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How to navigate to a TACAN station? (Read 3594 times)

Apr 17^th, 2011 at 2:57pm

trvdmeulen Offline
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I've studied the section navigation in FSX but there is nothing mentioned about TACAN stations. I use FSC 8.2 (aerosoft)for flightplanning. Does anyone now a good article how to navigate to/from a TACAN station??

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Reply #1 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 6:02pm

-Crossfire- Offline
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Tacan is a military navaid, believe you use it the same way as a VOR, but I'm not 100% sure.

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Reply #2 - Apr 17^th, 2011 at 6:59pm

beaky Offline
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Unless it's a VORTAC (TACAN combined with a VOR) a VOR receiver won't work with it, because TACAN uses UHF and VOR uses VHF. The distance signal (DME), however, is UHF in both cases.

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Reply #3 - Apr 19^th, 2011 at 11:32am

trvdmeulen Offline
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VOR/DME is no problem just fly to the needle the needle always points to the station. But he TACAN from example EHLW has a radial that always points 180 degrees to the south. If I fly from a southern course I have to fly to the tail end of the needle. a VOR or VORTAC would just point to the north. I use the Aerosoft F-16 but I think there is no option to set the nav receiver to UHF. Maybe a litlle more practice flying with NDB, VOR/DME, and VORTAC and TACAN. Huh

Huh

For non GPS navigation I use a HSI.

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Reply #4 - Apr 19^th, 2011 at 12:24pm

trvdmeulen Offline
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correction the radial of EHLW TACAN is 14' when I move the map al the radials move with it Angry

Angry

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Reply #5 - Apr 19^th, 2011 at 12:45pm

beaky Offline
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trvdmeulen wrote on Apr 19^th, 2011 at 11:32am:

VOR/DME is no problem just fly to the needle the needle always points to the station. But he TACAN from example EHLW has a radial that always points 180 degrees to the south. If I fly from a southern course I have to fly to the tail end of the needle. a VOR or VORTAC would just point to the north.

I'm not familiar with TACAN, so I don't know what to make of that. Huh

Huh

Seems unlikely that in real life, TO/FROM sensing is not possible with TACAN.

Quote:

I use the Aerosoft F-16 but I think there is no option to set the nav receiver to UHF. Maybe a litlle more practice flying with NDB, VOR/DME, and VORTAC and TACAN. Huh

Huh

For non GPS navigation I use a HSI.

Don't forget- VORs and TACAN are not just for homing in on a station- they are best used when plotting position, either using two radials or a radial and some landmark, or a radial with DME.

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Reply #6 - Apr 21^st, 2011 at 6:14pm

trvdmeulen Offline
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It took some time to answer, had to reinstall windows Angry

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I found an article about plotting http://powerboat.about.com/od/boatingnavigation/ht/Plotacourse.htm
does this do the job ?? and do I need real aeronautical maps and where to get them??
greetz, Riemer

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Reply #7 - Apr 21^st, 2011 at 7:26pm

beaky Offline
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trvdmeulen wrote on Apr 21^st, 2011 at 6:14pm:

It took some time to answer, had to reinstall windows Angry

Angry

I found an article about plotting http://powerboat.about.com/od/boatingnavigation/ht/Plotacourse.htm
does this do the job ?? and do I need real aeronautical maps and where to get them??
greetz, Riemer

When I say "plotting position" I'm not talking so much about laying out a course line as determining your position at any given time (in order to know which way to go you first need to know where you are).

And although there are similarities, you'd be wise to avoid trying to apply nautical nav to aeronautical nav. The differences are significant.

Having real charts helps, for sure... I haven't had much luck finding free downloadable Europe charts, but the US ones are available here...

http://aeronav.faa.gov/index.asp?xml=aeronav/applications

You can usually also get real paper charts, free of charge, from pilot shops... when they expire, they are discarded. If you show up asking for charts before they get tossed, you might get quite a few. Expired charts are a hazard for real flying, but harmless and quite useful for sim-flying.

