What are VOR and NDB? Why we use these?

[autopilot 3]

Hello, Guys!

 

What are VORs and NDBs? I know that these are navigation beacons but Every Aircraft has GPS in it and Pilot can easily go through by GPS, but despite of GPS why we have needed VOR and NDB?

 

I've read about these on Wikipedia but unable to clear my concept. So please help me out here.

 

What're the advantages of VOR and NDB to pilot? Many Aircraft goes away from VORs and NDBs and many of them goes over these beacons and follow them. So what actually the matter is? What kind of info, these beacons give to pilot? Even they've no human in them and how pilots contact these?

 

Please explain me briefly.

 

Regards,

 

 

AP,

[Lowflyer 97]

Briefly? We didn't always have GPS. And besides, GPS is boring.

[LAdamson 240]

 

Briefly? We didn't always have GPS. And besides, GPS is boring.

GPS for flight simming, is perhaps boring. I seldom used it. For real life, I haven't used VOR navigation for nearly 20 years. I spent a lot of money building an airplane, and didn't equip it with VOR nav radios. They're expensive and would have only served as something to "play" with. I did have a handheld VOR nav/radio for backup. GPS does have it's advantages. I fly in mountain country, and VOR is line of sight. It's the same reason Alaska has gone to greater extremes to promote and use GPS navigation. With GPS, you can realistically setup flight plans with a lot more direct routing, as well as points of interest. I used GPS for all of my long distance VFR flights. It was used in conjunction with satellite weather, as well as being tied to a fuel computer for very accurate updates. Satellite weather has the advantage of letting you know the weather for hundreds of miles in all directions, as well as winds and altimeter settings. It's all overlayed on the GPS screen. When flying 500 miles or so in the mountain west, GPS and the addon equipment has made a world of difference, from the older primitive methods.

 

 

I started flying well before the GPS era. I was quite interested to see it's first moving map uses around 1993, and I've gone through quite a few aviation GPSs since that time. They're extremely dependable, despite what you'll sometimes hear on a flight sim or student pilot forum. In reality, what's available for simming, is often behind the real versions by years. Sometimes by as much as 10 or 15 years. It's one reason, I seldom used them for simming.

 

 

As a side note: For the purposes of recreating flights of a past era, the use of older navigation systems can be quite enjoyable, and it's something more to do, than following a magenta line. In real life, I found that I could spend much more time enjoying the view down below, than concentrating on dials, and pencil lines on a sectional map, let alone triangulating courses with surrounding mountains. Where I live, the scenery is exceptional. Always did pre-plan with a sectional, as well as taking it along.

[pilottj 198]

I suppose showing VORs and NDBs to a student pilot today is like showing a rotary phone to a kid raised on IPADs and such.  However there are still a lot of VOR stations in the world.  NDBs are a little more scarce, but look at NZ's north island on Skyvector, and you will find plenty of NDB/DME station combos.  I believe as long as they exist, it is important to learn the skills required for their use.  Just like looking out the window, identifying landmarks on that gigantic moving map outside the airplane with your Mk I eyeball and finding them on your sectional is still an essential and basic skill that all student pilot must master.  

 

Personally I can tune a Nav frequency and dial the OBS heading faster than I can punch in the station identifier on the GPS.  I think the big clunky dials of the nav and CDI are easier to manage while in turbulence, better than tiny buttons.

 

Most importantly VORs/NDBs are redundancy.  Redundancy in flying is a very good thing to strive for if you want to be a safe pilot, always leaving yourself with a way out of a potential problem.  While you are tracking your GPS course, tune in nearby VORs to verify your position.  This helps reduce user error and lets you identify possible system malfunctions.  It is never a good thing to rely solely on a single type of system.  

 

Cost is another prohibitive thing for GPS is ownership of an older airplane that might not be equipped with GPS.  A single Garmin GNS430 costs in the neighborhood of 15-20,000 USD for unit cost and installation fees.  If you own an older Cessna 172, are you going to spend an extra 20K when it probably already equipped with a nav or two.  A handheld GPS would be much cheaper.  However GPS approaches can only be legally flown by certified panel mounted GPS.  Unless the regulations have changed, I believe the GPS can't be used to fly VOR/LOC/NDB approaches, they can only be used for 'guidance'.  You must have the specified equipment in your aircraft to fly the non GPS approach.  

