The Accuracy of the VHF Omni-Range System of Aircraft Navigation; A Statistical Study

This paper describes a statistical treatment of the errors encountered in the VHF Omni-Range Navigation System. The first part of the paper consists of a rudimentary discussion of statistical theory which serves to acquaint the reader with the methods used in the second portion of the report. Each of ten different errors are described in terms of a normal distribution function with the parameters x and s, the mean and standard deviation respectively. The ten errors are summed up and are compared to the error distribution which was obtained from error data gathered by the pilots of various scheduled airlines. The close agreement justifies the method used. Of the ten errors, only five are significant, and the VOR ground station error is shown to be greater than the sum of the other nine.