PilotEdge Forums

Pilots,

I really enjoy flying into KSAN. I've lived in San Diego before and my sister and nieces live there still -- you can see there house just north of Balboa Park as you are on short final 27! I also enjoy golfing at the visible Balboa Muni and have had nice picnics in the park directly under the approach path and just south of the Air and Space Museum. You can see some awesome wingtip vortices swirling in the air from the 737s...

http://peaware.pilotedge.net/flight.cfm?id=87264

Lessons Learned:

Nostalgia: Bathed in nostalgia, I'm trying to remember what I messed up on this flight...I don't think I messed up anything. And that's what's great about nostalgia isn't it? So some things I did differently. I really focused on slowing the King Air ahead of MZB -- no need to be at 180-200KIAS heading towards the localizer, even if you are 15 NM from the field. i had my radios set up, I anticipated the turns ATC would give me..so maybe familiarity and nostalgia = good results. All in all a nice flight.

TANNR Trouble: Oh yes! I did make a note on my flight plan! What the heck is the deal with the TANNR intersection! I Never get PGY when I make this turn. I was at 11000 and still didn't pick it up until 5-8 miles after making the turn. I used GPS to be "legal" but it's so weird. It must be an x-plane gltich. I mean I was picking up the LOCALIZER 25 miles out! At least I could ID it, though the needle wasn't alive. Weird. Todd
N3298S

TANNR Trouble: Oh yes! I did make a note on my flight plan! What the heck is the deal with the TANNR intersection! I Never get PGY when I make this turn. I was at 11000 and still didn't pick it up until 5-8 miles after making the turn. I used GPS to be "legal" but it's so weird. It must be an x-plane gltich. I mean I was picking up the LOCALIZER 25 miles out! At least I could ID it, though the needle wasn't alive. Weird.

VORs have a range of 50nm by default in X-Plane. Unfortunately, that isn't accurate. I *think* you can go in and manually modify ranges, but I don't remember off the top of my head where the change is made.

I too have notice that in X-plane not being able to pick up the PGY VOR at TANNR. Right or wrong what I have done is using DME, turn to 156 at TANNR. PGY will come in within a few miles.

If you don't have DME, TANNR can also be ID'ed by crossing OCN027 radial. Again make the turn and wait for the VOR to come in.

Depending upon terrain and altitude, an individual VOR may have a longer/short range than typical. As suggest, I suspect that X-Plane doesn't model this. Especially since the distance may be different on different radials.

Looking at the source data used by X-Plane, PGY has the standard 'low-altitude VOR' reception range of 40 nm. Interestingly, this is the correct designation according to the official data I can find as well; clearly PGY is higher-power in the real world than is "official" I've logged an issue against the X-Plane scenery database, but in the meantime, you can edit Resources/default data/earth_nav.dat and fix it... do a 'find' for PGY and change the '40' to '80' (both lines - the line that starts with 3 is the VOR itself, the line that starts with 12 is the DME) and you should be able to receive it.

This has been a long-standing issue with X-Plane. The key is to determine that you're NOT receiving the next VOR ahead of time and tell ATC. They'll give you a heading to fly until you're receiving the VOR.

Standard service volumes are routinely exceeded in the construction of low enroute airways. They are flight checked as part of the process of establishing those routes to verify navaid reception. X-Plane's stock nav database doesn't allow for this (nobody has tweaked the VORs and resubmitted them), so it can get you into trouble. Stay ahead of the airplane, realize you're not receiving and come up with another plan. Then, head into the X-Plane nav database and fix the VORs as you encounter them.

Thanks Tim

It's one of the cool things about X-plane that you can go under the hood and fix this stuff. Very neat.

Todd

Indeed, no sign of PGY at TANNR, but I hadn't altered my X-Plane database. I used the Garmin 530, but have always backed that up (where possible) with the VORs. As everyone has found, PGY comes in soon enough, but I was vectored off the TEC route for a visual to 27, so it all didn't matter anyway! A very enjoyable flight.

My only glitch was to accidentally type KSNA instead of KSAN into the flight plan. Despite me filing the correct TEC route to San Diego, and announcing it to Ground, I found myself listening to an entirely different route, and the controller had also cleared me to Riverside - from where I was starting. So, we both had a laugh about it, and proceeded to get it right