Here's what happens: Let's say the aircraft is directly south of the station and wants to proceed on the 360° bearing directly to the station. The wind is out of the west, directly across our intended flightpath. Here's what this would look like. Since the wind is a direct crosswind to our flight path, we would notice a drift to the east off our intended flight path. With a less-than-perfect understanding of NDB/ADF navigation, we turn the aircraft to again place the ADF needle on the nose, once again heading directly TO the station. |
But, alas, we continue to drift to the east, so we continue to alter our heading, always putting the ADF on the nose. This process continues until we no longer need any heading changes to keep the ASF needle on the nose, and we can now proceed directly to the ADF. But, wait: something seems to be wrong! The desired bearing TO the station is the one we started on - the 360° bearing, but we are now on the 270° bearing TO! This is 'homing' to the station and it will get us there, but we had to take the long way around! |
The description of the correct way to maintain a specific bearing TO (or FROM) the station will have to wait for a future quiz with questions taken from the FAA's Instrument Rating knowldge test, so keep checking back! |
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