Originally Posted by
satpak77
I am all ears to anyone who can tell me where in the real world this example has occurred. I have flown all over South, Central, and North America, radar and non radar, and never been seen it. Not saying it doesn't happen, just saying that I have flown all over South, Central, and North America, radar and non radar, and never been seen it.
Never been seen it?
I've only seen it once since the Air Force. It was probably 7 or 8 years ago, in the B-727, heading somewhere in the Northeast, maybe in the neighborhood of Pennsylvania. We were cleared to a radial/DME fix off of a VOR, the FO was confused by the clearance and wasn't sure if we could comply, I assured him we could, we hit the fix within 0.2 NM, and then held.
I had a T-37 student who struggled with Fix-to-Fixes, just had a hard time conceptualizing the process. He managed to consistently apply a method to accomplish the task, but probably never understood it. On his Instrument Check ride, he successfully accomplished the task early in the profile (when the task was assigned by the Check Pilot), then was unexpectedly assigned another fix-to-fix by ATC near the end of the profile. The grading philosophy was "first or worst", so if he aced the first and blew the second, he'd still bust the checkride. He tried to persuade ATC to send him direct to the VOR instead of a radial/DME fix, but ATC would not relent. Finally he asked for a vector. ATC obliged. He passed the checkride.
That's the "real world" solution these days. If your airplane isn't RNAV equipped, it's still vector equipped.
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