7.6 VOR Navigation

One can think of a VOR as a bicycle wheel with spokes. The centre being the station/beacon, while the spokes represent radials coming out of the beacon. There are 360 radials emitting constantly from a fully operational VOR.

If you can understand the following diagram, you are well on your way to understanding VORs:

 

The colour needle corresponds to the colour aircraft.

The VOR is a great tool for navigation. Plot your route using these and you won’t get lost easily.

3 Easy steps on using the VOR:

Tune the frequency into your NAV1

Identify the beacon (Morse code)

Test the instrument to make sure it isn’t emitting erroneous readings

Tracking directly to a VOR:

Simply rotate the OBS until two conditions are met:

The needle has centred

The TO/FROM flag indicates TO

Tracking from a VOR on a radial

Rotate the OBS until these two conditions are met:

The needle has centred

The TO/FROM flag indicates FROM

If the VOR has DME then we can navigate very accurately:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With a radial and distance we can pinpoint our positions anywhere on a map. So if our track utilises two fixes with both a radial and fix, we can stay on track. If the aircraft’s CDI needle centralised on 155° but the DME read 20nm, we would know we are left of track by about 1nm. If we record the time at both fixes we can work out our exact groundspeed, because we have the distance between the two fixes.