A320 Beginner Flight Tutorial

  • Hello everyone,

    We published a new step-by-step beginner tutorial for the Airbus A320, explaining the most basic things for a successful flight from A to B.

    It contains instructions on how to manage the aircraft throughout the flight and how to fly a fully automatic landing.

    https://www.aerofly.com/aerofly_fs_2/d…inners_tutorial

    A full flight tutorial for the intermediate or experienced users will probably follow soon.

  • Great idea to remember all the people who are starting in the world of simulation with Aerofly Fs2 and that the knowledge we have is non-existent.

    As in my case, virtual reality will put the poison in the body of the aerial simulation, we need now more than ever these fantastic tutorials step by step and starting from scratch.

    Please Ipacs !!!!!, I encourage you to make a tutorial section for beginners of the rest of the aircraft.

    Thank you very much and greetings.

  • There are other very detailed tutorials for other aircraft in the wiki.

    There will also be more coming soon.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • Thank you for the tutorial. It was so well-written that by following it, I completed a fully automated Airbus flight without a single problem for the first time ever in 5 years of trying!

    One question: in the real world, I assume an airliner can't fly exactly to its fight plan every time. So, what if I want to imagine ATC asks me to fly a different heading, speed or altitude; how do I use the autopilot to take back control from the automated flight mode so I can follow ATC instructions?

    I thought all you had to do was 'pull' ALT, SPD or HDG the knob towards you to take control and then dialled in whatever speed or altitude you wanted but when I try this it seems the plane fights back as though it doesn't want to lose control and then everything goes wrong. Any tutorials planned for using the autopilot to follow ATC instructions?

    The sim is getting better every day!

  • I thought all you had to do was 'pull' ALT, SPD or HDG the knob towards you to take control and then dialled in whatever speed or altitude you wanted but when I try this it seems the plane fights back as though it doesn't want to lose control and then everything goes wrong. Any tutorials planned for using the autopilot to follow ATC instructions?

    I'll get into detail about that in the advanced tutorial...

    Yes, pulling the individual knobs puts the autopilot into a selected mode but the aircraft will typically still behave the same way like in managed mode.

    - When you pull the speed knob towards you the airspeed becomes a selected guidance. On the PFD the target speed turns cyan and you can adjust the speed manually by turning the knob. Depending on the thrust mode and vertical mode the aircraft will either adjust the thrust to maintain the speed or pitch up and down when it's commanding either full thrust or idle.

    - When you pull the heading knob you can manually change the heading.

    - When you pull the altitude knob the aircraft starts to climb or descent towards the selected altitude and levels off at the selected altitude. The autothrust will command either full climb thrust or idle thrust and then the aircraft uses the elevators to increase or decrease the speed by pitching up and down.

  • Hi Ed,

    technically the MCDU is already alive, you can manually insert radio frequencies. It's just a question of implementing more features now but I'm not totally happy with the amount of work that I need to put in to add in a single new field (e.g. V1 speed). So I'm currently implementing another solution for this which can be reused for the 747 CDUs or LJ45 CDUs for example. So stay tuned, that is not the end yet, I'd like to have a fully functional FMS in all aircraft at some point.

  • I’m now really enjoying using the A320 managed mode, thanks to the wiki great tutorial. I have a few questions:

    First, how is the Nav display able to fix a ‘top of descent’ position before you manually dial in the altitude you want to descend to?

    Second, ocassionally I get a message on descent saying ‘more drag’, how do I create more drag as the spoilers don’t seem to deploy in mid flight?

    Finally, do I engage the 2nd autopilot button before turning onto final approach or when I’m actually on final?

    Thanks

  • First, how is the Nav display able to fix a ‘top of descent’ position before you manually dial in the altitude you want to descend to?

    Second, ocassionally I get a message on descent saying ‘more drag’, how do I create more drag as the spoilers don’t seem to deploy in mid flight?

    Finally, do I engage the 2nd autopilot button before turning onto final approach or when I’m actually on final?

    1) The top of descent is calculated using the flight plan cruise altitude which you have no access to but which is automatically set when you place the aircraft on the runway. I then calculate backwards from the final approach fix which has an altitude constaint (of something like 2500ft above threshold) including a bit of extra distance for the deceleration from cruising speed down to approach speed. The majority of that distance is just altitude times glide ratio.

    2) that add drag message isn't calculated correctly, it appears when you are 200ft high on profile I believe which is not what the real aircraft does. I've changed that already but you just haven't received any updates for this yet as it's not quite finished.

    3) You can engage the second ap as soon as you pressed the approach buttons. If you engage it before the ap1 will turn off and ap2 will remain engaged. Typically the approach is engaged when on an intercept heading and when cleared by ATC. Then the 2nd ap is engaged directly after the approach.