LeSving wrote:
How are these DMEs used?
They are used by the pilot to determine distance from the threshold. IFR approaches have check fixes where the pilot should check that the glidepath altitude is correct. (Yes, simplified.) Historically, these fixes were determined using NDB locators or marker beacons, but they are increasingly being replaced by DME distances.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Sorry Peter, but you’re wrong. NDBs have been used for enroute navigation in most (*) European countries well into the 1990s. Not much, certainly, but here and there.
Yes, in many places NDB’s were used until GPS was firmly established. Why not… unless there is convective activity they are quite reliable.
In the east block they relied very heavily on NDB’s, in some states to this day. Almost all the navigation we did in the TU154 transition was NDB based and the only Nav radio the AN2 had was a huge ADF.
I remember flying into the Canaries on the Caravelle before we had the Garmin 100 AVD glued onto the dashboard. Usually the first radio to be received from the Canaries was a beacon somewhere on top of a mountain on Tenerife (I believe it’s callsign was FP but not sure anymore) which was reachable long before the VOR’s gave any reasonable bearing.
Also the one on the south tip of Greenland (Prins Christian Sund?) used to be very widely used for crossbearings on NATL crossings, even with the Rich Air DC8 I flew on several times to MIA and back.
That was in between 1990 and 1993.
