How to navigate to a TACAN station?

[trvdmeulen]

I've studied the section navigation in FSX but there is nothing mentioned about TACAN stations. I use FSC 8.2 (aerosoft)for flightplanning. Does anyone now a good article how to navigate to/from a TACAN station??

[-Crossfire-]

Tacan is a military navaid, believe you use it the same way as a VOR, but I'm not 100% sure.

[beaky]

Unless it's a VORTAC (TACAN combined with a VOR) a VOR receiver won't work with it, because TACAN uses UHF and VOR uses VHF. The distance signal (DME), however, is UHF in both cases.

[trvdmeulen]

VOR/DME is no problem just fly to the needle the needle always points to the station. But he TACAN from example EHLW has a radial that always points 180 degrees to the south. If I fly from a southern course I have to fly to the tail end of the needle. a VOR or VORTAC would just point to the north. I use the Aerosoft F-16 but I think there is no option to set the nav receiver to UHF. Maybe a litlle more practice flying with NDB, VOR/DME, and VORTAC and TACAN. :-? For non GPS navigation I use a HSI.

[trvdmeulen]

correction the radial of EHLW TACAN is 14' when I move the map al the radials move with it

[beaky]

VOR/DME is no problem just fly to the needle the needle always points to the station. But he TACAN from example EHLW has a radial that always points 180 degrees to the south. If I fly from a southern course I have to fly to the tail end of the needle. a VOR or VORTAC would just point to the north.

I'm not familiar with TACAN, so I don't know what to make of that.  :-? Seems unlikely that in real life, TO/FROM sensing is not possible with TACAN.

I use the Aerosoft F-16 but I think there is no option to set the nav receiver to UHF. Maybe a litlle more practice flying with NDB, VOR/DME, and VORTAC and TACAN. :-? For non GPS navigation I use a HSI.

Don't forget- VORs and TACAN are not just for homing in on a station- they are best used when plotting position, either using two radials or a radial and some landmark, or a radial with DME.

[trvdmeulen]

It took some time to answer, had to reinstall windows I found an article about plotting http://powerboat.about.com/od/boatingna ... course.htm
does this do the job ?? and do I need real aeronautical maps and where to get them??
greetz,  Riemer

[beaky]

[quote]It took some time to answer, had to reinstall windows I found an article about plotting http://powerboat.about.com/od/boatingna ... course.htm
does this do the job ?? and do I need real aeronautical maps and where to get them??
greetz,

[trvdmeulen]

Thank you for the information. There are a lot of different charts: whats the difference between them maybe you can explain?? I'll download a raster chart then I can take a look at it. Looking forward to the tutorial. Are there really no european charts??

[beaky]

Thank you for the information. There are a lot of different charts: whats the difference between them maybe you can explain??

As far as the VFR charts go, you have world charts, sectionals, and terminal charts. The difference is simply a matter of scale- each shows more or less area.

I'll download a raster chart then I can take a look at it. Looking forward to the tutorial. Are there really no european charts??

There are plenty of sources where you can buy them, but I haven't seen any free ones available for download. Mind you, I haven't looked very hard, and in some cases the language barrier was a problem for me.

Those raster charts from the NOAA are huge files, so you might also have a look here... with this site, you can also plot a course, and get rudimentary heading and distance information. Before I started working on scaled-down pdfs of all the US sectionals, I used to use screencaps from skyvector.

http://skyvector.com/

Another useful site, where you can see your course laid across multiple sectionals, is runwayfinder:

http://runwayfinder.com/

[trvdmeulen]

thanks, skyvector is great with all the navaids on the map.

[trvdmeulen]

also runwayfinder. I'll buy a plotter about a few weeks.

[beaky]

also runwayfinder. I'll buy a plotter about a few weeks.

A plotter is merely a protractor (to measure angles) and a ruler that's calibrated to match the scale of the chart. You can use any protractor and ruler (just transpose the chart scale to centimeters or whatever).

What you will need is one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6B

There are very inexpensive cardboard and plastic ones available (I've been using mine for over 13 years and it still works fine), or you can find a program that emulates the flight computer by doing the calculations.

[trvdmeulen]

thanks , read it more carefully later. I have a party with friends tonight. Been messing around with bittorrent sites I was looking for JeppView downloaded it but I couldn't get it working. Have a copy of simcharts 3.0 but not all airports are in the list. Maybe I'll buy the new FlightsimCommander. But I'll go on with these charts seen you have posted already some sectionals.

[trvdmeulen]

pretty ingenieus instrument this E6B. I have found a site where I can buy it and also the VFR+GPS maps of the EU and one of the Netherlands. I am currently downloading your tutorials. Have studied the legend of one of your charts a bit.