Regarding VOR Ranges ..... again ;-)

Hello,

I have tried going over some posts, but it is still so confusing. I know other means of establishing VOR ranges were established that were not MSFS internal FAA style ranges that are hard set. But then I read further that Navigraph has implemented a feature that extends a VOR’s range because users commented that these table gave minimum design range. And I said, yay !! But then again I read further I still I read that from cycle 2109 on, this and that VOR can be 40, 60, 80 … So again hard limits. Let me take PJG for example since I have 20 years and 9000 hours of experience around that VOR.
Clearly it’s a high altitude VOR. Now IRL pilot’s don’t care about ranges, they are more practical in that sense. So we observe. Guessing by the other posts I have read;

  1. MSFS internal would have it “switch” ON at 130nm
  2. Navigraph, from cycle 2109 has increased this to 195nm because 130nm is only an (H) VOR minimum range, correct?

In real life, at airline cruise levels, you receive this VOR at 220-230nm. Which makes sense (1.25x√alt + 1.25x√vor elevation). Now in this case, there’s not much difference (195-220) but I feel we are still having hard distances according to tables. And I think lower energy VOR’s suffer a lot from this difference. I theory, I should be able to fly at minimum radio reception altitudes on all routes where it is published and not have signal loss.

Fair point that the last time I flew like this was I believe end 2108 or start 2109 but, in general, is the above equation used at all in determining ranges? Or is a hard set table limit (either min. or max.) the only way to “switch” on or off these VOR’s?

Cheers !

Hi,
we offer only the data but not the logic how the data can be interpreted. Also, according the MSFS SDK there is no possibility to use a table for the distances, only one fix “range value”. Therefore, these values are only a reference value, accoring the AIP´s of each country. In your case, the AIP shows 200NM for PJG

The calculation can only be made in the sim directly.

Hope that helps,
Richard

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