Peter wrote:
So if you carry an ADF but actually use a tablet to fly the plane on an NDB approach, that is legal.
If you monitor the NDB during the approach, yes. No one has said otherwise.
If you really mean that you don’t have to monitor the NDB, please provide some evidence for that. And while you’re at it, provide some evidence that you are allowed to do fix substitution for equipment not carried.
please provide some evidence for that.
I don’t need to, because the law is silent on it.
Think about it – how could Brussels, or anyone else, mandate how you conduct yourself in the cockpit? This is not an AOC operation, where you must follow a proc manual.
If the law said the pilot must use the specified equipment, and use nothing else (e.g. disregard GPS even if it is telling you that you are heading for a rock – some I met in the IR training establishment have adopted that position, namely that you are required to follow a totally obviously bogus ADF track, to a coastal AD) that would be different. But it is never likely to. It is impossible to draft such a law, saying “ADF is primary but if GPS says you are going to die, then you are permitted to use GPS”. No way to draft that.
And while you’re at it, provide some evidence that you are allowed to do fix substitution for equipment not carried.
I never said you can. I always said you have to carry the specified equipment. Europe does not permit equipment carriage substitution.
EDIT: posts moved to existing thread which suggests otherwise, with some local concessions.
Any passenger carrying operation would not pass their own safety team standards in flying an NDB approach, while actually using an NDB!
Any passenger carrying operation would not pass their own safety team standards in flying an NDB approach, while actually using an NDB!
Glad someone did say something sensible about NDB 
Not now, but they used to.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Neither Germany nor the UK can prescribe minimum aircraft equipment for airspace use except what they are explicitly allowed to require by EU regulations. So they are allowed to require e.g. mode S transponders, but not a DME.
Technically you are right. Practically not: While they can not establish a formal equipment requirement for airspace use, they can still structure it in a way, that only aircraft with the required equipment can actually use it. If they, e.g. define the usable IFR waypoints only in terms of NDB/DME (obviously absurd but theoretically possible), you can not legally plan a flight without carrying this equipment. At least today using the GPS overlay as a replacement would not be allowed.
Luckily, the reality moves into the opposite direction: The vast majority of NDB-approaches got a small “(GPS)” in front of the NDB in the AIP and therefore are completely legal to fly in aircraft w/o ADF installed.
The two biggest problems with ADF is
A) The pilot can’t fly them
B) The kit is shagged
If the above two problems are addressed then you can fly a perfectly respectable approach.
It depends on where.
If you have an NDB in the middle of hundreds of miles of ocean, or flat land, then you can build an ADF which will give you an accuracy of the order of 1 degree. I know a guy who used to do this on the old airliners. So they are as good as VORs for long range navigation across barren terrain, and obviously much simpler than a VOR; you just stick up a big antenna and feed 100kW into the bottom of it
But as soon as you get assymetry in the surrounding terrain – specifically assymetry in the conductivity – then it distorts, possibly dangerously badly. The Shoreham NDB was fine at 10nm but at some 2-3nm you needed a change of heading of 20-30 degrees to track it, which is obviously silly.
So they aren’t good as approach navaids in many cases.
Quote Luckily, the reality moves into the opposite direction: The vast majority of NDB-approaches got a small “(GPS)” in front of the NDB in the AIP and therefore are completely legal to fly in aircraft w/o ADF installed.
Can you give an example please
Bathman wrote:
The two biggest problems with ADF is
A) The pilot can’t fly them
B) The kit is shaggedIf the above two problems are addressed then you can fly a perfectly respectable approach.
Except for when you cross a coast or even better – when there is TS somewhere on the continent…
