C172 N21643's Locallizer and a Bit More on the Instrument

Finally got a reasonable photo of an airplane localizer in a plane I fly!  A&E Flying Club's best Cessna 172, N21643.  I'm on the 643 crew now, and really enjoy Dave A's leadership as crew chief!  He is positive and pretty unflappable.  I told him so today!

Anyway, as I own at least 1/50th of this airplane (club members own the planes collectively and the maximum # of active members is 50; right today we have 47) I thought this would be a good localizer for the blog.

The "OBS" knob is the "Omni-Bearing Selector."  Back a few decades, a fair number of pilots called what we now shorthand call "the VOR" -- "the Omni."

You see here the 360 degree "clock" we use in many areas of aviation.  Right now the VOR is set to a southeasterly heading (120 degrees).

As explained previously, this piece of avionics equipment is key to instrument flying.
If one's airport has a "localizer* [pic from a training blog]," as does my home airport Hawthorne, CA (KHHR), there is a radio signal down the center line of the runway, and to line up with it you center it on the vertical line in the VOR receiver (VHF Omni Range), the more accurate name for the instrument.

If one's airport has an "ILS," "instrument landing system," HORIZONTAL control is also provided, you line up on BOTH the vertical and horizontal lines on the VOR -- the horizontal is the "glideslope," so you come down at a nice angle.

* (Side note:  ~ 2 years ago the FAA was "tuning" the localizer at KHRR and my car (the Audi, not the new Beetle) was parked there.  And, the tuning messed up the car's GPS!  Had to reset it!  Too many strong radio signals!)