CyberAirVA

__________________________________________________

NDB

It won't take long before you as a virtual airline pilot will come across the term NDB. So what is it? The three letter combination stand for Non Directional Beacon. As the name implies it's a beacon, that's used in aviation navigation. The NDB is a radio beacon (as opposed to light beacons), it sends out a radio frequency (in the 190 - 535 kilohertz band) consisting of a three letter Morse code, it's identifier.
So what do we use to receive this three letter signal? We will use the ADF, which stands for automatic direction finder. Note that in the B737 the ADF is incorporated in the RMI, which stands for radio magnetic indicator. In the Learjet the ADF is incorporated in the HSI, which stand for horizontal situation indicator. More on how to tune the receiver can be found in the help file for your flight simulator.

Note that in real life aviation non directional beacons aren't normally used as an navigation aid, but more as a navigation point.

There do exist some problems with the NDB, although not when we use it in flight simulators. In real life aviation, radio beacons are subject to disturbances that may result in erroneous bearing information. Such disturbances result from such factors as lightning, precipitation static, etc. At night, radio beacons are vulnerable to interference from distant stations.

_______________________________________