Simviation Forums

when u navigate using VORs, do u fly directly to them or not?

all replies greatly appreciated!

ben

Yes. You can follow their signals to them and away from them.  8-)

when u navigate using VORs, do u fly directly to them or not?

Flying directly to them or away from them is certainly the easiest, however they can also be used in an offset fashion.

You can also use them simply to create a waypoint: where the radials from two VORs intersect, or a point on one radial at a given distance from the station (with DME). You may use that waypoint for a course change, course verification, or time marker, without ever flying towards either station.
You can also use DME to fly in an arc around a VOR station, which is sometimes done to transition from cruise flight to an IFR approach.

Remember also that there's possibly going to be a lot of other people navigating to the VOR, so it could be quite congested over a VOR with lots of VFR traffic, so sometimes you can navigate to a VOR, then when you're five or ten miles out, turn towards you're outbound heading and intercept the outbound radial five or ten miles away from the VOR, so you can completely avoid over-flying it.  Usually you wouldn't need to do that though, because most of the time there isn't that much traffic.