Roy Smith wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Andrew Sarangan) wrote:

Roy Smith wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Andrew Sarangan) wrote:

If you file to a VOR direct, can ATC clear you along an airway
instead, and expect you to look up the airways? In other words, how
important is to carry an enroute chart if you don't plan on using
airways?

You're joking, right?

ATC can give you any clearance they want. You don't have to accept it,
and can't if you don't have the equipment to fly it (i.e. route requires
DME and you don't have DME). But, you'd look pretty stupid saying,
"unable airways, negative chart".

Roy

No, I am not joking. Let me put the question differently. Does ATC
always assume that you have a VOR receiver and the ability to fly
airways? Since there is no specific equipment suffix for a VOR, it
appears to me that they expect all aircraft to be equipped with a VOR
receiver unless we tell them otherwise.

Ah, that's a slightly different question. I recoiled at your idea of
not carrying an en-route chart.

It is certainly legal to fly IFR without a VOR receiver, but it's pretty
much taken for granted that you've got one. It's certainly taken for
granted that you've got a chart!


Yes, that is what I thought. ATC expects you to have a VOR and
navigate along airways even though neither one is legally required. So
we agree on that.


What would you do if you lost comm and didn't have a VOR receiver? Do
you have some other way to navigate on your own? If you had GPS, you'd
be able to fly airways with that. ADF only? I suppose it's possible.
People used to do it. Not sure why you'd want to do it today.

I am not following the argument. If you filed direct using /G (or ADF
or something else), and you lose comm, just continue flying direct to
your cleared destination. Why would you have to switch to airways if
you lose comm?



Maybe I'm just not understanding the situation. Are you saying that you
just want to file GPS direct destination and leave the chart at home to
save weight? In which case I'm back to recoiling :-)

No, to the contrary, I carry both charts (sectional and the LL
enroute). But I find the sectional chart far more valuable when flying
direct. I am not suggesting that one should leave the LL behind, but
my LL chart hardly gets any use on a direct navigation flight. The
sectional has almost all of the information you need. However, the LL
may become useful if ATC redirects you along airways (hence the reason
for my earlier question), or if you have to look up ARTCC boundaries,
or if you have to look up which airports have IAPs. Am I missing
anything else? Is there any other essential information that is not on
the sectional? I think it would be nice if there was a single chart
that contained both information. And I think they have been attempting
to do that in recent years, as I have noticed more and more airway
intersections shown on the sectional charts.

On a related note, when VORs are decommissioned in the not too distant
future and replaced by direct navigation, I imagine that all the LL
charts will start to look like a VFR sectional.