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Rho Theta Navigation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rho-theta is a term used in aviation navigation for a location method (or even a group of locating methods) based on the measurement of coordinates (direction and distance to a ground station beacon or beacons ). Many automated Aids to Navigation, such as a VORTAC, use the Rho-Theta data as the primary method to calculate relative position of an aircraft to the reference beacon(s). Rho-Theta methodology is a key component in Area Navigation (RNAV). [1]

The term "Rho-Theta" consists of the two Greek letters corresponding to Rho and Theta:[2] [3] [4]

  • Rho (Greek ρ) as a synonym for distance measurement, e.g. Rho would be the equivalent to the English abbreviation "R" for Range
  • Theta (Greek θ) for the associated heading (direction or bearing) measurement.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "The Airline Pilots Forum and Resource".
  2. ^ "A navigation primer". Flightglobal.com. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  3. ^ Dodington, Sven H.; Greenspan, Richard L. (2020). "Rho-theta system". Access Science. doi:10.1036/1097-8542.587300.
  4. ^ "- YouTube". YouTube.