 

That being said if I had money to buy an airplane for personal use, I would invest in new technology.  While my heart would say 'get a Beech 18', my brain would say 'get a DA-42-VI'   While the DA-42 would have high initial costs, maintenance costs over time would be lower, not to mention fuel costs.  If I am going to be flying a loved one, safety is paramount, so give me all the modern safety gadgets available B)

[LAdamson 240]

My plane (Van's RV6A), as it's been sold to a retired airline pilot......is being equipped with NAV radios for the purpose of non GPS approaches. I myself was VFR. My backup was a second handheld GPS, as well as that portable NAV/COMM I previously mentioned. We also kept a Satellite tracker (uses GPS) on board for emergency location. As to GPS failure rates, I do keep an eye on them. With two dozen GPS satellites orbiting the earth, in addition to new satellite systems from other countries, I could count on picking up between eight and eleven satellites at all times. Having a dependable antenna setup is important, as a lot of GPS failures come down to the antenna. I owned five aviation GPSs since 1993. Last failure (a very short time) was in '94. An airline pilot friend of mine, who flies a Boeing with GPS as the main navigation source, reports around 14 years since a GPS drop-out of short endurance.

 

 

 

My last GPS was a Garmin 696 portable. Identifiers were actually loaded automatically from the comm. Since it had a more modern method of operation, it wasn't too tough to hand set identifiers. Besides that, I'd always have a long distance flight plane pre-loaded, with all information ready to go. The GPS also controlled my two axis auto-pilot. Panel mounted NAV/COMMS are also thousands of dollars, plus more antennas. Something you think about, when building a plane.

[g_precentralis 191]

An airline pilot friend of mine, who flies a Boeing with GPS as the main navigation source...

While GPS is the main nav source at moder airliners, the backup devices are quite diversiform. I mean, just for rnav there's multiple redundancy, and if all that fails, there is still VOR/DME/NDB capability.

 

Back on the topic: Contrary to OP believes, not every aircraft has GPS (or any other kind of area navigation), and that's the main reason radio navaids still exist. 

The ILS is the proof radio navigation is not dead yet. Even with all that expensive WAAS approved avionics you still cannot go bellow around 200ft minima.

[Glynn 405]

Vors and NDB's as just more fun, in the Sim at least, real world probably less so

[pschlute 37]

To the OP...buy yourself the Flight1/Dreamfleet 727 and you will learn all about VOR/NDB navigation !

[Lowflyer 97]

@LAdamson: Everything you say is true, but I still think being a magenta slave is boring and I will never use GPS for leisure flight unless I get hopelessly lost, which hasn't happened yet and hopefully never will.

That said I'm mainly talking about VFR here, which is something I always do with map and compass simply because I enjoy it. Sure using GPS is more efficient but who cares? I don't find flying so boring that I'm desperate to shave every minute possible off the en-route segment.

IFR is a different thing and I mainly see that as a means to improve my chances of getting home as planned even if the weather has worsened overnight, in which case I might as well use GPS if I have it, but even then I'll still have more fun using radio navigation, and having fun is why I fly. :smile:

[LAdamson 240]

@LAdamson: Everything you say is true, but I still think being a magenta slave is boring and I will never use GPS for leisure flight unless I get hopelessly lost, which hasn't happened yet and hopefully never will.

 

That said I'm mainly talking about VFR here, which is something I always do with map and compass simply because I enjoy it. Sure using GPS is more efficient but who cares? I don't find flying so boring that I'm desperate to shave every minute possible off the en-route segment.

 

IFR is a different thing and I mainly see that as a means to improve my chances of getting home as planned even if the weather has worsened overnight, in which case I might as well use GPS if I have it, but even then I'll still have more fun using radio navigation, and having fun is why I fly. :smile:

Are we talking real life, simulation, or both? I was never desperate to shave a possible minute off. It's just a case of VOR routes not being the route I might prefer. I had a tendency to include numerous scenic spots along the way. In mountain country, VORs are usually set at airports or locations where they work. As I said, they're line of sight. Just as in Alaska, cloud cover can often prevent the use of VORs, because you can't fly high enough to recieve the signal. GPS doesn't have this limitation. Fun for me, always includes GPS. I'm the one that installed it, and connected the systems to it. I don't get a kick out of radio navigation at all.....anymore. I'll be just as content when all VORs are dismantled. Doesn't really matter though, my only PIC as of this year is sims and R/C.

