"Casey Wilson" wrote in message
...
Who is being silly? You are relating apples and oranges. Bearing is
related to heading and course, position is related to geographical
coordinates. A single VOR won't tell you squat about geographical
coordinates.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Bearing relative to the VOR station is all about your position relative to
the station. Knowing your bearing relative to the station greatly narrows
down your geographical coordinates. You can get a lot more accurate using a
second VOR or DME, but that doesn't change the fact that even a single VOR
is telling you a lot about your geographical coordinates.

While on the other hand, the bearing relative to the VOR has NOTHING to do
with heading or course. Nothing at all. It boggles my mind that you would
say it does. The mistaken impression that it does have something to do with
heading or course is where lots of people (the original poster included) get
confused. You're just making matters worse by saying that it does.

Given that the "standard service volume" (AIM 1-1-8) is at least 40
nautical miles, the definition is not a trivial thing. I have tuned into
VOR
stations as much as 85 miles away. So, where am I on that line from the
station.

Just knowing you're on that line is useful GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION
information.

[...] and we are up to 200 square miles of area
over which the airplane could be flying.

All you're doing is bickering about just how accurate the GEOGRAPHICAL
POSITION information is. A single VOR isn't very accurate at all. Two VORs
are more accurate. A VOR with DME is even more accurate. Two VORs with DME
each are even more accurate. And a GPS receiver is even more accurate. So
what? They all still give you geographical positions.

I like using the VOR, I like having two of them in the panel. Hell, I
even like the ADF -- got one of those too. When I triangulate any two of
those, I have a rough idea of my 'position.'

No triangulation is needed to get a rough idea of your position.
Triangulation reduces the "roughness" of your position estimate, but a
single VOR receiver alone gives you a rough idea of your position. (An ADF,
of course, does no such thing...it MUST be referenced to another instrument
to provide ANY positional information at all).

Pete