Maybe a dumb question. I've seen a few places where a VOR approach doesn't have an obvious (to me) way to get lined up inbound without radar vectors.
Say you don't have GPS and you're navigating with VORs. You'd like to do the VOR RWY 18 approach to KDEC, and you're coming from somewhere north of the AXC VOR the approach is based on, like the BMI VOR for example. How would you get yourself established on this approach without radar help?
It seems reasonable to me to fly (off-airway) R-180 outbound from BMI and intercept the approach course of R-349 inbound to AXC. However I'd heard (though don't have any regs to back it up yet) you can only transition from enroute to an approach based on a fix that appears on both charts. So I suppose you can't essentially vector yourself this way with the off-airway R-180. Is this true? If so, I'd be super grateful for a FAR/AIM reference if you know it!
So then what fix appears on both the enroute chart and the approach plate? Only AXC is on both. But if you fly directly to AXC from BMI then you're facing the wrong direction. You'd be incoming on roughly R-352 and then need to turn around and fly outbound on R-349. A HILPT would be just the thing on an approach, but here we wouldn't be on an actual approach yet and I haven't heard of them being used outside approaches. Would you do a HILPT at that depicted hold, or just hang a uey here, or is neither really right?
As I said, maybe a dumb question, but it's stumping me. Thanks for the help!