"Jose" wrote in message
m...
When you are being vectored (or intercepting from a PT), how do you tell
whether you have blasted through the course, or still heading towards it?

Do to this, I do have to use more interpretation and I extract enough
heading information to tell me. (All I need to know is "yes/no"). My
mental process is to mentally rotate the airplane to point towards the
runway; this tells me which side I'm on, and then when I mentally unrotate
the airplane, this tells me whether it's the side I want or not. This
does not take me several miles, and is acutally quite natural when
intercepting from a PT, where I'm primarily using the compass to
accomplish the turn anyway (I use the 80-260 method).

Some fixes on approaches are defined by a VOR cross radial. How do you
know whether you have passed that fix or still heading towards it?

When the OBS is set to the radial, the needle points towards the radio
station until passage, then it points away. On my chart (which I hold or
can orient track up) I can see where the station is. Drop dead simple.
This is easily visualized by mentally flying away from the station.


All this mental rotation of the aircraft and figuring out position is
completely unnecessary. All you have to do is glance at the CDI and see if
your heading is on the same side as the needle. If it is, you are still
headed toward the radial, you have not passed it. If not, you have passed
through it. Doesn't matter whether the radial number is set at the top or
bottom of the dial, it still works exactly the same way.

For a localizer, set the OBS to the inbound course at the top and you
interpret it exactly the same way, whether on the front course or the back
course. For GPS, set the OBS to DTK and it is exactly the same.