Jay Honeck writes:

I think you're forgetting that it takes forever for all the old stuff
to go away -- at least not in America.

I thought I read that the FAA was itching to decommission NDBs and
(perhaps?) VORs.

Even though I rarely turn them
on, I've got dual VORs in the panel, with dual glide-slope indicators,
and (until last month) I still had DME, too. (I yanked it out, and
gained 10 pounds of useful load...)

You still need the transmitters on the ground, though.

However, even with IFR the situational awareness and accuracy of GPS
is so markedly improved that I really don't know any "hard" IFR pilots
who *don't* rely on GPS anymore. Every one of the pilots I know who
routinely fly IFR relies heavily on GPS technology now -- and that's
only proper.

Do they still tune their VORs and cross-check to ensure that the
heading towards the real VOR matches the heading given by the GPS?

Yep. Heck, they've already removed the NDB approaches from most of
the airports in our area. VORs will hang in there a few more
decades, but they will soon go the way of the light beacons.

And then the bad guys will head to the area of a major airport, turn
on the GPS jammer, and kill a few thousand people in an hour without
anyone even knowing they were there.

--
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