane view here,
yes, we are in fact to the northwest of the station. Now, what if we got really fancy here and
I told you something like, "Hey, I want you to go ahead and intercept the 270 radial from
the station and track it inbound and then fly on the 090 radial outbound from the station." So that's pretty fancy instruction right there. That's going to show that you know what's
going on. So, 270 inbound, the 270 radial inbound. Let's go ahead and dial this guy up here with
our OBS knob so that we have 090 on our heading, because ultimately we're going to be flying
to the station on the 270 radial inbound, and then 090 from the station. So we first dial it up to 090 there, and then
we're going to go ahead and fly our present heading to intercept the 270 radial. So we see the to-indication, that's good. 090 is good. And we're going to go ahead and stay on that
heading there. We'll roll our wings level. Once we start to see this needle moving in,
then we can go ahead and start turning to the right, and we'll want to get about a 30-degree
intercept-- 30-45 degree intercept, depending on how far you are from the station. Remember the further you are from the station,
the less sensitive this guy is. Then make that right turn and intercept that
radial and track it inbound. Now, since we have a to-flag, and we're going
to be flying to the station, we have positive sensing. The needle's on our left, that means we have
to go left to get it. We can see here though, we're already at a
90-degree intercept, so going left won't help us anymore. That's about as steep as we can go. We notice 360 is our heading, and that's about
90 degrees off of 090. About 010 now, I need to roll our wings level
here. So as we fly this 80-degree intercept, or
so, that's about as steep as we can get. As we start getting closer, I'm going to start
shallowing up my intercept angle, so that needle doesn't do a quick jump to the right
and we fly right through it. As we start to turn more towards the station,
it'll make a little bit better sense that, as the needle's to our left we'll go left
to get the radial, and if our needle is to the right, we'll go right to get it. So as we're getting closer here, we're going
to go ahead and start turning to the right. We can see our needle's already moving, and
hopefully, it's not too late to that we might actually shoot right through this. So I should have had a shallower intercept
as I approached the radial. I'll roll over to about a roughly 090 heading
up here once I see this needle centered down here. I'll go ahead and shallow my bank now. keep that needle coming in, try to keep that
30-degree intercept, or so, up here on our heading-- now about a 20-degree intercept. And as this needle centers up here, I'm going
to go ahead and roll on to a 090 heading, and just track that heading inbound. Again, if we had wind, we might actually have
to fly a heading of, say, like 100, if we had a wind coming in out of the south pushing
the airplane to the north, to stay on that ground track of 090 to the station, and on
the 270 from the station. Remember, the station's made up of 360 radials,
and we have the 270 radial sticking out this way, the 090 radial sticking out that way. Even though you have 090 dialed in here, it's
090 to get to the station, not the 090 radial that you're on. You're in fact on the 270 radial, and if you
were at all in doubt and wanted to confirm that, remember what we said, we can just twist
this guy around to where we get the needle centered with a from-flag. Once we get that from-flag, we'll just keep
spinning here, get our 270 radial centered up there. From-flag 270, needle centered, we are on
the 270 radial, roughly. You know 272-- something close. In VORs we're not looking for plus or minus
0.1 degrees here, we're giving you a little leeway since they're not that precise. A fun fact, how precise should your VOR be? Well, we typically accept plus or minus 4
degrees as an error when they're actually testing these VORs on the ground. When the mechanic tests it and says, "Yeah
your VORs working good," he's just testing it to plus or minus 4 degrees for you. So we'll go ahead here and fly inbound on
the 270 radial on a 090 heading to cross the VOR and track outbound on the 090 radial. The only difference we're going to notice
here while we're crossing the station, is instead of 090 to the station, it's going
to become 090 and the flag is going to flip to "from" and it's going to be from the station,
because remember, we're going to be on the 090 radial soon. When we're on the 090 radial, we'll have to
have that from-flag with the needle centered, to show us that we are in fact on the 090
radial. Why I keep emphasizing radial here, is people
often confuse the heading, or bearing, with radial. The radials are these fixed lines coming out
of the VOR station. They never move, they are fixed in place,
and you can often reference and say, "Yeah sure the Venice airport lies on the 167 radial
from Sarasota." So if you just go ahead and get this guy tuned
up to about 167 at the top there, with a from-flag, you know you're on the 167 radial from Sarasota. Now you just have to figure out, how far are
you from Sarasota, and then you can exactly pinpoint where the Venice airport is and where
you are in relation to it. It's safe to say that if you flew over the
Sarasota VOR, and then flew the 167 radial outbound from Sarasota, 167 from the station,
then you would, in fact, fly directly over the Venice airport at some point in the future
as you fly outbound on that radial. So as we proceed outbound on the 270 radial
here, with the 090 heading, we can see that our needle's moving a little faster here. As we get closer, it gets much more sensitive
the closer you get. And as we cross over, it's going to flip from
"to" to "from." Once it does that, I'll go ahead and pause
