Today, I flew the beam.
Radio Range Navigation, or “the range”, was the main navigation system used by aircraft for instrument flying in the 1930s and 1940s, until the advent of the VHF omnidirectional range (VOR), beginning in the late 1940s. It was used for en route navigation as well as instrument approaches and holds. (Wikipedia)
It consists of flying towards the station which is emmiting morse A and N signals depending on how far one is away from one of the four fixed beams. If on the beam, the A and N morse signals blend together into a uniform tone.
Sounds familiar? Then you have just probably recalled @Deacon211 AAR from the last year’s Christmas Flight. We miss your golden AARs @Deacon211!
Yongphulla in Bhutan to Tezpur in India.
As I thought I might be rather busy navigating this old system, I reached to my hangar for the Electra which, at least in this MSFS rendition, is rather a simple-to-fly bird.
Aeroplane Heaven did a nice job in terms of modelling but let the Electra down in terms of sounds & system & engines accuracy. Some of that stuff I fixed myself and even was able to bolt the Big Radial’s Goose wwise sounds to the Electra as these two share the same type of engines. It works just OK. I miss some cockpit sounds, which is OK, and engine start up sounds, which is a pitty, but the rumble of the engines once started is worth it! 
Getting ready and taking off. The Electra was on its MTOW so at this altitude (some 8500ft) was quite sluggish to lift off.
The plan was to intercept the 137 degrees beam to the station from the A sector and then follow it down to Tezpur. If flown correctly, I should overfly Misamari airport once clear of the mountains.
The ability to fly the beam (Radio Range Navigation) in MSFS is brought to us thanks to a mod by ElectronVolt. https://flightsim.to/file/21201/radio-range-navigation
Heading 100 degrees from my departure airport, I could hear a clear A signal as expected. After some time I noticed a weak N signal which became stronger when closer to the 137 degrees beam. Here the two signals became indistinguishable and blended into a uniform tone. Time to turn 137 degrees and start flying the beam (note the advanced vibration monitoring equipment on the glareshield; nice touch Aeroplane Heaven ).
Time to start descending as well. The approach chart above called for overflying the station at 3000 ft then descend to 2000 ft outbound from the airport, turn back and land. No big math this time. I just estimated the descend rate between 1000 and 2000 fpm should do.
Misamari airport. Bang on the beam!
The signal gets louder as you approach the station. In this screen, you can make the masts.
I have to say listening to blending A and N morse signals over a prolonged period of time becomes quite nauseating. But since I was flying in VR with no desire to leave VR, lift the HMD and switch off the RRN radio, I decided to press on and ignore the signal instead. I was already visual with Tezpur. When I called the tower to get an active runway, I was advised that the airport was IMC. Well, honestly…
Do you recall I claimed that this leg would take me some 80 years into the past? This is why:
The next leg will be part of the Hump route flown by the USAAF during the WWII over Himalayas to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek. So naturally I installed appropriate scenery 
The Electra is maybe a little out of place here in 1944 Tezpur airport scenery but it still makes for nice screenshots
Next stop is Chabua. I have not yet made my mind whether to fly the beam again or go with the period NDBs… let alone whether to take a DC-3 (or shall we pretend a C-47?) or a B-307 (and pretend it is a C-46). We shall see.
Stay tuned.