Do you still practice VOR approaches?

[Immelman]

I can think of many occasions in the past year that things like this happened...this was all airline but most of the stuff was to airports you'd fly a Mooney into:

 

- RAIM not available

- Base leg vector to a major international airport: The wind is howling with an approaching front and they are down to 1 landing runway, 1 ILS, in a non-standard direction. We are #2 and see the LOC flag start to get intermittent on us. A few seconds later, "Flight 123, the localizer is down, say intentions". Had to fly a lap, but then we shot the old school VOR approach and got in!

- Too much tailwind to fly the ILS and land straight in, visibility and ceiling too low to circle... VOR from the other direction

- And numerous instances where the LOC or GP was NOTAM'd out due to construction or what have you

 

Be prepared to fly whatever approach is best given the circumstances.

[midlifeflyer]

Thanks for the visual. But here is the question. How do you simulate the flight on the GTN750 simulator? I can't figure that out. Thanks.

 

When on the map page, click on the menu icon and then "Demo." Of from the main home screen. click "Demo." Once there you will see three icons. Of the three "GPS" will bring you to such things as setting your current position (like an airport or in the air somewhere). The "NAV" icon will bring you to a screen where yo can set certain parameters including altitude and speed. 

 

The simulator assume GPS Steering. So if you set up a flight plan or a Direct To and go into the NAV area to set your airspeed, you will fly. On;ly reall issue is yo have to go back there to do such things as change speeds.

[midlifeflyer]

I was looking at something for myself and a friend and saw something I think relevant to this thread. A number of folks urge the benefit of practicing VOR approaches despite GPS in case of an airport where it's the only viable choice, such as in the case of a GPS failure.  

 

I think it might be more valuable to fly without GPS on one of those non GPS approaches with a multi-stage missed, like "Climb to 1000, then climbing right turn to 3000 on heading 130° and XYZ VORTAC R-87 to OHNOH intersection/XYZ 18.5 DME and hold."  

 

GPS makes those incredibly easy but it can be a bit of a bear to do it "manually" if one hasn't for a long time (BTW, although altitudes, distances and identifiers were changed to protect the innocent, that's from a real missed off an ILS).

[larryb]

I fly to Fullerton (KFUL) frequently and they always assign me the VOR-A approach. I asked for a GPS approach one time and ATC pretended not to hear me. I assume they like it because generally the approach is adequate for the ceilings and it keeps traffic out of the way of LAX. I did see it's on the list for removal, so I'm curious as to what will replace it.

 

Larry

[midlifeflyer]

I fly to Fullerton (KFUL) frequently and they always assign me the VOR-A approach. I asked for a GPS approach one time and ATC pretended not to hear me. I assume they like it because generally the approach is adequate for the ceilings and it keeps traffic out of the way of LAX. I did see it's on the list for removal, so I'm curious as to what will replace it.

 

Larry

I'd be keeping my eye out for a GPS approach to Runway 02 or ATC is just going to figure out how to route traffic for an approach to 24.