Area navigation

Yeah

... like all the RNAV approaches and all that sort of stuff, 'cause all the-

That's a big job

... it's, yeah, it's [laughs] kind of a big thing.

43 years ago.

The next time you brief an RNAV approach and watch your position track cleanly up the procedure, take a second to think about where that technology came from, not the engineering.

The decision.

A press conference, 16 days after the worst kind of night over the Pacific, when someone decided that what had happened would not happen again.

Now, crews flying under Part 135 are normally not allowed to begin the approach if the weather is below landing minimums.

The minimums listed on the RNAV GPS runway 15 approach to Newenham are 803 miles.

So they're pretty high because of all that terrain.

During the workup to the, to today, I spent some time on the phone with a friend of mine who lives in Alaska and has flown all over the place up there.

Now, again, my buddy, uh, also reiterated that the weather changing from minute to minute up there in Alaska is simply what flying in Alaska is all about, and pilots need to get used to it.

Now, he also mentioned that the earlier approach charts for Newenham carried a note that said a successful missed approach for minimums was highly unlikely.

Now, I'm thinking those earlier approaches might have had some lower minimums than the current RNAV approach did.

But I've gotta tell you, having been a 135 pilot for years, I would think that any flights in Alaska are really much more challenging than any of us down here in the lower 48 face or are even used to.

Some DME installations have a hold feature that permits a DME signal to be retained from one VORTAC, while the course indicator displays course deviation information from an ILS or another VORTAC.

VOR/DME RNAV.

Area navigation, RNAV, permits electronic course guidance on any direct route between points established by the pilot.

While RNAV is a generic term that applies to a variety of navigational aids such as LORAN-C, GPS, and others, this section deals with VOR/DME-based RNAV.

VOR/DME RNAV is not a separate ground-based NAVAID, but a method of navigation using VOR/DME and VORTAC signals specially processed by the aircraft's RNAV computer.

See Figure fifteen dash thirty-four.

Note, in this section, the term VORTAC also includes VOR/DME NAVAIDs.

In its simplest form, VOR/DME RNAV allows the pilot to electronically move VORTACs around to more convenient locations.

Over the course of several minutes, as he vectored me pretty far around, we kind of came to an agreement that I did know what I was doing and this something silly had happened in the airplane.

And so he said, well, do you have, you know, do you need any assistance? And I said, I would prefer an RNAV.

Please.

That ILS, for those who take the ILS into Teterboro, I can't remember which runway number it is, but those who take the south-facing runway into Teterboro, that ILS is very slightly, may not be this way anymore, but it used to be very slightly offset from the runway.

And I knew that, and I figured I would rather set myself up for success here.

And I know that the RNAV is not slightly offset.

So...

Get the RNAV, get it programmed in.

It's less than 5,000 feet long, [laughs] and runway 2-5 does not have any instrument approaches.

When the winds are out of the west, which they usually are, we'll fly the RNAV 2-8 circle to 2-5 without VNAV in a 121 jet airliner to a 4,999-foot runway-

Oh

... and without leading edge slats to boot, we operate the mighty Embraer 145.