The NDB Approach

Because so many of you fans and our customers have asked us, we decided to start tackling the Flight portion of your training as well as the ground and this is a short extract from our up and coming App on IFR procedures.

[aviatortrucker]

I found the NDB approach, very rewarding, and easy to do once you understand it. You can still do it with a glass cockpit if your navigator is set up to receive the NDB radio frequencies, and has the ability to be integrated with your display. This will be a bearing pointer within the HSI. This is a lot easier than the old school where you had a fixed compass card and you had to basically know your bearing by adding the heading and the magnetic indicated bearing. I don’t follow push the head, pull the tail. My theory is the NDB points to the station. You can tell which way to turn based on where the head of the arrow is. If you are flying away from the station, the arrow will be pointing behind you. The needle will point left or right of the tail of the aircraft. So if say, it is indicating 120 you would turn right 30° which would make the pointer at 090. When the needle returns to 120 and you turn back to the left your 30 degrees, You will be on that bearing from the station with the pointer directly behind you at 180. Easy Peezy. Basically you should think of the NDB pointer as degrees left or right of the nose or degrees left or right of the tail. If you are flying 360 and want to go outbound from the station at 90° when the pointer is at 270 you would make your right turn. at 090 your pointer will be left or right the number of degrees away from that outbound bearing. Then, to correct, you just note the number of degrees left to right and fly double that amount in the direction that the arrow is pointing. When it returns to the original degrees off, return your aircraft in the opposite direction and you will then fly 090 with the tailstraight up at North and the bearing pointer directly at 180 or south.

[gerhardvanderwesthuizen]

ha ha ha!! I am South African and i've been on the G1000 all the way from the C172 up to the Caravan.

Good Video! Cheers

[BrianEdlin]

Another great video! Great advise on always resetting the DG

[razercortex]

Still our one of the international Airport VGCB uses NDBs for approaches

[joelopuck]

The how do you know when you are withing 10 degrees of the turn to final at 7:45 in the video was something I always wondered.
Thanks
Joe
CYWG

[NineGPull]

Good video, however I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about "push the head, pull the tail" with regards to which way to turn when outbound or inbound. Remember to also continuous monitor the morse code ident due to the lack of nav signal flags on the ADFs.

[donberg]

Good video, but you left out one important info for you pilots, each NDB has an assigned frequency, the one I work on is "UR" (VINEE) 253KHZ, this is ID every 30 sec, so if you know morse code you can check on your approach plate for that station by its call sign! (another cross reference) VORTAC works the same.

[timgoddard]

Accurate and well presented. Nice job!

[Sheepsmating]

Thank you for the good tutorial. I'm preparing for any interview questions where they might ask how to shoot an NDB approach. I never practice them in any sims or real planes but the interview question does come up.

[travelwithflavio]

Thank you for the lesson. Really accurate and interesting.
Grazie

[gregbergman]

What about tracking to the NDB? You set the condition of no wing, but that is hardly likely. Your presentation might lead some to "home" to the station instead of tracking to the station. With a strong wind, one could have the a > 10 degree deflection from the inbound course and still be on the correct course. As an example, if the wind was such that your heading was 15 deg right of the inbound course and the NDB needle was showing 15 deg left of course (both heading and needle remaining constant) you are on course. Assuming the same wind as my example, if you just kept the needle pointed straight up, you would be drifting off course.

[tomzeng]

cool our country has so many ndb approaches

[thementorproject]

Nice job. Always difficult to explain abstract ideas in simple terms.