Intermediate VOR

Having tired of the unrealistic scenery around Jekyll Island I've decided to head further south. The next leg of my journey will take me a couple hundred miles further south to Titusville, Florida where my in-laws reside and where I've previously conducted some test flights using MegaScenery Earth downloads (see earlier posts).

The navigation on this one is going to be a little more complicated, so it's time to talk more about VOR. In a prior post, I described VOR (Very High Frequency Omni-directional Range) as homing in on a radio signal to find an airport and that's basically how I've used it so far. Of course, it's a little more complicated than that. In fact, each VOR station emits two signals, one omni-directional, and one uni-directional but rotating through all 360 degrees around the station. By interpreting these two signals, the equipment in your plane can tell you where you are in relation to the station, and to any of the 360 radials (vectors/directions) going out from the station.

In addition to the nav radio in the plane, there's a VOR dial. It has a knob that lets you rotate through the 360 degrees, plus it has an arrow that can point straight down or to the left or right. Finally, it has an up arrow or "to" flag and a down arrow or "from" flag. To get to Athens, and then to Jekyll, I justed tuned in the frequency of the VOR at my destination, then rotated the dial until I got a straight arrow and a "to" flag. I'd then turn my plane until my heading matched the degree heading indicated at the top of the VOR dial. In other words, with the straight arrow and "to" flag, that heading would take me "to" the VOR station I had tuned in.

To get from Jekyll to Titusville is going to be a little tricker though, mainly because my destination airport, the Arthur Dunn Air Park in Titusville, has no VOR station of it's own. What I've learned from a bit of Googling though is that Arthur Dunn is 32.8 miles out from the Melbourne (Florida, not Australia) VOR along the 343 radial. That means if you flew from the Melbourne VOR on a heading of 343 degrees, you'd get to the airport after flying 32.8 miles.

Conversely, if you're approaching Melbourne VOR on the reciprocal course (163 degrees), you'd fly over the airport 32.8 miles before you got to the VOR. My trick then, is to find that 343 radial, get on it, and follow it towards Melbourne. The nav radio will tell me how far I am from the signal, so at about 40 miles or so out I should be able to spot the airport.

Of course, it's going to be a while heading south before I'll even pick up that signal, so I'm going to use the Brunswick VOR at the start of the trip. I'll tune it in and fly south, using the range finding feature to tell me how far I've traveled. I expect to lose the signal after about 60 nautical miles, by which time I'll be about 100 nautical miles out from Titusville. There will probably be a gap in there before I pick up Melbourne, but I can manage that by keeping ocean to my left and land to my right. No problem!

Here's a closeup of the equipment I'm talking about, taken during my flight to Titusville which will be detailed in my next post:

You may be able to right click the image and open it in another tab at a larger size. If you do, you'll see that on the top radio there are four frequencies displayed. The first two, 128.30 and 128.25 are communication frequencies. The second two, 110.00 and 112.25 are navigation frequencies, with 110.00 being the one currently tuned in. To the left of the radio stack there's a dial with a white plus sign in it. That's the VOR dial. It's currently turned to about 165 (between 150 and due south, which is 180). The vertical axis of the + sign is the needle I mentioned, which is offset slightly to the right. At the bottom of that needle, there's an up arrow which is the "to" flag I mentioned. This shows me that I'm slightly to the left of the 165 radial to the VOR at 110.00 MHz (which is Melbourne). Also, towards the bottom of the radio stack, you can see that I'm 53.1 nautical miles out (or just over 20 miles from the airport in Titusville).

This probably doesn't make any sense at all. A video demonstration would be a lot better, but I'm not sure how to make one of those yet. Anyway, coming up next - my actual flight from Jekyll to Titusville, which was completed in the midst of trying to write this particular post.