Ones and Zeros

Today’s lesson is VOR interception and tracking.  It’s also back to New Market (8W2) where I went to have my turn coordinator replaced.  I’d finally tracked down where our missing towbar was.  I’d taken it out of the plane to use in New Market and left it there.

I called Todd at New Market and he said that he was wondering about this extra towbar.  He left it out where I could find it later that evening.  New Market’s a country airport, the type of place where you leave your keys in the car.  It wasn’t going to be missing when I got there and no one would think it was a bomb either.

Since we had to track VORs and VOR-determined airways, I convinced instructor M that we should go to New Market and get my towbar.  M seemed fine with this.  But New Market doesn’t have an instrument approach.  It also has non-standard lighting, and a displaced threshold over powerlines.  Not an ideal night landing spot so we expedited our departure with a short brief.  We wanted to get there in twilight instead of night.  But even with the 900 feet displaced threshold I had 2000 feet of runway.  And in the end, I could get the towbar another day if we didn’t like the looks.

The VOR tracking went well we all do this in the private pilot training.  And I’ve used VORs since too, I use Campbell’s method which works and is simpler, but tends to confuse others.  All was uneventful as I have to demonstrate practical competence rather than follow a certain method.  We landed in New Market on runway 24 from a long straight in approach as we were the only ones around.  I picked up my towbar and restarted the plane.

M did the takeoff with me under foggles.  He handled the plane to me at 200 feet AGL (above ground level) with a strict admonition to “Maintain runway heading!”.  That was an exercise in trust for him as there was a hill at our altitude just west of our course.  I’m sure he was watching carefully though.

I maintained runway heading then turned east then intercepted a victor airway as we gained altitude out of the valley and could receive the VOR again.   We did more VOR tracking and some unusual altitudes then headed for home.  All in all a successful and uneventful lesson.

The next lesson is NDB (non-directional beacon) interception and tracking, that’s harder and something I have less practice with.  In my plane we have a VOR with glideslope, ADF (automatic direction finder for NDB), and GPS.  I’m only missing a DME and the GPS can give me that data.  I’m going to have to learn everything it’ll be more work but will be better in the long run.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 07:32 and is filed under aviation, flying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.