DME Question

Not every real VOR has an associated DME. If it is listed on the chart as a VORTAC or a VOR/DME it will have. Many others will not and it may be you just got unlucky and picked VOR's without associated DME's.

Having said that, I've flown the FS9 in many parts of California and most of the larger citiy VOR's do have DME's that have worked for me in FS9. I'm not a programming expert but I don't see why, if you can read the SEA DME, you shouldn't be able to read others.

Might be a silly question but...are you close enough to the station to get a signal? Or as Don states it may not be a DME tied VOR.

I think PH is on the right track-- you need to be within 100 nm or so to receive the signal.

And assuming you're flying the Cessna or something similar with a separate DME display, the switch on your DME display has to be set to the correct NAV radio-- if you put the VOR frequency into NAV2, you have to set that switch to "N2."

Ed

I am close enough to the station, but they must not be tied to a DME. I've just tried so many and none work outside of the Seattle area for me. If possible, maybe you can give me a VOR that you know provides DME information in California (and the nearby city), and I'll find it, plug it in and try it on my system. At least then I'll know whether it's a system problem. Thank you very much for helping with this. George

Not too sure on the USA but for the UK select airport EGNM (Leeds Bradford) there is a VOR not too far from the airport Pole Hill - POL 112.10
depart head South any aircraft and it should show work!

I just checked it in FS9 and the Mission Bay VOR on 117.8 (San Diego) and the San Diego Lindberg Field RW27 ILS on 110.9 DME readouts both work correctly.

One thing you need to double check on every flight where you are using VOR's or ILS's is that the NAV/GPS switch on the panel is set to NAV. If not, in the immortal words of another poster, you'll crash and burn every time.

GWFlyer wrote:

I am close enough to the station, but they must not be tied to a DME.

George, you can find DME tuning data by going into map mode (click the map icon in your cockpit or press ALT and then go to the World menu and choose Map). Once in the map, click on airports until you find some with DME tuning info. You'll probably have to zoom in on the airport so that you can click on an individual runway.

For example, SoCal's Ontario Airport (KONT) has the following info if you click on the individual runways or the ILS feathers:

CAT III ILS/DME 26L (ITWO)
Type: ILS
Frequency: 111.35 MHz
Heading: 256

While on the same map page as KONT you could also access DME info on KNTK and KFUL. if you wanted. Sometimes you can get this info just by clicking on the airport but other times you'll need to click the runways or ILS feathers (the green lines that look like an arrow to the runway) to access it.

You can use the same map features when you click on the Edit tab of the Flight Planner BEFORE you get in your plane, which makes even more sense.

Hope this helps!

Got it! It works very well. I really appreciate everyone's help. Thank you very much. George