Is anyone willing to make a Tutorial Flight for the Boeing 737, similar to the A320?

1st Official Post

    I have been flying J van E's excellent tutorial for the Airbus A320. I have shortened it to 1 page and 2 images without losing any of the features. Thanks Jeroen,

    Now, do we have anyone here that can make a similar tutorial - Takeoff, climbout to level flight, make a descent and approach to an airport with an ILS approach using the B737-500?

    Here is the heart of the panel to help someone get started.

    Maybe Jan can chip in with what works and what is not working just yet.

    I checked all the tutorials I could find for the Wilco and Evolution 737s but they all deal with the 45 minute preflight, putting the FP in the FMC and flipping all the switches on the O/H panel. Assuming we use the Location and Nav page to make the flight plan and are lined up on the numbers ready for full throttle for a start, we should be able to find the TO config, find the initial climb profile, engage the LNAV/VS/FLC to follow the route and get to our assigned altitude. Fly level for a few minutes, make a descent using the AP/VS/FLC and find the ILS IAF heading in the right direction, flying at the proper altitude, in the proper configuration and at the correct speed. Fly it to the threshold, disengage, flare and land as Jeroen would say.

    Regards,

    Ray

    • Official Post

    Yes but please let me update the autopilot first. Would be a waste of time if someone wrote a tutorial about the autopilot right now when there will be significant changes to it right around the corner. I am trying to automate more things at the beginning so that you don't have to care about the autopilot at the beginning.
    When its done it will be as much as setting up the flight plan via navigation page, then set airplane on the runway, press toga, takeoff manually, engage autopilot ... and then: retract gear and flaps, increase selected altitude flch or vnav to get up there then decrease selected altitude again and press vnav, deploy flaps, decrease speed, gear, press approach button, arm spoilers, 2nd ap on, autoland, APs off, done.

    Sounds good, Jet-Pack. Although I like to take care of a few things myself but I am sure that will be possible too. ;) (Right...?)

    And btw concerning my Airbus totorial: don't forget that it is a tutorial that tells you how to fly the Aerofly Airbus in its current state: the procedures aren't realistic from A to Z but work around the current limitations. When the Airbus has been updated too and will be more like the real thing the tutorial will be updated too to reflect a more realistic flow.

    Very good to hear the 737gets a more realistic autopilot, looking forward to it!

    Any chance you have autopilot updates for other aircrafts at the same time?
    I really hope your A320 a/p is next or soon?

    And if the F18 a/p could follow the flightplan it would be very nice(eg a working nav button or a keybord assignment)?

    Anyway i love your sim allready, it is very nice as is :)

    Raymond

    • Official Post

    There are only two autopilots in the Aerofly FS 2: The Cessna and Baron share a simple autopilot, the airliners all share the same advanced autopilot. That advanced one is what I am currently changing. So yes the A320, B747, C90GTx, LJ45,... will all have more accurate autopilots. The functionality of the individual autopilots are so similar that it we don't need to several autopilots. They all have a climb/descent, altitude hold, vertical speed, heading, loc,... Its just a matter of which button causes multiple things to happen and which doesn't. VNAV for example would do couple of things in the background... And some of these airplanes have other basic modes like pitch hold or roll hold, that will all be taken care of as well.

    • Official Post

    Jan, when you update the autopilot please forward to me the new functions so that I can update the Wiki/manual with the new information.

    Jeff

    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

    Quote from Jet-Pack

    There are only two autopilots in the Aerofly FS 2: The Cessna and Baron share a simple autopilot, the airliners all share the same advanced autopilot. That advanced one is what I am currently changing. So yes the A320, B747, C90GTx, LJ45,... will all have more accurate autopilots. The functionality of the individual autopilots are so similar that it we don't need to several autopilots. They all have a climb/descent, altitude hold, vertical speed, heading, loc,... Its just a matter of which button causes multiple things to happen and which doesn't. VNAV for example would do couple of things in the background... And some of these airplanes have other basic modes like pitch hold or roll hold, that will all be taken care of as well.

    Thanks Jan,

    This is good and timely news. I have a few questions.

    1. Will the Marker Beacons work - Both Lights and Sounds?
    2. VNAV and LNAV should be fully functional when your mods are ready?
    3. Will ADF, VOR/DME, ILS, and RNAV approaches be possible?

    Regards,
    Ray

    • Official Post
    Quote from Jetjockey10

    Thanks Jan,

    This is good and timely news. I have a few questions.

    1. Will the Marker Beacons work - Both Lights and Sounds?
    2. VNAV and LNAV should be fully functional when your mods are ready?
    3. Will ADF, VOR/DME, ILS, and RNAV approaches be possible?

