VOR Navigation

[jasonboche 7]

In terms of flight planning, are VORs used as a navigational reference to fly TO (ie, connect the VOR dots to your destination airport), or are they used for radial intercept to fly a straight course to the next destination which could be an airport, a VOR, or another radial?The FSX flight planner seems to offer VOR to VOR naviation which would make the former statement above truthful but this would seem largely inneficient, particularly due to the lack of VORs on the Hawaiian islands. On the mainland for example, I can chart a VOR to VOR course from MSP to ORD and it would seem there are so many VORs to choose from that the course is nearly a straight line.What is the range of a VOR UHF signal and are they all the same or does it depend on line of sight land obstructions, and the different types of VORs (such as a VORTAC with military functionality)?

[N6330V 0]

Jason,A simple google search would have saved you the post and answered any and all of your questions!http://www.sarangan.org/aviation/articles/vor-article.pdfFeel free to ask any other questions after you read the document. :smile:Regards,

[RoboRay 126]

In terms of flight planning, are VORs used as a navigational reference to fly TO (ie, connect the VOR dots to your destination airport), or are they used for radial intercept to fly a straight course to the next destination which could be an airport, a VOR, or another radial?

Yes. :D

[styckx 1,872]

particularly due to the lack of VORs on the Hawaiian islands.

Huh? Considering the size of Hawaii it has plenty of VOR's and DMEs to navigate the entire state with ease. Every major airport has one, or one close enough that you could VFR your way to the airport from it.This is the route and VOR's I use when I fly from Barking Sands to Hilo. It's the easiest route ever to navigate by VOR. As is the rest of the state.

[fastcarfastplane 0]

well....20-40ish miles is about how close you need to be to pick up a VOR....the higher you go, the farther out you can be. the picture above....i'm not sure the distance, but i have no clue how you could ever pick up a VOR being that far out...aren't these islands at least a hundred miles apart IRL? like the Kauai to Oahu has to be at least 100+ miles.anyways...while the VOR is great navigation, especially combined with a GPS if your plane has one. (and is usually how i fly, as i save my Ipad for emergencies,) you can also use it to triangulate your position...which is tricky, depending on your planes speed, but all you really do is tune the VOR your on, find one your past, and any 3rd one perpendicular to you.....and you can figure out how far along that direction you are..... DME is a little easier as its like tuning a radio station *(literally) and the gauge points the direction...like, directly....as opposed to intercepting a VOR, unless you know how it works...which isn't hard either i suppose. but maybe if you're not a pilot, you don't use them often in the game or w/e.

[styckx 1,872]

VOR-VOR Kaui to Oahu (Honolulu) is 95nm. (both of these shots I didn't dial in the VOR.. Just pulled up the freq for examples)I can pick up the Kona VOR from Honolulu Airport at about 3500-4000ft. I've picked them up as far as 189nm away. When I do this trip I usually fly at about 8500ft. Everything I've ever read I've known VOR's and DME's to have a range of roughly 200 miles give or take.Speed hasn't fully calcuated out yet on this. I snapped this literally as it came online while climbing.

[LHookins 3,113]

The squares on that map are about 40 miles across.Hook

[Shaka 2]

In terms of flight planning, are VORs used as a navigational reference to fly TO (ie, connect the VOR dots to your destination airport), or are they used for radial intercept to fly a straight course to the next destination which could be an airport, a VOR, or another radial?

Feel free to ask any other questions after you read the document.

Jason, also feel free to ask questions here in the forum, since that's what they are here for. :Monkey:

[jasonboche 7]

Using Google, I've been reading up on VOR navigation & watching instructional videos on youtube but I was looking for clarification on the flight planning as I've not done much of that yet. Flying directly to a VOR makes things incredibly easy but that only works ideally when a VOR is located at an airport. Take the Hawaiian main island, there must be a dozen airports or more that don't have VOR stations, therefore I'd use a VOR within range to navigate on one of its radials that goes through the destination air strip.Very informative bunch. Thank you.

[styckx 1,872]

Just doubled checked FSX.. Same range.. Tuned to Kona VOR and set a FROM course out of Honolulu.. I stopped after 191nm out from the VOR and still picking it up..

[jasonboche 7]

Thanks for testing that. I talked to my father who knows just about anything there is to know about radio communications. His response was that UHF at ground level has a much shorter distance (20-30 miles) than it does say at 30,000 feet.

[Chock 17,769]

Hawaii is an interesting case where VORs are concerned, and it would be advisable to use two VORs when flying across all those joins between land and water, because VOR signals can actually distort when they cross joins between land and water. It is unlikely that a PC-based entertainment sim would simulate that, but where the real world is concerned, you do actually get asked about that phenomenon in the IFR exam.Al

[Guest]

http://www.sarangan....vor-article.pdfFeel free to ask any other questions after you read the document.

That's a very insteresting document...! I only know the basics of VOR and I clearly belong to the knob twisters he is talking about.Is what he describes the common way to do it or is it some sort of special and clever method? I usually read stuff that belongs to the 'knob twisters camp'... Very interesting, although I think I need to read it a few times again before I grasp it.

[japascoe 98]

Thanks for testing that. I talked to my father who knows just about anything there is to know about radio communications. His response was that UHF at ground level has a much shorter distance (20-30 miles) than it does say at 30,000 feet.

I don't know what difference it makes for the range of the radio transmissions, but the V in VOR stands for VHF, not UHF.Regarding your question on flight planning, you can use any and all information the VOR gives you for navigation. You can connect the dots by overflying each VOR or you can take a turn-off onto a radial from a different VOR before reaching the first VOR you were tracking. The choice is up to you, though unless you're following an airway, or want to set up for an approach the connect the dots method is probably easier.

[Tom Wright 438]

VORs can be used in both ways. The simplest is to just use them as waypoints and fly to them.Years ago when airliners didn't have glass cockpits and FMS with GPS equipment, VOR was their primary method of navigation. High altitude airways used to correspond with a VOR radial (or bearing to or from a VOR) so that tracking that radial allowed them to fly the airway. Some waypoints were not necessarily a VOR station, but could have been an intersection between two airways/VOR radials. By using the DME and knowing their distance from the VOR they're tracking, along with a chart, they could accurately know where they are and where the intersection is. They could also use both VOR radios tuned to two VORs, flying a radial on one and waiting for the bar to cross on the other to tell them where they've intersected. They would then turn and fly that radial either toward or away from the VOR station. Of course nowadays certainly in European airspace, new airways do not necessarily correspond with VORs, because pretty much all airliners fly with some sort of GPS equipment.