All depends on the kind of approaches you have around you, here in las vegas,
I have no idea where the closest NDB approach is. my check ride was a ILS,
VOR and a VOR circle.




Roy Smith wrote:

"Mark" wrote:
I was looking at starting my ifr training and realized the 172s in the
club I blelong to don't have DMEs. Is that required for IFR flight? I
noticed alot of checkpoints and such are distance from navaid.

The vast majority of planes people do IFR training in do not have DME,
because there is no requirement to have DME to fly IFR in general(*).
You need DME above flight level mumble-something (240?), and you need
DME to fly approaches with DME in the title or a note saying "DME
required". Some approaches will allow lower minimums if you have DME.

Other than that, in the en-route environment, the vast majority of fixes
are defined by both DME and VOR-VOR crosses. If you don't have DME, you
just have to tune in the other VOR and work the cross-fix. Granted, DME
makes it more convenient, but it's hardly necessary.

Of course, GPS is turning this all on its ear.

My advice to you is to concentrate on the basics. First, make sure you
have BAI (Basic Attitude Instruments) down so cold you can hold heading,
altitude, and airspeed to better than PTS requirements while reading a
chart and having a heated argument with your instructor about politics,
sports, or the releative merits of the Beach Boys vs. The Grateful Dead.

In smooth air, you should be able to hold +/- 2 degrees, +/- 20 feet,
and +/- 2 kts for 5 minutes at a time, and 5 degrees, 50 feet, and 5 kts
indefinately. Once you can do that, you're ready to move on. If you
still have to think about holding heading, altitude, and airspeed,
you're not ready for more complex stuff.

Once you've got BAI mastered, then move on to the fun stuff like
navigation, holding, and approaches. Moving onto the fun stuff too fast
is probably the single biggest (and most common) mistake you can make in
your instrument training.

Once you've learned to do everything with 2 VOR receivers, it's easy to
add in DME later.

The more interesting question today is not whether you have DME, but
whether you have GPS. You will have to demonstrate 3 kinds of
approaches on your checkride. Traditionally, this has meant a VOR, an
NDB, and an ILS. Today, it's more and more becoming a VOR, a GPS, and
an ILS. As much as I'm a sucker for tradition, I just can't justify to
myself wasting any time practicing NDB approaches when the time could be
much more profitably spend learning the GPS. The trick is to make sure
you don't get so spoiled by the GPS that you can't fly with VOR alone.

(*) This is a US-centric view of the universe, and is not true in some
other parts of the world.