UK initial IR test without ADF

Same in Germany, ADF is not required at any stage of the IR training and exam and every half decent instructor and examiner will treat it as something of historical interest only, teaching students to carry it per current regulations but not use it as a primary source of navigation.

Germany has very few NDBs and RNAV approaches at almost all airports with IAPs. Whenever an NDB breaks, it gets NOTAMed as withdrawn. As Germany follows the strategy with marker beacons (withdraw once broken), a lot of ILS approaches require DMEs for the altitude check.

How do you ensure that the examiner won’t ask you to fly to an airport which needs an ADF?

You have no control over that (in the UK, at least).

At many places the whole thing was more or less known in advance e.g. if training at one place in Spain, you went to Granada for the NO approach and then to Malaga for the ILS – always. Or at LGKV you did the VOR at LGKV and the ILS at LGTS – always. But if you are based at say Shoreham EGKA, you could get any of the coastal airports, or even Farnborough, and all of them have NDBs.

I got lucky on my IRT because the FE nominated EGHI whose NDB was notamed INOP that day

Where does it say that you have to je equipped to fly any approach the examiner chooses? I mean if your plane isn’t equipped for what he wants, then he can fail your plane but not you. It’s like ATC asking for some altitude you cannot make and you saying “unable”. You go somewhere else and do the non-precision approach, then all requirements of an IR exam are met.

Same if he said “let’s fly the MLS approach at Heathrow for a precision approach” and you happen not to have that on board.

Where does it say that you have to je equipped to fly any approach the examiner chooses?

That’s the way it works here in the UK.

You can’t “negotiate” with the examiner. He is testing your ability to fly “classical IFR”. So you don’t need to have a GPS installed, for example.

But maybe there is recent guidance? If anyone knows, please post it.

Peter wrote:

I got lucky on my IRT because the FE nominated EGHI whose NDB was notamed INOP that day

I put it to you that the examiner knew exactly what he was doing, and luck was not necessarily a factor

From CAA Standards Document 01 (A) Version 9:

2.2.3 Where an aircraft is used for an IR or EIR skill test and the avionic equipment does not meet the ANO Schedule 5 requirements for the carriage of ADF, the examiner will need to give some consideration to the profile to ensure that all items of the test schedule are completed. AIC Yellow 29/2014 provides information as to when ADF is mandatory and when the requirements may be met by equivalent means. The examiner is advised to establish at an early stage if the lack of ADF will impose limitations on the available procedures and destination airfields. It may be necessary to select a profile and destination where ADF is not required or may be supplanted by equivalent means and to brief accordingly. Applicants are to be advised that this may require a longer flight.

2.2.4 With regard to paragraph 2.2.3 above and the carriage of ADF; the CAA considers it important for all applicants to be trained to competence in the full range of IFR procedures that they are likely to encounter once rated. This includes following instrument departure, arrival, approach, missed approach and holding procedures predicated on ADF. Therefore ATO must still include training in the operation and use of ADF and NDB and applicants must be competent, at the end of a course of training, to fly any published instrument procedure. Note also that radio navigation using NDB is a requirement of the basic instrument flight module at AMC2 to Appendix 6 to Part-FCL.

Really funny this ADF business in the UK.

Wow. That guidance is so totally backwards. They make it sound as if an ADF were actually an essential and temporary piece of equipment and devolve into special rules which have to be established in case it is not on board. How quaint.

That PDF is here local copy

The “problem” is that – as often stated – Europe does not have a formal navaid-GPS substitution concession, so if you want to fly an IAP which contains an NDB, you MUST carry an ADF.

This is really very simple! It’s the way IFR works. One doesn’t have to like it…

One could ask why there are NDBs… well, they are the cheapest way to make an airport “IFR” and an airport needs to be “IFR” to accept ICAO compliant AOC flights (in general terms). A VOR costs much more. And ILS more still, and comes with lots of other requirements. One could have GPS approaches but there is historical resistance because “America could turn it off” etc etc. AND most NDB approaches are very old (pre-GPS) and a design of a GPS approach is of the order of 10k-30k (a Slovak firm was doing it cheaply – search here for the details) and few airports want to pay this because they have the NDB already.

In the AOC world, a form of navaid-GPS substitution is legalised via a national CAA approved AOC manual which legalises the use of FMS to fly navaid approaches. Specifically, the FMS gets position data from INS which uses DME/DME or GPS for corrections, or (in bizjets) it gets position data from GPS. But private pilots get no such concession. They have to carry the navaid receivers.