@Rwy20 – we established that a few posts earlier – but it would have been much clearer top right
Howard wrote:
“Report at West Wycombe House”. They say “Report at the Golden Ball” and they say this to people like me who learned from the start of flying from Wycombe
Doesn’t matter whether they call it the golden ball, N1 or whatever. VRPs must be properly researched before flight. They aren’t typically self explanatory.
JasonC wrote:
Doesn’t matter whether they call it the golden ball, N1 or whatever. VRPs must be properly researched before flight. They aren’t typically self explanatory.
I did my research beforehand Jason: I made sure the VRPs all existed on my Aera and that I could get the system to do a Direct-To when I needed it to. At present I’m happy with that and in the UK many VORs are on their way out (CPT being the most recently removed I believe) so finding VRPs by radial is becoming impossible. Barring using Google Earth (which I also use pre-flight to help with airport recognition) one is left with GPS… the world is moving more and more that way.
@Peter_Mundy I must have misunderstood the posts then. I’m on my mobile phone so a bit limited in what I can crosscheck while posting.
Generally, a VOR isn’t visual navigation anymore, so VRPs should be discernible without VOR radials. That explains my smiley after the comment about the VOR radial. But I think the real difference to the era when people looked for these points or even whole airfields visually is that there was no expectation to be able to find them at first try, without doubt and with certainty. It was accepted that you would sometimes fly the wrong way and have to look harder or not end up where you intended to, if you read stories from the early days of aviation. These days, you would be reprimanded for not using a GPS and get your license pulled if you fly across some TMA looking for your destination by pilotage and dead reckoning.
Got it Howard. So what was the problem?
CPT is a lat long as well I was directed there on Thursday. Has it been decommissioned?
Last I heard, CPT had been decommissioned… VORs are disappearing in vast numbers in the next few years.
Report on NATS strategic plan to cut VORs by more than half in next 4 years
“As such by 2020 we will be reducing their number from 44 down to 19." (NATS)
CPT remains in current Jepp data. It is a major holding pattern for 94.567% of UK air traffic (I made that number up 
)
I very much agree with RWY20 about the past. As they say, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be Today, ATC want you where they tell you to be precisely, no messing about. The days of pottering about, watching the fields go by in a taildragger with a Vs of 30kt, and when you want a pee, popping down into a field for it, and then chatting up some wide eyed barn gurl while wearing your leather cap and gloves and jacket (oh yes and the scarf, blowing in the wind) are long gone. Those days ended not long after Yalta. Well, @Jacko can still do it but (a) he wears a kilt and (b) lives in a different era 
Ha ha, love it, you’re great!
“the golden ball”….. that made my day ;)))))
Peter wrote:
CPT remains in current Jepp data. It is a major holding pattern for 94.567% of UK air traffic (I made that number up )You don’t need a VOR for that. Make it a waypoint.
Today, ATC want you where they tell you to be precisely, no messing about.So make it an RNAV 1 hold.
A Google search informs me that in fact Compton has not been decommissioned permanentlly, but instead has been out of action for three months whilst being replaced
