tmo wrote:
I don’t want to believe this. Is it your opinion, or is that actually some official strategy?
It’s my opinion. There’s no official strategy. UK airports, ATC (and thus airspace and approaches) are fully privatised with no over-arching control of strategy.
What happens in the future is what the individual businesses involved choose to do, in response to market forces and a regulator that does not make airspace, operational or technology-adoption changes itself as a matter of policy, but is heavily lobbied by various commercial interests (e.g. ATC, airlines, training companies) with a revolving door of employees to grease the wheels.
All I’m doing is hypothesising why it’ll probably remain much as it is now, simply because major changes like getting rid of NDBs are not in the interest of anyone who makes money from the present setup.
For another example of this see why RNP approaches to non-towered airports in the UK are now a thing, but not in a way that would actually be useful to anyone (pre-approved commercial operators only, max one approach per hour, no other movements at aerodrome or in ATZ permitted while approach in progress).
Peter wrote:
Nobody will spend 1p for GA here, and airlines don’t need LPV (they have CAT3 ILS).
My point was that augmentation of GPS has uses far beyond aviation. Even modern farm equipment uses augmented GPS. Oh well, to each one’s own.
tmo wrote:
My point was that augmentation of GPS has uses far beyond aviation. Even modern farm equipment uses augmented GPS. Oh well, to each one’s own.
But farm equipment don’t need the EGNOS “Safety of Life” service. And the signals are still there…
I will take your words for it then 
Peter wrote:
this quaint obsession with NDB holds is endearingly BritishNo, it is the work of old farts who make a living out of it.
I disagree. In my neck of the woods the NDB is available to every runway and at one airfield its your only option. In therefore should be taught and frankly tested.
The fact that the old farts didn’t just follow the FAA implementation of GPS approaches is where the failure lies.
I’m with Graham here and I don’t think there is any official strategy and it’s left to the individual airport to decided. Which is probably why Shoreham only has an RNP approach so the airfield operator/Flying school can avoid NDB approaches on IR test.
Rumour is my local international airport only went to the expense of an LPV200 so they could save cash by shutting down the cat 1 ILS. Now there are stuck with an RNP with the same minima as the NDB approach and are having to keep the ILS.
Shoreham only has an RNP approach so the airfield operator/Flying school can avoid NDB approaches on IR test.
The service contract on an NDB and a DME is also a waste of money… and it has to be recovered from purely “officially IFR” traffic, and only from traffic whichis additional i.e. would not fly there otherwise…
But anybody can fly a GPS DIY version of a published NDB IAP, and in fact almost everybody flying for real does exactly that; they aren’t using the ADF. They merely have to carry the ADF for it to be legal, if the radio calls reveal them to be flying the NDB/DME IAP.
And all-DIY IAPs are legal in G-regs in the UK, so spending money on navaids is hard to justify if you can use GPS.
An ILS is the big exception to the above.
the old farts didn’t just follow the FAA implementation of GPS approaches is where the failure lies.
The failure is in privatising ATC. In the US you have a remotely located approach controller. This dovetails with Class E down to 1200ft, to make IAPs possible to airports with unmanned towers.
I disagree. In my neck of the woods the NDB is available to every runway and at one airfield its your only option. In therefore should be taught and frankly tested.
While I agree on the principal, the NDB is useless in practice you can do well with 50£ tablet (it’s illegal but works well down to 500ft agl better than NDB, talking from personal experience of shooting coastal NDB down to it’s minima, I was lucky the only thing that saved the show was the water under), now I give up: bolted a pannel GPS and moving map, one can’t afford to be dumb & lucky twice…
If the goal is “to do with what we have in aerodromes” then why not let people fly an NDB on it’s GPS overlay with LNAV+V during IR initial test & revalidations that would be a good start?
How people would fly them privately or commercially: well I trust one is either very skilled and current to try or is not stupid to use an NDB in real weather? it’s very unforgiving out there
There is a good reason why CAA recommands 600ft agl as absolute minima for IMCR holders: it’s simply impossible to fly NDB in unfamiliar places bellow 500ft agl (I could fly LPV to 50ft and ILS to 200ft but I figure out I can’t fly NDB bellow 500ft & 2km visbility without killing myself? I am really surprised some people are can fly that in real life: it’s impressive the amount of superior skills & currency some have to be able to do it safely: hand flying NDB to 300ft agl? it just happens we never head any of these “NDB masters” on frequency when it’s murky & windy in Scotland)
it’s illegal
It isn’t illegal.
But this is nothing to do with Equipment requirements for European IR training and test.
Peter wrote:
It isn’t illegal.
To clarify: It’s not illegal to use a tablet or any other kind of navigation device, certified or not, for course guidance on an NDB approach, as long as you have an ADF with the NDB tuned and identified and cross check with the ADF needle.
as long as you have an ADF with the NDB tuned and identified and cross check with the ADF needle.
Do you have a reference for the above text?
That is just procedural gold plating. Not unusual on British and perhaps European AOC ops (even where they fly the FMS-generated “synthetic ILS” into [insert Greek island], having requested an NDB or VOR approach) although I have spoken to one twin TP AOC pilot, Italy, who said the NDB merely must not be notamed INOP.
The regs are just equipment carriage.
