Love your VOR's, NDB's, etc?

[Fozzer]

An interesting read in my latest edition of Flying eNewsletter:

By J. Mac McClellan

Will VORs and ILS Really Go Away?
It was more than 15 years ago when Richard Collins and I met with the then head of FAA airway and navigation and planning, and he laid out a detailed plan that would have decommissioned virtually all VOR stations and ILS equipment in less than 10 years. GPS, with the added accuracy and dependability of wide area augmentation system (WAAS), was going to make navigation stations bolted to the ground unnecessary and irrelevant. Obviously, it didn't happen.
Now the FAA is talking about starting to scale back the national network of VOR stations by 2010 because GPS and WAAS are a reality and we really don't need those costly to maintain navigation radio stations. Will it happen this time? I doubt it.
It would be easy to blame the many thousands of general aviation airplane owners who have not yet installed a GPS with certified IFR capability, and the much larger group yet to embrace WAAS. And that group, through AOPA and other associations, will complain, but they are not the real drag on transition to GPS, WAAS and the next generation (NextGen) air traffic control system.

The real foot dragging comes from the airlines.

Though Garmin in particular has delivered many thousands of WAAS-equipped GPS systems for personal and business airplanes, the jets, especially the airlines, lag behind. Even the best-equipped business jets have been slower to get WAAS equipment approved and installed than piston singles.

Part of the reason is that certifying anything

[Brett_Henderson]

I think this one of those deals where obsolescence will come from the user-end, rather than any decree by an inept, government agency.

If I were buying and equiping a small plane right now.. I'd certainly NOT equip it with an ADF. Eventually, that will be the case with VOR equipment. Why pay for all that equipment, wiring and antennas when a GPS renders them all moot ? VOR hardware is delicate, expensive and needs regular tuning/calibration.

Same deal with new commercial aircraft. I'll bet that the number of ILS equiped planes will dwindle to nothing before the ILS transmitters get shut down.

I'll miss VORs.. but I won't miss the days prior to GPS. Flying to an airport for the first time (even VFR), trying to find it by tracking a VOR radials can be time consuming, expensive and even dangerous. By the time you spot it, you could very well have diced through the traffic pattern..

[C]

Funny that this has come up.

I was going through my stash of old magazines in the past few weeks (over a decade worth of FlyPast, Aeroplane, and a lot of Pilot etc). Anyway, I came across one issue of Pilot (it was a 1997 or 98 issue), and in the news was an article saying how several of the civil authorities expected to be turning off VORs and NDBs within the decade!

Hasn't quite happened yet!

[DaveSims]

I do know they have started shutting down some VORS and NDBs that aren't frequently used anymore.  Its just a matter of time until they are all shut down.  The AOPA has been fighting it because of the costs of everyone who hasn't already upgrading their avionics packages.  But I think Brett is right, you'll see less people buying aircraft with NAV and ADF equipment, especially as GPS is becoming more and more accepted.  I think that is what held it back in the past, you could have GPS in the aircraft, but it wasn't supposed to be a primary navigation instrument.

[beaky]

I agree that the ground-based navaids will  linger a while only because of the money involved in retrofitting or replacing older fleets that are otherwise perfectly fine for airline and military work. Heck, that's probably why they're still in use at all... in many parts of the world, airliners still rely heavily on NDBs, even for approaches!

I'll miss them, though... plotting a fix with two radials is something interesting to do on a long flight, and of course it's always fun to try to spot a ground station. And I'm a little disappointed that if and when I finally get my IR, I won't be learning NDB approaches.

Future generations of pilots will not miss them at all, of course... until they lose GPS coverage or the unit goes belly-up.
In that case, they'll be in trouble, because GPS nav is so easy and reliable that they will have weak pilotage and dead reckoning skills.  ;)


WAAS is pretty awesome, though- during my recent riude in Mike's Tiger, he flew a simulated WAAS approach into 47N that was very simple and expedient.