January 17, 2010 -- Yesterday was a good enough day for a flight south. I met a friend at Leesburg and we were off by about 10:20 am in calm air. Potomac sent us up to STILL as usual, but soon we were turned south to Casanova and then, after we cleared the SFRA, on to Lawrenceville.
Imagine my surprise when I find that no matter what, I can't seem to tune in LVL on the nav radio. It shows up fine on my DME, which according to the GPS is reading
correctly, but there was no signal on the nav. Well, I had it on the GPS and on my VFR chart, so there was no chance of not flying to LVL. Besides, Potomac gave me vectors to go around the MOA in any case.
Once I got home, I looked carefully at the remarks section of the AirNav.com
listing, which says, "VOR PORTION UNUSBL R-090 BYD 20 NM ALL ALTS, R-090 ALL
DSTCS BLO 7000 FT, 091-105 ALL DSTCS & ALTS, R-106 BYD 27 NM ALL ALTS, R-106 ALL
DSTCS BLO 7500 FT, 107-170 ALL DSTCS & ALTS, 171-180 ALL DSDTCS BLO 6000 FT,
201-325 BYD 17 NM BLO 9000 FT, 326-089 ALL DSTCS & ALTS." Okay now I understand
why I got no signal.
But, I guess I'm just wondering why any FAA-maintained navaid is so limited in
its usefulness? This VORTAC is situated in pretty flat terrain, so it's not like there are mountains blocking the reception.
We broke off IFR near LVL and continued VFR to my friend's land. He has two plots and we circled over them at about 2000 feet several times so that he could take pictures. Then we landed at KAVC (Mecklenburg airport) to refuel and use the restrooms.
We flew home VFR, taking this picture of the James River and Mainden's Bridge from about 2000 feet. We tracked up to MANGE, then Flat Rock VOR, then Casanova, then to Linden and JASEN to re-enter the SFRA and land at Leesburg.
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