Remember VORs?

nganapathy

Wednesday, November 25, 2020 at 01:20 PM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

VORs are the foundational backbone of the National Airspace System and serve as a critical backup to GPS, making proficiency essential for all pilots, especially during GPS outages.
Effective VOR navigation requires understanding the station's azimuth information and the cockpit indicator's components (OBS, CDI, To/From flag) to interpret signals for position, radial interception, and course tracking.
Pilots must master distinct VOR navigation techniques for identifying radials, flying towards or away from stations, correcting for wind drift, and traversing multi-segment airways, which differ from GPS methods.
Despite GPS's prevalence and convenience, maintaining VOR navigation skills is crucial for safety and operational resilience, reinforcing the importance of regular practice.

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Area navigation using GPS has been around (for us) for about 30 years. Before that we did mostly the same thing using LORAN for a while. But, the National Airspace System was designed around VHF Omni- Range navigation stations, VORs, that long preceded GPS.

Technically, there are three types: VORs that just provide azimuth information, VOR-DMEs that include a DME station, and VORTACs (VOR plus the military tactical air navigation system) that, for our purposes, are the same as VOR-DMEs. Regardless of the type, though, the actual navigation is via azimuth information using the VOR.