You WILL Understand VORs after Watching This! (PPL Lesson 37)

welcome to free pilot training if you're struggling with learning how to use vors you will understand them after this video or you'll get your money back from this training i thought this is free pilot training exactly vors are confusing for everyone when we first start training to be pilots and a lot of instructors make things worse when they pass out these little drawings that might help you out on the written test but make it more confusing when you get in the airplane but if i can get you to understand just a few basic things you'll see just how easy these vors are to use and that you don't need these stupid drawings the first one of these basic things is the difference in heading and bearing these are two different things when we talk about bearing that's my position in relation to the position of something else for example let's say i wanted to identify my position off this vor and my airplane's down here now let's say if i want to fly to the station i have to fly a course of 300 and that's a west northwest course 300 is my bearing to the station and it doesn't matter what my heading is the heading of my airplane could be turned all the way in the opposite direction and my bearing to the station would still be 300 degrees and that's because that's the course i need to fly in order to go to the station with that in mind sometimes you'll need to know your bearing from the station if someone else had to fly from the station to your position what course would they fly in this example the course from the station to my position is one two zero so that's my bearing from the station and once again it does not matter what your heading is it's the course that you would fly from the station to your position okay so why am i telling you all this vors only get bearing to and from the station they don't have anything to do with heading whatsoever and understanding that is the first step in making vors easy to use vor stands for vhf omnidirectional range and that vhf stands for very high frequency radio and that just means these things operate off of radio waves and we use the navid radios in the plane to pick up that signal from the vors and in most planes you tune these in just like you would the com radios meaning the radios we talk on so the first step in using a vor is to tune the frequency in on the nav aid radios so today my frequency over here at bartlesville is uh 117.9 so i'll tune that in right here 117.9 on the nav aid radios 117.9 and then i'll switch it over here to the active frequency on this particular aircraft this navaid radio is tied to this vor right here and this navaid radio is tied into this one now that we've tuned in the frequency we can make sure that we're on the right frequency one of two ways every vor is coded with a three letter identifier as you can see here this one is bravo victor oscar on some newer aircraft when you tune the frequency incorrectly these letters will also be displayed on older aircraft like mine you can actually turn the sound on on your navid radios and listen to this morse code identifier right here now i'm not saying that you need to learn morse code all i'm saying is that this is a great way to make sure that you're getting the right signal okay so now let's talk about how these vors work for just a second these guys broadcast radio signals all the way around the station and these radio signals are aligned with magnetic courses from the station we call these individual radio signals radials and there's 360 of them to match the 360 degrees on a compass sorry i'm not going to draw all 360 of them for you here i don't like you guys that much all right pop quiz time let's say i'm flying my cessna 172 out here and i'm on top of the zero seven zero radial what's my bearing from the station remember we said that these radials are aligned with magnetic courses from the station so that would mean our bearing is zero seven zero from the station and now you're starting to see just how easy this is but now comes the part that instructors don't explain too well and because of that everyone has a hard time with these things all these radials only broadcast from the station none of these radials broadcast to the station because of that if i'm out here on the zero nine zero radial from the station i can't use this radial to fly to the station i would have to pick one of these radials on the other side of the station and use that signal to fly to the station and if you tune those radials in on the other side of the station your airplane will actually sense those radials on the side you're on as well and i'm going to simplify this even more for you in a second but for now i've got a memory aid for you to go to the station you must go through the station and what i mean by that is to go through the station to a radio on the other side and this memory aid can also be used to help you find your bearing to the station for example if i'm out here on the zero six zero radial the radial on the opposite end of the station is two four zero for my bearing to this station i went through the station to two four zero and it's really easy to come up with those reciprocals by either adding or subtracting 180 or just simply looking at the other side of your compass card all right so now let's take a look at the two from indicator we're going to use this guy to determine whether the course we selected is going to take us to the station or from the station and to select a specific course we can rotate this obs knob on the course deviation indicator or the cdi okay so let's say i'm flying somewhere east of the station and i dial in the zero nine zero radial would i get a two or a from indication the answer is you'll get a from indication and that's because if you intercept and fly any of these radials on your side of the vor they'll take you away from the station in fact if you're within 90 degrees of that radial you have selected you will always get a from indication so that from indicator not only allows you to fly a course from the station but you can also find your bearing from the station let's say i have the 110 radial dialed in if i'm receiving