DME/Tacan idents, do they exist?

[Guest]

HiI was just tuning in a DME on my radio, but it wouldn't give any ident morse. I checked the maps, and it was indeed a Tacan.Are there no idents associated with Tacans? Are they at all tunable from normal DME equipment in real life?I don't know any pure DME stations in my area, and the plane I'm usually with don't even have such equipment (old PA-28). So, does pure DME stations have morse idents?If there are any difference between real world Tacan and DME regarding idents, would it be possible to distinguish between the two types in xml code? My textual gets the Tacan/DME station identifier, but there is no morse to be heard.

[wsieffert 0]

See this article: http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/howto/tacan.htm

[Guest bones]

In real life if you tune into a TACAN you will get a DME reading but no bearing data - this latter UHF signal being outside your VOR receiver frequency band. I would guess (as I haven't tried tuning into a TACAN) that the TACAN would be broadcasting the ident on the main UHF signal and not the DME signal. This is what happens at a co-located VOR/DME station.If a DME isn't paired to a VOR (or part of a TACAN facility) then it should have a unique ident. There are a growing number of NDB/DME facilities appearing at smaller airports in Europe (they are more affordable than ILS/DME) and both NDB and DME elements radiate separate ident signals. An example at random (because the book opened at the page) is Carlisle in the UK. It has an NDB/DME procedure, with the NDB on 328 coding "CO" and the DME on Channel 44X (110.7) coding "CL".For an ILS/DME facility the DME is "absorbed" into the ILS and only one ident is broadcast.Makes it tricky for FS doesn't it? :-)