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Roy Smith > With a GPS and a comm radio, the emergency backup is calling ATC and > asking for vectors to an ASR/PAR approach. If either the GPS or the > comm is capable of running off internal batteries (i.e. no reliance on > ships power), I think the overall system reliability is way better than > what we had before. Yes, that is a reasonable backup plan, especially in the NY corridor where you are based. But there are any number of places you could fly in the U.S. where an ASR or PAR approach is beyond the reasonable IFR alternate range of many general aviation aircraft. More than anything else, I wonder why it seems the FAA and many pilots have almost given up on Loran. I suspect faulty installations (including installations on aircraft without static wicks, i.e. slower aircraft not required to have static wicks installed) gave Loran an undeserved bad reputation early on. The cost to maintain the Loran system indefinitely is miniscule compared with GPS. And a hybrid GPS-Loran unit would seem an ideal, automatic/intuitive backup system. To put this another way, would you prefer to have two Garmin 430s/530s ($8,000 to $12,000 each) or one Garmin 430/530, a backup Com radio ($1000), and a used Loran($300)? Lots of high-end singles/light twins are starting to show up with the dual Garmin 430/530 setup; I honestly do not understand the utility of this. Someone please help me out to understand this. -- Richard Kaplan, CFII rkaplan@umrpc.com www.umrpc.com/p210 |
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