NDB Approach

gismo said:
I don't think they're "hard" but with an off field beacon the accuracy depends on the accuracy of your heading indicator even if your ADF is perfect (most aren't). And getting an accurate compass reading to set into the DG in moderate turbulence is pretty much impossible IME.

That said, an RMI coupled to a slaved HSI or DG makes NDB tracking dirt simple although there's still enough error to require looking over a rather large field of view for the target runway if the beacon is not on the field.
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The only reason they are "hard" is that people in this day and age have lost the ability to accept the "non precision" part of a non precision approach.
 
JHW said:
The only reason they are "hard" is that people in this day and age have lost the ability to accept the "non precision" part of a non precision approach.
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Which is as it should be. Once you have the ability to increase your situational awareness both quantitatively and qualitatively in something as serious as IFR flying, one would be rather remiss in the intelligence department if one wanted to return to a lower standard of information. If you don't have to accept that level of inaccuracy, why should one?
 
Henning said:
Which is as it should be. Once you have the ability to increase your situational awareness both quantitatively and qualitatively in something as serious as IFR flying, one would be rather remiss in the intelligence department if one wanted to return to a lower standard of information. If you don't have to accept that level of inaccuracy, why should one?
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Because it puts hair on ones chest.
 
I like seeing the dual NDB approaches which are common in the eastern bloc countries (old Soviet Union); two NDBs, in line with each other - needles aligned, you're lined-up with the runway, one flips, you passed the FAF. Dirt-simple, low-maintenance. Sometimes, simple is good.
 
SCCutler said:
Dirt-simple, low-maintenance. Sometimes, simple is good.
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You bet. I've wondered why a frequency scanner and computer can't resolve a plane's position by simply comparing the magnetic bearings of as many AM stations as it can receive. After all, the exact location of the station antennas are known.

dtuuri
 
SCCutler said:
I like seeing the dual NDB approaches which are common in the eastern bloc countries (old Soviet Union); two NDBs, in line with each other - needles aligned, you're lined-up with the runway, one flips, you passed the FAF. Dirt-simple, low-maintenance. Sometimes, simple is good.
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I never knew of ones set up like that. I like it. I'm sure you could fly a relatively accurate approach.

KISS method - Keep It Simple, Stupid.
 
Pretty rare to find, much less fly, much less fly in IMC, an NDB approach. We have one at Front Range airport (KFTG) but I never flew it 'cuz I don't have an ADF. I also didn't fly it with the GPS - just never got around to it.

If I had an ADF in my plane I would have chunked it out the window before someone made me do an NDB approach! :D

I did have one in my old 1966 C172 and it was good for listening to AM radio and as a strike finder.
 
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I only teach my private students NDB in the sim as required by our lessons. Beyond that I never mention them. Once I get my II, here soon, I'll do the same. None of our planes have ADFs and the NDBs around here arn't being fixed once they break. Our NDB has be NOTAM U/S since January.
 
Ghery said:
I'm glad it isn't 20 years from now. I probably won't be flying then. I'll be 82.
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I'll be 60-something and hopefully still flying, but the only plane I'll still have will be my champ. I won't be able to afford to fly anything else with the taxes we will all be paying.
 
I'm 32 and back when not everyone had panel mounted GPS and before Ipads were a thing that's all my IR training airport had unless you had a spare 20K for a Garmin 430 setup. They work just fine if you know their tenancies (IE homing)
 
Dr. O said:
GPS is wonderful and I love it
But before GPS there was NDB for small airports (and large) that could not afford an ILS.
Flying an NDB approach in a crosswind requires situational awareness (just like finding Carnegie Hall - practice)
Today's pilots, like Thursday's Child, have far to go to actually master their craft (shrug)
It is all moot anyway. More and more NDB transmitters are being shut down by the FAA to save money. The one at my home airport that had been there for four generations is recently gone, replaced with a sterile GPS RNAV approach.

