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Question about old school flight planning


Jonas Koch (1448221)

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Jonas Koch (1448221)

Hey guys, I've been thinking about trying out some older planes lately like the 727/737-200. Which of course means no FMS. I thought it would be fun to try to improve on my radio navigation skills. 😀 BUT then comes the flight planning... as I'm not a real world pilot I am kind of very much depending on simbrief, which uses airways with rnav waypoints. So I wanted to hear how you could create a vor to vor flightplan that would still be "legal"/realistic as my aim is to try to fly as realistic as possible. I have been searching for information, but mostly it was stuff from USA. As I fly most often here in Scandinavia I thought this is the right place to ask for advice :D 

Just as an example, let's say a flight between Copenhagen and Stockholm, would a flight plan like this: "EKCH LJU VSN ESSA" make any sense at all? or is it just complete useless?
I'd love to hear some thoughts from more experienced pilots and controllers
Thanks in advance
Cheers Jonas

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Thomas Ljung (1253198)

One problem you probably will encounter, flying with ground based navigation aids, is that they have started to disappear. They are replaced with GPS waypoints.

Another is the range.
VORs have variable range class (low, medium, high power antenas) depending its purpose. They may reach 25NM, or 40NM, or up to 200NM on high output antennas.
Most VOR:s specially US & Europe are low to medium range for avoiding interference.

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Martin Loxbo (811805)

As Thomas said the main problem would be that many VORs have been withdrawn in recent years. For example, it used to be that the route from ESSA to EKCH was DKR N872 SVD, which was essentially a straight line from DKR VOR to SVD VOR. Nowadays none of these VORs exist anymore, although they might still be in your simulator. In this particular example, you may notice that DKR has been replaced by the point PETEV, with the same coordinates, and SVD is replaced by ERNOV also located in the same position. So you could file the current route which would be PETEV N872 ERNOV, but still navigate from DKR to SVD in your sim.

For your flight from EKCH to ESSA, it's a bit more tricky to find a VOR based route that still follows the current route structure. Normally flights from the south to ESSA should enter Stockholm TMA via NILUG but that will be difficult without an FMS! I would say your most realistic route in this case would be to route LJU DCT TRS. This almost follows the airway N851 so you would follow the normal flow of traffic. (If you want to route via VSN, that puts you in a position where you're likely to get in conflict with southbound traffic, so ATC may have to get you out of the way by vectoring.)

Since all the SIDs and STARs at ESSA and EKCH are based on RNAV these days, make sure to mention to ATC that you are "unable RNAV SID/STAR" so they can give you alternative instructions (vectoring or perhaps a direct route to a VOR). If departing ESSA, have a look at the SID descriptions which have a special instruction for aircraft unable to follow RNAV SID.

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Jonas Koch (1448221)

Thanks a lot for your answers really helpful. That was exactly my concern, that you could end up conflicting with other traffic. I guess it might be a good idea to look at the INS then, and that way be able to at leased enter the correct way. 
In any case I've got some offline training to do before trying out the older birds online.

Thanks again for taking your time to explain, now I have an idea and an example to look at. 

Cheers!      

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