this and then we'll go ahead and dial it up so that we can actually fly the 167 radial
outbound, and go ahead and find the Venice airport somehow. So there's our flip "to" to "from." Now we're going to go ahead and dial us up
to fly the 167 radial to get to Venice and make sure we keep positive sensing. So how we're going to do this, is go ahead
and dial up 167 in there. And we notice we have a 167 heading here. We're "from" the station. I'll go ahead and un-pause our simulation,
and we can see that our needle is off to the right, so we need to turn our aircraft to
the right to go get back on that radial. So I'll go ahead and bank us to the right
here. And we're turning to the right, we can see
our aircraft coming back around and eventually going to intercept this radial, and we'll
be tracking it outbound, and we have positive sensing because we're flying away from the
station, and we have a from-flag. So positive sensing is when you're flying
away from the station with a from-flag, or you're flying to the station and you have
a to-flag. If it's vice-versa, if you're flying from
the station with a to-flag, then it's reverse sensing where instead of going right to get
our needle centered, we actually have to go left, and the needle acts backward. A better way to say this might be: if your
heading on your DG roughly matches what you have on your VOR selector there, the OBS setting,
then you have positive sensing. If it's within, say, plus or minus 30 degrees--really
if it's within plus or minus 90-- if it's relatively close, then you have positive sensing. You have reverse-sensing when it is 180 degrees
opposite to what you have select. So when you're on a heading of 090, but the
VOR selector's set to 270, then you have reverse sensing. So we'll go ahead and fly about this 200 heading
here at about a 30-degree intercept, and as we see our needle starting to center up. I'll go ahead and bank a little to the left
to go ahead and fly the 167 radial outbound. I'll turn back towards 167 there. That'll give me a nice, smooth intercept onto
that radial. See our needle moving there? I'm turning to the left, and we'll intercept
and track this 167 radial outbound towards the Venice airport. Now as we're flying along here, say we get
a little off course, and we happen to get blown off to the west side of that radial,
we're just going to notice that the needle moves through center, and it's going to track
over to the left, meaning we have to turn back to the left to go get it. We're turned to the right now. I'm going to go ahead and turn back to the
left, and that's going to bring our needle back to the center. As we see, our heading comes back around the
needle will stop diverging as our airplane comes back around, we'll intercept that course
outbound. Now that we have a nice intercept angle going
on here, with our heading of the aircraft versus the radial that we're dialed into on
our OBS, we can see the needle's coming back to center. As it centers up, we'll want to go ahead and
turn our aircraft heading back close to this heading here, 167. We'll want to turn our aircraft towards a
167 heading to keep that needle in the center. And then, of course, we'll account for any
wind correction we might need on to this heading up here. To do a quick recap with you guys here, as
we're flying along and we don't know where we are, the instructor's going to say, "Tell
me where you are relative to the station." You're going to say, "Well, I don't know." So, where are you relative to the Sarasota
VOR? Well, we're just going to spin our OBS knob
as long as we have our VOR tuned to the Sarasota VOR, we'll spin our OBS knob to get a from-flag,
and center up the needle. There's a to-flag-- keep spinning. There's our from-flag. We'll keep on spinning, and we'll spin a little
slower as we get close, and as we center up that needle, then we can safely say, "Okay
we are 170 from the station. We are to the southeast of the station. Mostly south." If the instructor says, "Good. Now that you know you're southeast of the
station, take me to Sarasota, take me to the station." You'll say, "Alright, no problem." I'm just going to spin this guy around until
I get a to-indication. With the flag in the to-position, and the
needle centered. There's our to-indication. There's our needle starting to center-- oops,
we went too far, we'll go back a little bit. Twist it nice and slow. We'll get that needle centered, and okay,
I want to fly about a 335 heading to get to the station. I'm flying a 075 heading right now, let me
go ahead and turn to the left here, and I'll fly a 335 heading to get to the station. While we're making this turn, sure the needle
gets a little bit out of whack. We could turn and keep going further left
instead of flying at 335, we could fly a 300 heading to come back around and intercept
that radial. Or once you get pointed generally towards
the station, you could just twist the OBS again. Get the needle centered, read your new heading
at the top there, and then fly that heading on your DG. So we're roughly pointed towards the station. I'm going to go ahead and level my wings there. And then I'm going to twist the OBS to get
the needle centered up again. And now we can see that 325 will take us to
the station. I'll fly that heading of about 325, turning
a little to the right here to get back to it. We're on a 320 heading right now, and that'll
take us to our station. Well, guys, that's pretty much it for VOR
navigation in the airplane. There's not much more complicated than that,
at least at the private pilot level. We'll get into a little more advanced stuff
for the instrument course, and show you some really fancy tricks with the VOR then. In the meantime, make sure you give us a thumbs
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