DGCA CPL Air Navigation study guide
DGCA CPL Air Navigation · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The DGCA CPL Air Navigation paper is one of the theoretical knowledge examinations that a candidate must clear before the Directorate General of Civil Aviation - an agency of India's Ministry of Civil Aviation - will issue a Commercial Pilot Licence. It is written for student pilots who are working through the ground-school phase with an approved flying training organisation, and for foreign licence holders converting to an Indian CPL who need to demonstrate navigation knowledge to Indian standards. The DGCA CPL Air Navigation study guide has 4 sections and about 1,439 words.
01Earth, Time, Direction and Magnetism
The Earth is modelled as an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles; the geoid is the equipotential surface used for elevation. A nautical mile is one minute of arc of a great circle, 1852 m, so a degree of latitude is 60 nm.
373 words, about 2 min02Charts, Dead Reckoning and Flight Planning
A Mercator chart is conformal, shows rhumb lines as straight lines and great circles as curves, and its scale increases away from the equator by secant latitude, so distances must be measured at the latitude in use. A Lambert conformal conic has straight lines that closely approximate great circles and true scale on its standard parallels.
363 words, about 2 min03Ground-Based Radio Aids: ADF, VOR, DME, ILS and Radar
ADF measures the relative bearing of an NDB; bearing from the station = heading + relative bearing (subtract 360 if needed). QDM is the magnetic bearing to the station, QDR the magnetic bearing from it, QUJ the true bearing to it and QTE the true bearing from it.
357 words, about 2 min04Area Navigation, GNSS and Onboard Systems
Area navigation lets an aircraft fly a chosen path between waypoints rather than tracking directly to or from a ground station. RNAV specifies the navigation capability; RNP adds an on-board performance-monitoring and alerting requirement.
346 words, about 2 min