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.

Jose
--
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