I have not flown for a few days like many student pilots in the UK as the weather has been bad. I got to fly 1 hr and 05 mins as the instructors had many people to fly with today. Me and Donald flew a short route of 53nm about 40 ish mins. I am reading all about radio navigation in my Nav book and getting close to the end of it. todays lesson would be an introduction to VOR (VHF radio navigation aid otherwise known as VHF Onmidirection range) and NDB (Non direction beacon – send out a radio wave tansmission in all direction hence non direction) and ADF (Automatic direction finder) which locks onto the signals from the NDB.

I planned a normal VFR flight but as we were going to fly using radio nav aids, i had the various frequencies we would use noted. we would track 289 (T) (from cranfield to Daventry VOR) using freq 116.40. The VOR is often co-located and paired with a DME (distance measuring equipment) which measures how far you are from the DME and can even show the aeroplanes groundspeed and time to get there.

a VOR is a very helpful aid – the compass on the VOR does not need to be aligned with the DI and you are guided to the signal by a guide line but have a OBS to set your direction of travel. A VOR will tell you if you are going to or from a VOR radial.

I am a complete novice at this so i can only give you my inexperienced level of what i understood at flying school today. We got to the radio mast right above it so i knew i had flown well. It was nice to get a look at what the radio equipment looks like. Once overhead we turned left onto a heading of 177 (m).

Once the aeroplane was straight and level, i did a FREDA check, and started to pay attention to how tracking works when using ADF and NDB – we do not have a DME on this aeroplane. we tuned in westcott – WCO 335, set, listen then ADFing.

Non-Directional Beacons (NDBs) are the most common type of radio beacon found because of their simplicity and relative cheapness. NDBs are basically a simple radio transmitter which radiates a signal equally in every direction (hence ‘non-directional’). This signal is modulated with a Morse code identity signal.

This allows suitably equipped aircraft to ‘home’ on the beacon, bringing the aircraft to a position overhead. From there, the aircraft can either track to another beacon, or perform an instrument approach procedure using the NDB for lateral guidance.

when using the ADF instrument in G-AXIO we aligned the DI and Rotable compass card every time we changed heading – well in this aeroplane we do (G-BSSC – in Norwich had a RMI – Radio Magnetic Indicator which is automatically aligned). The needle will always point to the direction of the NDB and therefore in order to maintain tracking you have to adjust heading and counter this against wind. I know i have not explained this very well but it was my first lesson and from what i managed to achieve, i got us back home safely.