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Its an amazing transformation of the alphabet here Paul......
I'm sure if you apply the "learnings" of Darwin here, you'll soon put together the new law of natural selection and survival of the fittest and see that the only way things can advance, is to allow "NDB" to evolve into "GPS" !

So....
What am I going go bung in the 3-1/4 diameter inch hole in my instrument panel, and fill up the blank slot in my Bendix-King radio stack.... ...?

...and who's going to buy me a new, snazzy, portable GPS receiver...
...which takes three weeks to program before each flight...
...and even then you get it wrong...
...and you get lost....
...again...!

...arse....!

LOL......!

Paul...I love my little yellow needle......!

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I've read a number on very interesting articles in my various UK Pilot Magazines regarding the new-fangled Glass Cockpits, replacing the nice, simple, old-fashioned analogue instruments in our small GA aeroplanes..

The Glass Cockpits were a source of great confusion in interpretation, with serious risks of errors in programming them.
In one of the flight tests a simple electrical fault caused a total failure of all the screens, and the flight had to be safely maintained with reference to the couple of analogue instruments still remaining in the instrument panel..!!

The pilots were spending more time looking at the confusing glassware than looking out of the window in front...!!
...and they were not impressed with the results....!

Paul....as the saying goes; "Newer is not always better!"... ...!

Trucker's right; if you fly near an urban center there's bound to be an AM station nearby.
I think NDBs are very handy sometimes, but it wouldn't break my heart to see them all go... the bigger problem is that this is all part of a trend to, well, eventually remove humans from piloting altogether, it seems.
VORs are already being decommisioned in this country- now that's disturbing! And many green students coming up, if flying in a GPS-equipped plane, are absolutley lost, bewildered, and terrified if the thing is turned off.
At this rate, I reckon in 20 years if you can program the GPS-slaved AP and stay awake for the whole flight, you'll get your pilot's license.

Ah... "progress".  


On the other hand: I had a discussion with a friend Sunday about GPS... he learned to fly in Citabrias and the like many moons ago, but his RV-4 has a neat little panel-mounted GPS-com, and he says he won't fly in unfamiliar country without a GPS, even just a hand-held.... as backup.
Pulled his chestnuts out of the fire once (with a handheld ) on a cloudy day in the N. Carolina hills in a Citabria once... it was pretty much "ground contact" flying once he realized he had to press on to his nearby destination (wx kinda closed in around him). The cloud bases were resting on the hilltops, which were obscured even lower by haze (I've seen that, first time I flew down there. Scary).
But that unit had no terrain display; he had to know that the route he chose would keep him in the valley, so he had to know how to read the chart properly, and estimate the time, etc., before commiting to the "little grey line".  Once his course was set, all he had to do was keep 'er straight and level and keep zooming in until he could see the runway on the display and plan a straight-in.
So in the right hands, it's a very useful tool.

At any rate... I will sort of miss NDBs; they have a certain simple charm. I almost hope I get the chance to do an NDB approach in IMC someday, but it's not likely to happen.

I've never, not once, tuned to an NDB in all my training.  Hell, they've never even been mentioned.  No idea how to use them.  From my FS experience, I'm assuming it's just enter frequency, then fly where the needle is pointing, but that's just an assumption.

Saying NDB around an instrament student will automatically raise their blood pressure to an un healthy level, and make their (you know what) hole tighter

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That technique will get you there eventually, but as Brett says, if you "home" on the beacon you'll fly an arc towards it if there's any wind.

To do it with wind, you must first get a bearing on it, then turn to a heading that is the same as the bearing plus or minus wind correction angle which will of course be a little different that whatever offset you were using originally. If you think of that bearing angle as a VOR radial, it makes more sense... often when tracking a radial, your aircraft heading is not the same as the radial. What's tricky about NDBs is that instead of that needle and dot to show you if you're on track, you have to do some calculating first. Once you've made your decision, though, you need only keep that needle deflected the same amount as it was when you rolled out on your new course, and if the wind doesn't change, you should be OK. It's challenging. But in VFR flight, as you go crabbing towards the station, you can use visual landmarks or VOR radials, and even DME readings, to confirm you're on track. It just requires more skull sweat- and that's not a bad thing, most of the time.
In my RL (VFR) flying, I've rarely tracked directly to NDBs, although back when I was flying out of KTEB, I often reported inbound at the Paterson NDB or was directed there to hold by the tower. I usually did OK tracking to it.
Mostly, though I've used them as rough waypoints when there are no easily recognizable landmarks: when the needle shows I've passed it, or when it shows a particular bearing, I have a better idea where I am along my route. This is very useful when you'd like to have a VOR intersection but there's only one VOR within range... or when there's no VOR at all within range.
And if you're hopelessly lost but know you're in the neighborhood, or if you have to divert due to wx or whatever, even spiralling to a nearby NDB is better than blundering around.

I'll miss those NDBs... I'll  miss LORAN, too- I used to rent a Skyhawk that had LORAN; very accurate sometimes, and potentially more reliable (as a system) than GPS.