My GPS is precise but it is not a companion in finding home as the NDB was. We would come across Lake Erie from the Cleveland side on those icy, winter nights, me blowing on my fingers to thaw them out because the wimpy heater could not keep up with a zero night. The clouds wrapping us would gradually go from pitch black over the lake to glowing as we approached Detroit with 4.8 million people far below us and every one of them had a light on. Once we saw the glow we switched our attention from the VOR aiming us away from Windsor to the ADF receiver. Flip the switch on and crank the dial to 385 kc and gently rock it back and forth. It is eighty five miles through the dark freezing night to the little transmitter shack on the field, and with the cabin so cold tonight the receiver circuits won't be right on the mark. The speaker on the cabin roof is rattling with static, then there it is, morse code. We have good propagation tonight and the signal is steady. The friendly tone of the morse code struggling to be heard over the roar of the engine made the cabin feel warmer than it was. Flip the switch to ADF and the dead needle currently pointing off somewhere towards NYC twitches, then lazily begins to swing South. We stare hard at it. It twitches again, kind of vibrates for a half second then smartly walks around the compass rose and resolutely points to home, steady as a rock on this frozen night. In the summer time the lightning strikes all aver the country are yanking at it, causing the needle to twitch and flutter and even rotate off 80 or 90 degrees for a few seconds. But tonight it is the rock of Gibraltar, our bird dog pointing the way home.
"Hey Frank, any coffee left. Pour me a cup will ya I'm a little dry." and I tap away on the yoke with one finger in time with the beat of the morse code calling us home to warm beds and warm wives.
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Nicely done! :thumbsup:
 
Ghery said:
I'm glad it isn't 20 years from now. I probably won't be flying then. I'll be 82.
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When I first started flying I flew around with a UFO that still held a second class medical, so never say never.
 
NDB was fun. I remember listening to the Hog Report on the ADF receiver while homing in on the AM antennae on my way up to Wheatland.
 
Every ILS approach with a compass locator was a NDB approach until I joined the localizer.
 
Henning said:
Which is as it should be. Once you have the ability to increase your situational awareness both quantitatively and qualitatively in something as serious as IFR flying, one would be rather remiss in the intelligence department if one wanted to return to a lower standard of information. If you don't have to accept that level of inaccuracy, why should one?
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I agree with this 100%. I'd venture to bet the majority of NDB approaches that are flown CURRENTLY(not talking about the experienced 727 and BE18 drivers out there), are done so in VFR or MVFR conditions. When push comes to shove and I am coming in with crappy weather(even if it is slightly above NDB mins) I am gonna choose the most accurate approach with the lowest mins I can. Whoever said an NDB approach is as accurate as a VOR approach...that's laughable. If you are flying an NBD old school by looking at a heading indicator and over to an ADF indicator to figure out your Mag Bearing, that is a few seconds of calculation right there, which has probably changed since you first started the process. A VOR indicator instantly tells you how many degrees off course you are. Plus if you can tell 2-3 degrees on an NDB approach, in turbulence, your heading indicator and ADF indicator must be the size of dinner plates. On a VOR, 2 degrees is a whole dot off center and easily recognizable.

Don't get me wrong, they are cool to do because of their simplicity, I like tuning up the radio to show passengers, and we all love when the home NDB starts to come in to point us home(that story above should be published by the way).

But to be honest, times are changing and more accurate forms of navigation are becoming the norm. I'm sure the old mail airway pilots had the same debate between light beacon airways and NDBs.:D
 
For 20 years I took my annual instrument ride in Army Attack Helicopters certified for IFR flight with a single NDB 1984-2004...I must say I sort of miss not having one in my Arrow...When its your only instrument you have used for that long it sort of becomes your friend, unless you have seen the way the needle swings in a thunderstorm and you really need it at the time.
 
NDB's going away? Good riddance.
 
The ADF reminds me of my dog... The head goes down to eat its food, the tail comes up to take a ****
 
There were two NDB approaches available nearby when I was working on my instrument, and both were badly misaligned. Very, very badly. My instructor and I mucked about with one of them several times, thinking it was us, or our ADF. He followed up as I recall, in another airplane; some of the other instructors confirmed the one we played with was gacked, too. I think it may have been shutdown shortly after. No ADF in my checkride airplane, and haven't flown with one since. I didn't hate it, even worked on some as an AF avionics guy way back in the day. Just not a navaid that has much of a place anymore. . .
 
Done dozens of them. Last one was in 2011 and never broke out. Most likely never get to do another one.
 
How many of you guys(or gals) ever listened to an AM radio station on an NDB. That used to keep me company on a long night flight... think baseball or football, basketball or hockey games. It helped pass the time. I used to fly to airports that had an NDB within a couple of miles from it. Of course you had to know where the antenna was located. It can be(and was) a great backup aid to finding the airport. Just saying....

Noah W
 
Noah Werka said:
How many of you guys(or gals) ever listened to an AM radio station on an NDB. That used to keep me company on a long night flight... think baseball or football, basketball or hockey games. It helped pass the time. I used to fly to airports that had an NDB within a couple of miles from it. Of course you had to know where the antenna was located. It can be(and was) a great backup aid to finding the airport. Just saying....

Noah W
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Sure. KOA tower is still a VFR reporting point for locals at KAPA.
 
Not tough to do once you learn it properly, but they are just inaccurate and at times the needle waiving +/-20°

That said, many do have a tough time gaining the concept of which way to turn.
 
