Peter, I don’t know if the question is tongue in cheek but there are ndb’s on the sectionals still. An example is LAKER (LBH) right by Troutdale in Portland, Oregon. However I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t tune my Cessna’s excellent KR-87 to it when I landed there a couple of weeks ago. Given that the ADF is one of the few items in the original King radio stack that still works properly, this is doubly unfortunate.
Actually, all of my 24 Hr trip up and down the coast was flown by Foreflight/ iPad with the occasional VOR check for common sense and of course visual navigation and paper charts all the way. Make that a primary iPad, a second fully charged iPad in my bag, an iPhone also running Foreflight, and emergency USB battery pack and an occasionally functioning KLN-94 in the panel.
I don’t think any of the U.S. GA aircraft I’ve flown had ADF fitted (about 6 in different areas)
I believe that Alaska has still some enthusiasm for NDBs but they are very rare elsewhere
Even ILS are being ripped out now, in favour of cheaper LPV
Even ILS are being ripped out now, in favour of cheaper LPV
Not anywhere in the US that I am aware of.
The reason for my question was that if NDBs still exist, how can they remove them from the theory?
I am not suggesting NDBs are anything other than a joke, in the present age. But if the FAA can remove them from the TK, so can EASA, even though Europe is full of them and they will continue to provide the cheapest way to achieve the legal charade required to make a small airport capable of accepting AOC (IFR) flights.
Actually, I like them for VFR-Flying. Or the RBI, to be precise. How much does the NDB cost to operate anyway? Has anyone heared of figures? I could imagine they are comparatively cheap among the ground based navaids. Just curious, though.
I understand that ADF/NDB will be removed from private and commercial pilot knowledge tests. I believe IFR will still have questions on ADF/NDB. There should be less of an emphasis on ADF/NDB as it is phased out, but it will still be around for a while. The current knowledge tests may have half a dozen questions on ADF/NDB but maybe one or two specific to GPS. This is backwards of the current system and there should be questions on RNAV approaches, LPV, LP, TAA, Database, Programming, etc. ADF’s are still in some aircraft, but my Bonanza had its ADF removed and sold 14 years ago. I could only find a single airport that required an ADF for its instrument approach, and it now has two RNAV approaches, both straight in with LP and LNAV minimums. Most of the ILS outer marker locators have been removed or are being removed. Out ILS had its NDB locator removed and it was replaced with the installation of a DME facility. We now have two versions of the ILS approach, one which uses GPS RNAV for a TAA (Terminal Arrival Area) with a left and right base entry IAF and a straight in IAF in a T configuration. The second version requires DME and uses VOR and DME to transition from the airway structure to the IAF. In another ten years, most of the airways will be gone as well, replaced by a backup airway system with RNAV T and Q routes. We no longer need to study the LF range system either. 
Sorry – I may have been a bit overstated about the demise of ILS in the US. I had thought some had already been switched off.
This note from 2012 mentions plans to decommission VORs in the US by 2020, saving $220 million per year.
This note from Flight Safety Organisation (2011) includes quite a few numbers of the different IAPs and rationale for consolidation.
A lot of the charted NDBs in the US don’t work and haven’t worked for years. I remember the NDB still being on the sectional chart for Pinckneyville Du Quoin airport (where we had the rec.aviation flyin) still being charted five years or so after it died.
How much does the NDB cost to operate anyway?
I have no 1st hand data but have heard of very rough figures: about 5k/year for an NDB, 10k/year for a DME, 200k/year for a VOR or an ILS.
AFAIK almost nobody is making new NDBs anymore and the smaller airports are paying a service contract to some guy with a beard and a van with a load of 1960s and 1970s circuit boards, and he swaps the boards until the thing works again, and then he tries to repair the ones he pulled out. This is where the money goes, apart from the electricity. This may be a caricature but it’s probably not far off and it is how one UK airport manager described to me. My base airport has bought an old DME from Heathrow airport, and it works brilliantly all the way up to LEO (low earth orbit). No doubt they will be doing the same PCB swapping thing on that in due course once the damp starts to eat it…
Recently the UK NATS said that nobody is making VORs anymore (no idea if that’s actually true, but it appears that most of those currently running around here were made by Philips in 1970-1975) so when they pack up they will have to be shut down. I think this is nonsense; they probably don’t want to pay the escalating cost of the service contracts, and (electronics is my business) it is definitely getting harder and harder to find analog and RF electronics engineers who are willing to repair this stuff, and build replacement boards in small quantities. it’s a very non-glamorous job… I believe every VOR has a dedicated phone line and a secure link, and its magnetic deviation is remotely adjusted periodically (not in the USA AFAIK). There is also an access road and a fence and all that costs money.
Obviously nobody flying seriously is using NDBs or VORs for navigation so they probably can’t see why they should run them. I guess only the ATPL FTOs still use them for enroute stuff and they really ought to move on.
ILS is a different thing and most commercial operators need it. Gloucester EGBJ has just put one in, which they say cost them a few million by the time they did all the other stuff that goes with it (runway lights, I guess). A complete ILS was on Ebay recently for 10k but that’s just the hardware…
where we had the rec.aviation flyin
You know… I remember you from rec.aviation.ifr telling me EuroGA would collapse into a mess within a year 
