Fly Victor airways with RNAV?

[Marauder]

Like I said, it was a trick question... Promise me this won't go on for endless pages like the the light bulb thread

 

[aterpster]

What is a Victor Airway.

Get with it man.... This it the 21 century, we go <direct> using GPS.

What is a Victor Airway? It is a carefully designed and obstacle-assessed route that can assist tremendously in keeping you out of the rocks in your part of the world.

If you can routinely operate in the flight levels then direct is great until it is time to descend below those rocks.

 

[aterpster]

The difference between the track flown when using the VOR as your guidance and the track flown when using the GPS as your guidance is negligible, and well within the "width" of the airway.

That said, it assumes that you are putting in the appropriate fixes into your GPS route - the same intersections between your navaids.

RNAV nails the nominal centerline of the airway. VOR does not, especially as distance from the VOR increases. That's why the aiways expand at 51 miles.

I am presuming higher-end equipment that can load the exact airway for you. But, as you say, it can be done fix by fix, and end up with the same exact airway result.

 

[roncachamp]

As drawn on a chart, on a flat surface it would be 270ish, which is what I originally said. On the chart it would show that, because I do not have a globe large enough to wrap sectionals (or other maps) around. They would be on a flat surface, so the straight line drawn on the chart (as shown in the picture above) does show 270ish - albeit erroneously.

No, regardless how you draw it the HAR 270° radial would not go to MTU if extended far enough.

 

[EdFred]

No, regardless how you draw it the HAR 270° radial would not go to MTU if extended far enough.

20 years of mechanical drawing experience suggests you don't know what a horizontal line looks like on a piece of paper.

HAR VOR is approximately .15 degrees of latitude north, and 33 degrees of longitude east of Myton. Since they are both at approximately 40N latitude I'll skip the math to reduce the actual miles north/south and east/west they are apart, but my math shows that in a cartesian system that the angle between them in relation to true north is about 0.26 degrees, with Myton being slightly south. 270 - .26 = 269.74. I'd say that's 270ish.

 

[roddie]

Like I said, it was a trick question... Promise me this won't go on for endless pages like the the light bulb thread

Wishful thinking, I guess. Heh.

 

[roncachamp]

20 years of mechanical drawing experience suggests you don't know what a horizontal line looks like on a piece of paper.

HAR VOR is approximately .15 degrees of latitude north, and 33 degrees of longitude east of Myton. Since they are both at approximately 40N latitude I'll skip the math to reduce the actual miles north/south and east/west they are apart, but my math shows that in a cartesian system that the angle between them in relation to true north is about 0.26 degrees, with Myton being slightly south. 270 - .26 = 269.74. I'd say that's 270ish.

Are you a member of the Flat Earth Society? It doesn't matter how you say it, the HAR 270° radial would not go to MTU if extended far enough.

 

[Marauder]

Wishful thinking, I guess. Heh.

I'm an optimist, but guessing I may need to change sides!

 

[EdFred]

Are you a member of the Flat Earth Society? It doesn't matter how you say it, the HAR 270° radial would not go to MTU if extended far enough.

It's OK if you don't understand how to use a protractor. And since it's obvious from your posts you don't, I'm going to bow out of the conversation.

 

[DrMack]

Aeronautical charts are a Lambert conformal conic projection. For short distances a straight line drawn on such a chart approximates a great circle path (geodesic).

 

[roncachamp]

It's OK if you don't understand how to use a protractor. And since it's obvious from your posts you don't, I'm going to bow out of the conversation.

You wont learn anything with that attitude. How much of your protractor use has been on a sphere?

 

[flyingron]

The confusion here is that flying along a straight line except in the degenerate case of the equator directly towards (or away) from the pole, the course has to change continually to make a straight line (i.e. a great circle).

You can fly a 270 bearing relative from the VOR (the radial) but if you measure the (true) course all along that line you sill find that the course (with respenct to north rather than the VOR) points slightly towards the pole as you go along. You can see this on a globe or even a chart like a sectional. Pick two points on the same latitude line sufficiently far apart and draw a line between them. Note that the line diverges to the north of the latitude line (in the northern hemisphere).

This line as well as the VOR radial it is coincident with is a straight line (a great circle). The line of latitude is not.

 

[deeruck]

The confusion here is that flying along a straight line except in the degenerate case of the equator directly towards (or away) from the pole, the course has to change continually to make a straight line (i.e. a great circle).

Even in this case it would change, wouldn't it? But not continuously, it would do it suddenly at the pole. Flying the equator seems to be the only great circle where the course is unchanged, and also the only latitude which is a great circle.