There are some difficult editorial decisions but, for example, if you want to know the minutiae of how GPS works, you can always go to Wikipedia, you don’t really need ten pages in the PBN Manual.
Also, a lot has changed, and some stuff that was transitional, like published overlays, just don’t exist any more. We also feel that we need less reference to comparisons to the old ways, as it is no longer a discretionary technology built on legacy knowledge.
But someone has to take the decisions and John Shannon and I are putting a lot of time and effort into it at the moment. We hope to publish in the next month or two.
I’ve just had a quick look at the CAA PBN manual ( local copy ) and, yawn, they could not resist padding it out with the same old “system self justification” stuff like this
A google for
corporate bullshit generator
finds at least 5 of them, and you can have a good hour of laughter before the boss comes round.
I guess VOR navigation is not predictable and certainly not repeatable since VORs are programmed to rotate their radials on the 1st of each month, by 7.5 degrees, CW in the N hemisphere and CCW in the southern hemisphere, so that average errors over global aviation average out to zero.
Europe sometimes really struggles to put a straight face on this blatent job creation. Avionics-specific knowledge aside, there is nothing here which anybody who flies IFR can’t do, out of the box, as they say. But every organisation needs to justify its existence.
Reading further, here is the procedure for flying a GPS approach, according to the document:
And it is claimed GPS approaches are simple??
@Timothy I thought the PBN manual was a great piece of work and have certainly used it many times as a reference, it would be a shame to lose the reference material – could you perhaps have a technical reference book (perhaps accepting a version in time freeze) and then a shorter operating handbook?
@Peter I think some of what you see is a UK cultural thing with probably some military background – military ethos is to list every step in a very standardised and rigid work cycle, whereas in the civil environment a lot of the same actions/steps are still done but it is more subconscious and less rigid in order.
Balliol, sure, but the suggestion is that this should be a real checklist. By all means do that but I wonder how many people really do that? I reckon almost nobody. One of the attractions of GPS approaches is that they are flown in, essentially, the enroute mode of the GPS. It is just another portion of the route, with automatic sensitivity increases inside the 30nm circle, etc. This is very similar between a KLN94 and the latest box. The missed approach behaviour can be a gotcha and is system-specific. Whereas setting up an ILS requires a list of operations which are quite different from what one has been doing during the enroute phase. I therefore have an “ILS checklist”, although the main reason for it is because I also set up a DCT [airport] on the GPS, in the OBS mode, to get a magenta line showing where to expect the localiser, which is brill for situational awareness (I know an Easyjet pilot who used to use the ADF for that purpose).
Does anyone have any tips for revision for the PBN signoff? I have the EASA IR renewal next week 
It doesn’t matter now
I did the £60 Oyster Air PBN Course, took 37 minutes, passed it, and printed off the certificate. That meets the CAA information notice IN-034/2017 requirements.
The course is quite easy for anyone who flies IFR for real and can spell G-P-S. They will spot the right answers from a mile off and may get enough to pass, but with just 25 questions you can’t take chances. A number of questions are trick ones; you have to read them very carefully. I got 3 wrong out of 25, and I reckon 2 were slightly dodgy but one always gets that in aviation multiple choice exams. One was checking that the GPS is displaying 1nm when loading an RNAV1 SID – I wonder how many know that and what the hell to do if you don’t see that but the SID loaded. Another was about flying with a database whose geo coverage doesn’t include the airport you are going to! The obviously right answer was to fly a non-GPS approach, but the “right” answer was a long one, mentioning the option of a Visual Approach which I thought could not be right since you never plan to execute a VA in advance; it is something you choose to do if the conditions turn out to be suitable. The 3rd I can’t remember; as with most websites one could not print it off easily to a PDF.
To me, this experience confirms what I always said and what the USA (and Germany!) got right: you don’t need a PBN signoff if you have an IR and know how to use it. What you do need is to know your avionics. On a US IR checkride this is taken care of because the examiner is entitled to see you use all installed equipment and this applies to a PPL checkride also (to the extent of the course syllabus, obviously). AIUI a similar thing happens on an EASA IR checkride but one FTO FI told me it is normal practice to have an expired database and that prevents the checkride including a GPS approach; presumably that practice will now have to end.
Peter wrote:
It is normal practice to have an expired database and that prevents the checkride including a GPS approach; presumably that practice will now have to end.
I just got back to IR training yesterday in a school a/c and this was the case. I asked the instructor how this requirement will be covered for me (being a SEIR outlier) and he mentioned something about the sim (even though the only have a multi-engine sim). I also did the last pre-PBN RNAV theory exam which means that I’ll have to do some half day course which they’ll doubtless charge a fortune for.
Peter wrote:
you don’t need a PBN signoff if you have an IR and know how to use it. What you do need is to know your avionics.
Doesn’t the CAA accept prior experience for the PBN TK?
I haven’t seen any evidence of that, in any of the CAA paperwork or in that Oyster online exam → certificate route.
It is what Germany (LBA) does, quite sensibly.
I know I have banged on about this for ever but really, to an IR holder who flies the procedures, the topic is minute. What isn’t minute is avionics expertise (deciphering the user interface and the functionality and integration with other aircraft systems such as the autopilot) but it is no good to classify that under “PBN” and pretend that knowing how you do it with a GNS430 in a C152 qualifies you for an IFD540 (or whatever) in something with a reasonably complex autopilot. But, as I have written many times before, that argument leads to an “avionics type rating” which nobody (outside the regulatory sphere) wants, so maybe this PBN stuff is the lesser of two evils.