a from indication and my cdi needle is centered then i know for a 100 fact that i'm on the 1 1 0 radial now don't worry we'll talk a little bit more about the needle here in just a second now let's say i'm over here on the west side of the station and i spin the 090 course back in my cdi in this example i should expect a 2 indication remember how i said earlier that there are no radials going to the station if i want to get a 2 indication on my cdi i have to go through the station to those radials on the other side and like i said before my airplane is actually going to be able to sense these radials on my side of this station and that's going to allow me to intercept that 090 course inbound before i fly over the station then proceed outbound the technical wording here is that the course i've selected will take me to the station and if you noticed as soon as we crossed over the station the indicator flipped and is now giving us a from indication and that's because we're on the same side of the station as that zero nine zero radial and the course we've selected is now taking us from the station now here's something kind of weird that happens sometimes let's say i've dialed in a course of one eight what would happen if i'm on a radial exactly 90 degrees off of the course i have selected before you answer that question i want you to think about something is this course i have selected gonna take me to the station or from the station well the airplane thinks you're exactly in the middle of both indications so what it gives you is something called the neutral flag some older cdi's don't have a neutral flag they just don't display a to or from indication but anytime you get this indication that means you're exactly 90 degrees off the radio you have selected but if i'm 90 degrees off the radio i have selected am i right here or am i over here and this brings us into a discussion on the cdi needle and you're going to be amazed at how easy this is to understand to do that let's take a closer look at the course deviation indicator when you use these cdi's you should imagine your airplane being right in the center of these things then the course you want to fly is the white needle and as you can see from this example the needle is displaced to the left that means i'm right of course in this example i'm left of course because the needle is displaced to the right of my position now here's why everyone always gets confused with these things in this example i've got the 210 radial dialed in and as you can see i've got a 2 indication so that means i'm somewhere back here on the other side of the station and now you're probably thinking well this needle doesn't make any sense according to what you just told me i should be on the left side of this line but i'm actually on the right side what's the deal here remember what i told you earlier vors have nothing to do with heading and your cdi doesn't know your heading all it knows is that you put a 2 1 0 course in there and that radio only goes one direction so in order for that cdi needle to be accurate you need to turn your aircraft and point it in the same direction that that radial is traveling if you're not able to turn the airplane for one reason or another or you're doing this on the written test just imagine your airplane turning to the correct heading and that's going to make this super easy because if you're out here trucking in the opposite direction that you have this radial set this cdi needle is going to work backwards and we call this reverse sensing let's look at another one of these let's say i still have the two one zero radial set but now i'm getting a from indication okay so with the from indication i know i'm on the same side of the vor as this radial now let's imagine our airplane on a 210 heading and it looks to me like we're right of course so let's move this airplane over to the right and now we have a pretty good idea of where we are and now i know that if i want to get back on my 210 course i just have to turn left a little bit and intercept that radial let's look at another cdi that's not giving us a 2 or from indication as we said before this is giving a neutral indication and that just means we're exactly 90 degrees from the radial we have selected on this particular cdi i have the zero three zero radial selected so am i over here or am i down here just remember what i said to do turn your airplane and put it on a heading that matches the course on the cdi once you do that it'll be obvious that this airplane down here is you and that's because the needle is displaced to the left just like the course you want to fly now let's take a look at how you're going to get asked some of these questions on the written test and we'll look at some examples in the airplane what's my bearing from the topeka vortac if my cdi looks like this well i can see that i have the 030 core selected and i'm also getting a from indication and because my cdi is centered i know that i'm exactly on the zero three zero radial so let's grab our plotter and draw a line straight from the vortec through the zero three zero radial and now we know for sure that we're somewhere on this red line now they're going to try to trip you up with this question if you're getting this cdi reading what radial are you on well as you can see this cdi is giving us a two indication when we really need a from indication in order to know the radial that we're on and because of that the radial that we're on is on the opposite side of this two indication so oddly enough we're still on the zero three zero radial in this example but if i want to get a from indication all i have to do is spin this obs knob all the way around until the zero three zero course is at the top of the cdi all right guys here's another hard one which one of these airplanes am i in if this is the indication i'm getting all right so i've got the 210 radial selected and i'm getting a two indication and if i want to go to the station i need to go through the station to those radials on the other side so right now both these airplanes are on the correct side of the station let's go ahead and imagine both of these on a two one zero heading then we'll