[time-nuts] Boeing 787 GPS reception trouble

[Jim Lux]

On 6/2/14, 7:16 AM, Brian Lloyd wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 8:57 AM, Jim Lux <jimlux at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> O, and since navigation using the ADF and tuning to a AM
>> broadcast station wasn't unusual.
>
>
> Well, it is quite unusual for IFR (instrument flight rules) operation. But
> VFR pilots would sometimes use an AM broadcast station for navigation
> assistance.
>

Back in 1980, the examiner asked me how to do it, but didn't make me do it.



>
>> I had to learn how to do it when taking flying lessons: it was widely
>> acknowledged ( in 1980) to be nearly useless,
>
>
> Not entirely. I still make sure my planes are equipped with ADF (LF/MF
> direction finding) due to my experience with GPS outages over the Caribbean
> and Atlantic. I have experienced outages of over an hour where both my
> panel-mount and hand-held GPS receivers stopped working. ADF was all I had.
> I suspect that since I was flying a plane popular with drug-smugglers (a
> Piper Aztec), I was being tracked, followed, and GPS jammed. (I lived in
> the Virgin Islands, traveling to Florida on a regular basis. I would stop
> in the Turks and Caicos or Bahamas to refuel.)

I was referring to the "AM station as beacon", and to be fair, they were 
all talking about compared to conventional VOR/DME, and maybe if you had 
one of them new fangled RNAV units that mathematically transformed 
VOR/DME into lat/lon, etc.


>
> Once the rule is in place, it's very, very hard to get it removed, because
>> of the "if we allow X, and a plane has a problem, everyone is going to say
>> "it was because of X" even if it wasn't, so let's just keep things the
>> same."
>
>
> Amen.
>