How popular is "NAVIGATION"

Has anyone noticed how many posted pics show the Navigation feature in use on the top display? Surely a hint there for IPACS.

Hi Donka,
Have fun with the lessons. They are a good summary of what takes years to learn in reality.
There is an extra degree of satisfaction in flight planning and navigating on your own steam. In the absence of working VORs and DMEs outside a narrow arc at Salinas, the airport direction and distance display on the top panel can provide some guidance if a plot has been prepared on a chart or by using the really good SkyVector.com site. If going into the San Francisco runway 28s the track can be run by keeping to the north of a helpful string of airports en route.
For this example try passing 3 miles north of San Jose on a track of 284 degrees, on autopilot with no wind the plane will track to San Francisco lined up properly. For hand flying adjust steering to pass Moffett at 3.7 miles, passing Palo Alto descend past 4000 feet, with San Carlos about 50 degrees forward of the wing pass 3000 feet, steer for passing San Carlos at 3.1 miles and with San Carlos at about 40 degrees behind the wing pass 1800 feet. Another 4 miles and the sleepy Aerofly 2 ILS will come to life and you are in.
Clicking an airport on a SkyVector chart will show airport information with instrument flying approach plates which include named intersections which can be typed directly into the SkyVector flight plan to display exactly where they are in relation to the Aerofly 2 airports.
The localiser (left/right) of the ILS should be alive 25 miles out but until IPACS fix things we have to place ourselves less than 0.125 miles (750 feet) left or right of the runway extended centreline to have the ILS needle showing an indication at the ridiculous 3 mile wake up point. The top panel should be showing the distance and rough direction to San Francisco before that point.
For height a good check is about 300 feet for every mile from the near end of the runway. The top display will show the distance to the airport centre which is a mile extra for a really long runway.
A typical (3 degree) descent rate is 5 times the ground speed, eg 500 feet per minute at 100 knots, it varies depending on the glide-slope angle which is shown on the approach plate, on ILS 28R in this example it is shown as GS 3.00. Maintaining this will keep the glide-slope needle of the ILS under control.
Compared to "NAVIGATION" this is much more like real flying with a line drawn on a chart and a clock checking the time a landmark is passed. It is quite like flying using bearing and distance from VORs which hopefully IPACS will enable sometime soon.

Headwind and drift can be done in your head using memorised sine tables. For instance a wind 30 degrees off the nose has a 50% cross wind component and a 87% headwind component. The headwind can be calculated and added or subtracted to the true airspeed to give the corrected groundspeed and the crosswind correction calculated from its fraction of the airspeed back into a drift correction angle. For instance 5% is 3 degrees of drift (from sine 30 is 0.5 or 50%).

A bit of practice makes it easier, 100 kts and 10 ks of wind 30 degree off is handy. Sines below 30 are fairly linear and only a few higher ones are necessary, 45 is .707-easy eh, 60 is .87 and much above that call 1.0.

Here is a demo, the wind is about 25kt from 030 and this run is from San Jose to Livermore, a track of 359. Sine of 30 is 0.5, so the 31 degree cross wind component is about 12.5 kt.
The IAS is 100 kt so the x wind is 12.5%. The angle with a sine of .125 is about 7.5 degrees (.1 is 6 degrees). The desired track is 359 so I steered a heading of 007. This calculation takes seconds and the result is not bad. The groundspeed looks a bit high but IAS is lower than True Air speed at altitude.

This works in any sim or real life. I used it for low visibility pseudo VOR approaches into Zurich in Aerofly FS. I know of someone using it for asymetric instrument flying using screens for examination. Actually in a twin on one engine there is slight side slip unless the plane is banked slightly towards the live engine so no method is exactly accurate wings level.

Hi adak47, I looked at your link's nav computer and tried to convert this demo's IAS through the air into 'IAS groundspeed' into True ground speed. I probably should have done IAS to TAS (hard when flying) then done the ground speed as I presume the displayed wind is True not Indicated.
The track was 359 degrees.
The wind was about 030 degrees at 25kt
The Indicated Air Speed was 100kt.

The crosswind component is 31 degrees and headwind 90 - 31 = 59 degrees (I could use cosine 31 but it's best not trying to use memorised sines and cosines while trying to fly).
Sine 60 degrees is .87
59 degree headwind component of 25kt is about 22kt (I don't multiply by .87, far too hard, I take off about 10% plus a bit).
IAS 100 kt through the air minus 22kt headwind is 'IAS' 78 kt groundspeed
Your link's site's nav computer converted that into True Speed of 84 kt over the ground, the sim top panel showed a groundspeed of 83 kt so not too far off.

I looked at the sites formula for IAS to TAS
"The formula is (IAS) + (.02 x MSL / 1000)." It doesn't work.
It should be "The formula is (IAS) + (IAS x .02 x MSL / 1000)".
78 + (78 x .02 x 4000/1000) is
78 + (78 x .08) is
78 + 6.24
I'll try to remember the formula but of course the sim's top display shows groundspeed, it also gives height above the ground, how many light aircraft have a radio altimeter!

Surely some mistake, the IAS is only higher than TAS well below sea level unless the temperature is very low. Imagine the pitot head pushing through ice cream versus milk. It would over indicate if flying in a deep hole.

Reply to previous post, not this one.

That site took a long time to get the point across, he requires specified windspeed pre calculated max drifts for each airspeed which are then reduced or increased as wind speed and then direction is varied. I forget how I acquired my method, it might have started out like this but I might, repeat only might, have evolved it with the in your head airspeed plus crosswind component into drift bit. Doing all the sums live is better than trying to remember pre-calculated values and he doesn't do groundspeed! The results are the same, I will keep doing it my way as I'm used to it and I think it is integral and just as intuitive. I looked at his VOR gauge stuff incase he had a way of doing it by twiddling the OBS knob but sadly he didn't.
The IAS TAS difference doesn't matter at low level and at higher speeds higher up, the wind is less important as drift is less and the navaids sort it out.
The web site TAS formula was interesting but it seems a little simplistic, the real method uses Rectified airspeed, Correct outside air temperature and the Pressure altitude to produce a result good up to a TAS of 300 kt, above that a speed variable compressibility factor proportional to altitude is also applied. I had to look that up in my CRP 5 handbook but I remembered it was a complex calculation on the big CRP 5 and was only possible below 300 kt on the CRP 6. That web site formula might have been good within certain limits and might have assumed a standard atmosphere.