Noah Werka said:
How many of you guys(or gals) ever listened to an AM radio station on an NDB. That used to keep me company on a long night flight... think baseball or football, basketball or hockey games. It helped pass the time. I used to fly to airports that had an NDB within a couple of miles from it. Of course you had to know where the antenna was located. It can be(and was) a great backup aid to finding the airport. Just saying....

Noah W
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There's a station in NorCal that only plays the Bee Gees...
 
Sundancer said:
There were two NDB approaches available nearby when I was working on my instrument, and both were badly misaligned. Very, very badly. My instructor and I mucked about with one of them several times, thinking it was us, or our ADF. He followed up as I recall, in another airplane; some of the other instructors confirmed the one we played with was gacked, too. I think it may have been shutdown shortly after. No ADF in my checkride airplane, and haven't flown with one since. I didn't hate it, even worked on some as an AF avionics guy way back in the day. Just not a navaid that has much of a place anymore. . .
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What do you consider "badly misaligned"? what I generally saw was the approach put me on the extended centerline of the runway at around the visibility minimum for the approach.

Obviously you don't want the equivalent of three telephone poles and wires strung across the runway, so they place the antenna off to the side, giving a little bit of an angle to the final. But they always put me right where I wanted to be for landing.
 
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teejayevans said:
GPS, VOR/DME, 2 VORS: will tell you exactly where you are; ADF/NDB only gives you a bearing, I removed it, only ever did an approach on a simulator.
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You can take two bearings with an ADF. That will tell you where you are.
 
I looked at several local airports to see if I could find an NDB approach. I did manage to find one listed but am not sure if it is actually in service. I also found one ILS that said NDB and Radar required. I flew NDB approaches during training and thought they were challenging. I also flew one on my IFR checkride, but back then there weren't many airplanes with GPS installed. I do still listen to AM radio sometimes and plan to keep the ADF for now. For us frugal flyers, the old stuff doesn't require data base update subscriptions and for personal (i.e. non-business) flying, I can live with that. Not saying RNAV(GPS) isn't a LOT better, but it is for sure more expensive. :)
 
MauleSkinner said:
What do you consider "badly misaligned"? what I generally saw was the approach put me on the extended centerline of the runway at around the visibility minimum for the approach.

Obviously you don't want the equivalent of three telephone poles and wires strung across the runway, so they place the antenna off to the side, giving a little bit of an angle to the final. But they always put me right where I wanted to be for landing.
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We were parallel to the runway, that is, about the same heading, but offset about a mile and a half, perhaps a bit more, to the right. Would have been useful in marginal VFR, but not so good in IMC. We did it maybe three times, same result, as did a few other folks from our club. I think it was decommissioned a while later.
 
The CFIT of the USAF C-40 at Dubrovnik that killed Secretary Brown would not have happen had the airplane had two ADFs installed and had the crew been trained in how to lockstep two NDBs. The Russians still are dual ADF equipped and occasionally have to use that technique at some of their remote airports. It makes NDB as accurate as a good, on-airport VOR.
 
aterpster said:
The CFIT of the USAF C-40 at Dubrovnik that killed Secretary Brown would not have happen had the airplane had two ADFs installed and had the crew been trained in how to lockstep two NDBs. The Russians still are dual ADF equipped and occasionally have to use that technique at some of their remote airports. It makes NDB as accurate as a good, on-airport VOR.
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I used to fly a Baron that had two ADFs, and Charles City, IA, used to have two NDBs (although it was not a two-NDB approach)...used to love flying that approach. :)
 
MauleSkinner said:
I used to fly a Baron that had two ADFs, and Charles City, IA, used to have two NDBs (although it was not a two-NDB approach)...used to love flying that approach. :)
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When I started in this business almost every ILS in the U.S. had both an LOM and LMM. Also, the NDB minimums were on the same chart as the ILS and LOC procedures.
 
aterpster said:
The CFIT of the USAF C-40 at Dubrovnik that killed Secretary Brown would not have happen had the airplane had two ADFs installed and had the crew been trained in how to lockstep two NDBs. The Russians still are dual ADF equipped and occasionally have to use that technique at some of their remote airports. It makes NDB as accurate as a good, on-airport VOR.
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Well, if they would've tracked a 119 outbound from KLP instead of a 110, the accident would not have happened either.
 
Velocity173 said:
Well, if they would've tracked a 119 outbound from KLP instead of a 110, the accident would not have happened either.
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That goes without saying. Or, had they simply homed on the forward NDB the accident wouldn't have happened, either. Or, had they used their INS drift angle to make a correction to their heading, the accident wouldn't have happened, either.
 
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