[hopskip 253]

I wonder, if GPS is so amazing and infallible, why RAIM is a thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_autonomous_integrity_monitoring

 

Maybe because GPS signals may be susceptible to solar flares, the US Military 'doing things' to the signal on purpose, the GPS receiver on the aircraft, etc etc. 

[Jimmy RFR 406]

As I'm only the PIC of whatever is on my PC screen at any given time (which is usually nothing I'd be let near, or in, in real life, likely) , my opinion is likely worth less than those more far more knowledgeable than I on this thread.

 

However, in my simulated flying, I prefer using VOR navigation when I need navaids, rather than using the GPS.  This is purely because I find the Garmin 430 or 530 as installed in most of my simulated GA planes to be quite cumbersome to use while in flight.   If I had a hardware controller, I might feel differently. ^_^

 

Last night I took a flight through my newly acquired Orbx Nor Cal, from Petaluma (O69) to Ocean Ridge (E55), with quite a bit of very low cloud cover.  It was a very simple thing to tune the Santa Rosa VOR/DME and fly an inbound radial to it, then an outbound radial to E55.  No autopilot, no programming in a flight plan, just a bit of help finding my destination airport.

 

But of course in the simulated world that we fly in, we get to do whatever we like!  :lol: 

[pilottj 198]

Using VOR/NDB is a great exercise in mental focus, especially when flying in the soup.  Good mental focus is a good thing when flying anytime.  With the GNS or G1000 you can just plug in the flight plan, follow the magenta line or HSI, and have a flight plan page listing all distances/time and such.  Next time you fly, plan an IMC/Night flight using just VORs.  Go to Skyvector, load up the enroute map for your area, plan your flight on that.  Do not load this plan in to your GNS if you have one, in fact, turn it to an airport info or satellite info page and leave it there.  Fly your flight plan, you will find you have to focus a lot more, especially when having to identify a intersection with a cross radial or something.    As an added challenge, purposely distract or disorient yourself, see if you can resume your course, without a GPS this can be more challenging as the margin for error/distractions is a lot smaller when navigating with VOR/NDB.

 

FSX is a fantastic tool for exercising mental focus like this.  In the real wold, when you are in IMC, especially when your seats are filled by loved ones, by all means use the GPS and all the safety tools available to you.

Edited February 25, 2014 by pilottj

[mgh 89]

 VOR and NDB are still used. For example, London Heathrow STAR  via Bovingdon uses them.

[Kevin_Cusack 0]

Whether real world or FSX, there are lots of places where VORs and NDBs are the main form of navigation - especially for landing.  The FAA/NavCanada/etc. will get around to providing GPS approaches to every airport, but that will take a few years yet.  For most of us in the flightsim world we only get to fly the big iron in the sims, and we generally don't try to fly a 777 into a backcountry airport.  In the real world, those of us who are pilots generally own light aircraft that aren't equipped with the latest glass panels.  It depends on your flying!

I will say that in the real world, the loss of GPS signal can be disorienting.  I was only 20 miles back from the airport I trained at (in other words I should have the environs engraved into muscle memory!!) when I lost signal to both my portable and the panel-mount.  I was being lazy and had not sett up the underlying beacons as a back-up (surely both GPSs won't go bad!) and had to start paying attention to ground references again.  It took a few moments to get back in the game.  Fortunately, it was a good weather day.  I find I have better habits in the clouds where the magenta line is a confirmation, not a primary source.  Perhaps flying in Alaska and northern Canada (parts of New Zealand and Australia?) would be different because of the sparseness of the ground-based navaids and the chances of rapidly changing weather in mountain areas.

Once you have the art of flying down pat, flying with reference to VORs/NDBs can be challenging - both in the real world and in simming.