go ahead and draw our two one zero course inbound and as you can see the needle is displaced to the left so this airplane right here is the obvious choice let's go play around with these in the airplane a little bit now all right so the first thing we're going to do is where we're going to we're going to see where we are from the station so in order to do that we need to get a from indication as you can see here i've got a two indication so we need to get a from indication so we'll spin us around [Applause] and if you look at the view if you look at the vr sectional you'll see that we're approximately east southeast from the station so let's put that in the vor and see what that gives us [Applause] there it is now we'll just center up the needle so as you can see here we are on the one one zero radial roughly from the station [Applause] okay so that's the radio we are on from the station real quick i just want to point out that mike's actually flying a heading of about 280 right now and that's actually the opposite direction of the course we have selected and because of that our cdi is actually reverse sensing here so in order to get the cdi needle to give us good left to right indications we need to either turn around and fly a course of 295 here or we need to dial in a two indication in this case we're to the left of our course [Applause] in this case we're to the right of our course [Applause] now if i want to go to the station i need to go through the station so i'll put this on the other side [Applause] so it should be the reciprocal of that and you can just go slow until you get a two indication [Applause] yeah i hear you now round clear so now [Applause] that will take us to the station [Applause] go ahead fly 290 for me all right so now if we were in zero win situation then uh we would be going directly to the station and from now we could just fly this course and follow our white line if the white line deflects to the left there that means we're right of course if the white line deflects to the right that means we're left of course and so we're just trying to keep this centered the heading we're flying is going to be all depending on our wind direction next let's look at how we can use two vors to find our exact position on a sectional we call this triangulating our position pick one of the stations and find your bearing from the station in this example once again it looks like i'm on the zero three zero radial from the station now that you know that turn and fly the zero three zero course outbound this is going to allow you to stay on that radial and make this more accurate then let's tune in another bor that's close by and get our bearing from that station let's say we're getting a 275 from the station now we know exactly where we're at and now you can pull out your plotter or that stupid little scale on the faa's exam and find out exactly how far you are from the nearest field now i'll show you how i do this in the airplane using foreflight all right so first thing we're going to do here is we're going to get a from indication [Applause] so we just spin it around and i know i'm east of the station so i'm just going to spin it spin it spin it until we get a from indication and i'm going to line it up once we line it up we're going to go ahead and turn and fly that heading go ahead and turn and fly us on a [Applause] be like a 105 heading mike's got us in a turn here [Applause] and you can see we're getting off course a little bit but that's because we're uh making a turn right now we'll combat that here in just a second [Applause] zero five yeah one zero five so somewhere in there roll out and you can see that we're slightly right of course and that's because we made a left turn around our course now there so now if he just gets a little bit left he can intercept that course now we can use this other vor to triangulate our position off of [Applause] i'm going to use the tulsa view or [Applause] 114.4 all right so now i'm going to tune in the tulsa video down for 170. slap that in there and you can see i'm getting a from indication here and i know i'm like northeast of the station i'm just going to spin this other guy until i triangulate our position here and mike's doing a good job of keeping us centered on this from indication here so now i've triangulated our position we're on a 105 from the bartlesville station and then we're on a [Applause] 0-2-5 from this station right here the tulsa station and now we know exactly where we are and that's how easy it is to find your exact position by using two vors but what if my equipment's not working properly how would i know there's actually a few ways you can test your equipment but one in particular they're probably going to ask you about on the written exam this is the vot which stands for very high frequency omni test these things work almost exactly like a vor they also broadcast radials all the way around the station with one minor difference no matter what your bearing is from the station these radials are all three six zero radials so no matter where my airplane is what would happen if i dialed in a three six zero course you're absolutely right you would get a from indication then if we dialed in the reciprocal which is 180 then what would we get you guessed it we'd get a two indication usually you'll find these close to bigger airports and if you want to know the frequency you just have to check in the chart supplement looks like tulsa international has one and i could use that by tuning in the frequency 109.00 thanks for joining me today on free pilot training if you learned something from this video that's awesome but don't quit with this video try this video you've got some tests coming up [Music] position

Channel: Free Pilot Training

Views: 498,557

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Id: 6S95qXQNTzM

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 11 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/BigMacRedneck]

VOR, Bearing, Heading...Got It. Thank You for the FREE tutorial.

https://preview.redd.it/5jw2szbf61fa1.jpeg?width=174&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=528c8a12f115778ff94ff149f594ba6b7333d6c6