Steven P. McNicoll wrote:
"Jose" wrote in message
om...

Not for the bugsmashers I learned in. DME was stuff you'd see in
somebody's personal high performance airplane, as was an intercom.



DME arcs were more common on IAPs years ago than they are today. Many
procedures that had them saw them removed in the early '80s.



As you say, many of them were removed in the late 80s or so. The
present policy is:

4) Arc Initial Approach Segment. Requirements for arc initial approach
segments must be fully evaluated to determine if this type of procedure
entry is essential to the local traffic flow. Experience indicates that
arc initial segments have been established at locations where they are
used on a very limited basis or have not been fully accepted by the
user. Long arcs and/or multiple arcs have contributed to undesirable
chart clutter with minimum operational advantage.
(a) An arc initial segment in a radar environment shall not be
authorized unless it is operationally required.
(b) When a DME arc segment of an approach lies along an arc which
traverses an area of unusable radial information, the provisions of OA P
8200.1, paragraph 214.3 apply.
(c) Arc initial segments should be authorized via the shortest routing
when flight time can be reduced.
(d) Arc initial segments shall be designated by CW for clockwise and CCW
for counter-clockwise.
(e) Arc initial segments shall be designed to satisfy requirements for
executing the instrument approach. They shall NOT be established for the
convenience of routing aircraft around a terminal area.
(f) Arc initial segments less than 3 miles in length are not
recommended. Use of aircraft heading to intercept the intermediate
course should be considered as an alternate action in lieu of short arc
segments.
(g) DME Arc courses must be predicated only on collocated facilities
providing azimuth and DME information. Arc initial segments must not be
authorized on DME collocated with ILS or localizer facilities due to the
lack of constant azimuth information. See Order 6050.32, appendix III,
section 2 for collocation parameters.