User Guide

Flight Simulator
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Microsoft
2. Fly heading 030 degrees until the needle deflects one dot to the left, which indicates that you
have a wind from the left (Figure 13, position B).
3. Re-intercept the course at a 20-degree angle by flying a heading of 010 degrees (Figure 13,
position C).
4. When the needle centers, turn to a heading of 020 degrees (Figure 13, position D). Try this value
and see if it keeps the needle centered. If not, re-intercept the course and apply a larger or
smaller wind correction angle until you find one that keeps the needle centered.
You did a great job! You’re on your way to becoming a high priest of VOR tracking, master of all
meteorological forces, and ruler of airway navigation. You’ll be required to walk around the airport in
white robes. Pilots from all over will come seeking your guidance. TV shows! Live appearances! Think
of the possibilities. Well, at least you’ll get to your destination with ease.
Advanced Stuff: VORs and Airborne Freeways
Until now I’ve referred to all VOR routes as courses, and for good reason too. It makes the whole
process easier to understand. In order to do advanced things, like fly instrument approaches, you’ll
need to think about tracking to and from a VOR on a specific radial instead of a specific course. While
pilots speak of traveling to and from a VOR on a specific course, they can also speak of traveling to
and from the VOR on any one of its 360-degree radials. Technically, a course is just a path across the
ground, while a radial is a spoke starting at the VOR and radiating out in one direction.
Let’s begin our discussion with a recollection of your last car trip when you drove through a small
town. Let’s also say the freeway pointed due north as it passed straight through this town as shown
in Figure 14 (position A). While entering and leaving the town your car pointed north (360 degrees),
in the same direction as the freeway. If the portion of the freeway exiting this town had a different
name than the portion entering the town, would this affect the direction your car pointed while
passing through town? Of course not. So let’s call the portion of the freeway south of the town
freeway 180, and the portion north of the town freeway 360, as shown in Figure 14 (position B). Now
we can say that we went to town on freeway 180 and exited on freeway 360. Your direction never
changed despite giving the freeway different names.
Navigation by VOR is basically the same, as shown by Figure 14 (position C). If you’re headed
northbound to Town VOR, you travel inbound on the 180-degree radial and outbound on the 360-
degree radial. Either way, your airborne freeway points in a direction of 360 degrees, just like the
ground-bound freeway. Referring to a single freeway by radials going to and from a VOR station is
sometimes awkward. But this is the way instrument pilots are required to think of VOR navigation.
Therefore, when you’re asked to intercept and track to a VOR station on the 180 radial, you must
think of setting your OBS to 360 degrees (or the 180-degree reciprocal of the radial on which you’ll
track to the station).