You might want to wait a bit, though, as I am preparing to upload (to Simviation) all the US charts in pdf form, along with a tutorial for "real world style" navigation in flight simulation. The tutorial is tailored for sim-flyers who have absolutely no experience with real (VFR) navigation; you might find it useful. Eventually, I may do one for IFR flying, but frankly, for sim purposes, the same methods can be applied, minus the use of visual landmarks.

I've been putting it off, but now there seems to be some demand for this... maybe I'll finally start uploading in the next few days.

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Reply #8 - Apr 22^nd, 2011 at 4:44pm

trvdmeulen Offline
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Thank you for the information. There are a lot of different charts: whats the difference between them maybe you can explain?? I'll download a raster chart then I can take a look at it. Looking forward to the tutorial. Are there really no european charts??

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Reply #9 - Apr 22^nd, 2011 at 11:06pm

beaky Offline
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trvdmeulen wrote on Apr 22^nd, 2011 at 4:44pm:

Thank you for the information. There are a lot of different charts: whats the difference between them maybe you can explain??

As far as the VFR charts go, you have world charts, sectionals, and terminal charts. The difference is simply a matter of scale- each shows more or less area.

Quote:

I'll download a raster chart then I can take a look at it. Looking forward to the tutorial. Are there really no european charts??

There are plenty of sources where you can buy them, but I haven't seen any free ones available for download. Mind you, I haven't looked very hard, and in some cases the language barrier was a problem for me.

Those raster charts from the NOAA are huge files, so you might also have a look here... with this site, you can also plot a course, and get rudimentary heading and distance information. Before I started working on scaled-down pdfs of all the US sectionals, I used to use screencaps from skyvector.

http://skyvector.com/

Another useful site, where you can see your course laid across multiple sectionals, is runwayfinder:

http://runwayfinder.com/

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Reply #10 - Apr 24^th, 2011 at 10:18am

trvdmeulen Offline
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thanks, skyvector is great with all the navaids on the map.

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Reply #11 - Apr 24^th, 2011 at 10:37am

trvdmeulen Offline
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also runwayfinder. I'll buy a plotter about a few weeks.

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Reply #12 - Apr 24^th, 2011 at 3:27pm

beaky Offline
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trvdmeulen wrote on Apr 24^th, 2011 at 10:37am:

also runwayfinder. I'll buy a plotter about a few weeks.

A plotter is merely a protractor (to measure angles) and a ruler that's calibrated to match the scale of the chart. You can use any protractor and ruler (just transpose the chart scale to centimeters or whatever).

What you will need is one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6B

There are very inexpensive cardboard and plastic ones available (I've been using mine for over 13 years and it still works fine), or you can find a program that emulates the flight computer by doing the calculations.

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Reply #13 - Apr 29^th, 2011 at 2:07pm

trvdmeulen Offline
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thanks , read it more carefully later. I have a party with friends tonight. Been messing around with bittorrent sites I was looking for JeppView downloaded it but I couldn't get it working. Have a copy of simcharts 3.0 but not all airports are in the list. Maybe I'll buy the new FlightsimCommander. But I'll go on with these charts seen you have posted already some sectionals.

Hardware: Intel Core i3 2100(4 CPUs), ~3.1GHz Memory: Corsair 16340MB DDR-3 RAM 1333 Mhz 2 modules (till a maximum of 32 Gb)
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Reply #14 - May 2^nd, 2011 at 8:26pm

trvdmeulen Offline
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pretty ingenieus instrument this E6B. I have found a site where I can buy it and also the VFR+GPS maps of the EU and one of the Netherlands. I am currently downloading your tutorials. Have studied the legend of one of your charts a bit. Wink

Wink

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Reply #15 - May 2^nd, 2011 at 9:11pm

beaky Offline
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trvdmeulen wrote on May 2^nd, 2011 at 8:26pm:

pretty ingenieus instrument this E6B. I have found a site where I can buy it and also the VFR+GPS maps of the EU and one of the Netherlands. I am currently downloading your tutorials. Have studied the legend of one of your charts a bit. Wink

Wink

Yes, the E6B does a lot of things very simply... it's just a circular slide rule. After a few repetitions of the various tasks, it becomes very intuitive.

Glad to see you are interested in real navigation... let me know how you make out with the tutorial.

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