How wide is an NDB approach course?

Jim Carter wrote:

-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Spade ]
Posted At: Saturday, January 20, 2007 6:46 PM
Posted To: rec.aviation.ifr
Conversation: How wide is an NDB approach course?
Subject: How wide is an NDB approach course?


...

With an RMI you might be somewhere in town. With a fixed card you

might

not even be in the same county.


Come on now Sam, you know that's not right. NDB approaches are safe and
accurate when properly executed by trained and current pilots. They have
been for years. I will grant that they take a lot more situational
awareness than letting the GPS steer the bird down the tracks, but even
so the NDB approach still works just fine.


NDB always worked fine in my airline's simulators. My meager experience
with them on the line was from fair to poor.

Our former cold war enemies, the Soviets, make them work by
lock-stepping one NDB on the tail and one on the nose. With RMIs and
two ADFs, that did work.

Had the USAF crew that died along with Secretary Brown understood that
concept, they all would be alive today.