Charlie
I might be able to help, although I no longer use most of the stuff that Chris
mentioned. The modern airline pilot uses automatic navigation systems, flying
point to point with auto-changeover between destinations in the navigation
system. In the (bad?) old days, there was no GPS and inertial navigation
systems were in their infancy and not certified for use on approaches to
airfields. Chris was trained to use radio navigation beacons like VOR (gives a
bearing from the beacon), TACAN (bearing and range), DME (range only) and ADF
(really ropey old-style bearing system). But the main drawback for the older
systems was that the pilot had to interpret the reading, having checked that he
was tuned to the correct beacon, and fly a procedure which was really quite
challenging, allowing for drift by the wind and staying accurately on the
procedure. The ADF was the most difficult to use, in my experience (not much),
but each procedure required expertise and practice. The modern airline pilot
will get very little of the latter and hence have little of the former.
If it makes Chris feel any better, I still use VOR, DME and TACAN, but only in
good weather and only for position-checking above cloud. I fly no procedures
now, owing to lack of flying time (you need plenty of flying to maintain
instrument ratings). However, I use my horizontal situation indicator (HSI)
all the time; it includes a traffic advisory system (TAS) to warn me of other
aircraft in the vicinity.
Finally, only TACAN is an acronym (a word from an abbreviation); the others are
merely abbreviations ;-)
Chris
p.s. I’m not looking at Listers’ photos for this week because I’m on a limited
Internet connection. cb
> On 8 Sep 15, at 19:04, Charles Geilfuss <charles.geilfuss@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Chris,
> This is probably of interest to me but I don't know what the acronyms
> mean. Please elaborate for the uninitiated.
>
> Charlie
>
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 12:45 PM, Chris Trask <christrask@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>> Ahem! On a different note, I'd like to pass on (no pun intended) a
>> recent encounter with a commercial pilot. This fellow showed up at the
>> shop about three weeks ago, interested in building up a bike to use when he
>> was staying here for a few days. He ended up buying a very nice
>> ready-to-ride cruiser that was similar to the one that was stolen from his
>> roommate.
>>
>> He mentioned that he flew for a small regional airline, so we got
>> into a conversation. He flies nice, modern twins with all sorts of fancy
>> equipment. His primary navigation system is GPS-based, and he stated that
>> when they have to use VOR/TACAN they ave to think about it. I described to
>> him how I flew VOR/ADF with the RMI cards as primary indicators and the HSI
>> as a backup, even when stateside. He was totally mind-boggled.
>>
>> That's scary, and along with the TSA nonsense I'm even more inclined
>> to just drive.
>>
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro
>> - Hunter S. Thompson
>> --
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