    Regards,
    Ray

    1. I wouldn't cout marker beacons to the autopilot, so "no", not through the changes I am making to the autopilot. Would be added relatively quickly once there are actual marker receivers.
    2. YES, I hope I got everything right so far. I know the Airbus is already doing pretty much what it needs to do, Boeing I need to do more homework yet to be certain. They all fly a vertical profile now and have a basic speed profile. Constraints are probably up next.
    3. ILS for sure, VOR approaches probably soon, too. RNAV GPS probably, too? Can't promise it though... For the other approaches (not ILS) I will also have to learn a bit more and see if the groundwork in terms of instrumentation required for those approaches is already given. Otherwise probably later.

    Cheers,
    Jan

    • Official Post
    Quote from Overloaded

    Will manually tuned NAV-AIDS be restored in the near future?


    You can tune the navigation frequencies in the LJ45 and C90GTx manually in the current EA beta version as far as I know. I also found a way to allow nav-override the 737 which hopefully will make it to the next update. (It actually has switches on the panels for that hehe)

    Quote from Jet-Pack

    1. I wouldn't cout marker beacons to the autopilot, so "no", not through the changes I am making to the autopilot. Would be added relatively quickly once there are actual marker receivers.
    2. YES, I hope I got everything right so far. I know the Airbus is already doing pretty much what it needs to do, Boeing I need to do more homework yet to be certain. They all fly a vertical profile now and have a basic speed profile. Constraints are probably up next.
    3. ILS for sure, VOR approaches probably soon, too. RNAV GPS probably, too? Can't promise it though... For the other approaches (not ILS) I will also have to learn a bit more and see if the groundwork in terms of instrumentation required for those approaches is already given. Otherwise probably later.

    Cheers,
    Jan

    Well, you can't fly a legal ILS approach without working Marker Beacons so they are an integral part of Auto Flight. I sure hope the RNAV does get the attention it deserves. There are probably more RNAV approaches in the now than ILS approaches and the gap is widening all the time. I don't think there are very many new ILS being added but RNAV are growing like rabbits.

    Regards,

    Ray

    The 737 had manual nav-aid tuning already ! ! ! It was removed with the 'L/VNAV' upgrade. I would go back to the previous version in a flash.
    A customer warning at upgrade time with an option to block an upgrade with what some might see as sabotaging features would have been quite helpful. I would crawl over broken glass to have more demanding features, Aeroflying in night time fog on autopilot does not develop much skill. Showing the compass and failing some instruments or systems would be a nice scenario.

    • Official Post

    The automatic tuning for the 737 was added so that everyone could fly ILS approaches with the 737 - everyone on desktop and on mobile, which is a large portion of all users. And its not like you couldn't fly an ILS with the auto-tuning. You just had to use the one in from the navigation page. So to us it seemed very logical to take manual tuning away since it wasn't fully functional. You could only tune VORs as far as I remember, not the ILS. (It's not like we haven't put any thought into it)
    We now added support for a second NAV on the copilot side and joined the ILS and NAV1 so that you can override the NAV1 frequency and set up your ILS or VOR approach. So please be patient for that update :)

    Hi Jan.

    I don't mean to hijack the thread but I didn't want to create a new one for a simple question that has to do with navigation.
    I am flying the King Air quite often and the major problem at the moment seems to be even though you can manually tune the ILS frequency for the approach, the glide slope indicator does not appear on the EFIS. The horizontal and vertical displays are there and I can track the localizer but there is no indication of the glide slope. Is that just a bug at the moment?

    • Official Post
    Quote from Jet-Pack

    The automatic tuning for the 737 was added so that everyone could fly ILS approaches with the 737 - everyone on desktop and on mobile, which is a large portion of all users. And its not like you couldn't fly an ILS with the auto-tuning. You just had to use the one in from the navigation page. So to us it seemed very logical to take manual tuning away since it wasn't fully functional. You could only tune VORs as far as I remember, not the ILS. (It's not like we haven't put any thought into it)
    We now added support for a second NAV on the copilot side and joined the ILS and NAV1 so that you can override the NAV1 frequency and set up your ILS or VOR approach. So please be patient for that update :)

    Nice work Jan !

    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

    I restarted my Aero to see what the upgrade is about, Dead Nav 1, dead nav 2, dead ADF, dead NAV control box and the loc and glidepath boxes which were not working are now removed. The 5 degree HUD divisions are nice.

    What a diference a restart makes.
    I hadn't used the King Air that much and 30 mins ago I thought ...quite nice, must try it more often.

    • Official Post

    Just checked out the C90, ADF seems to be broken for some reason, I am looking into that. The ILS works on my developer version, not in the released version with the same aircraft files - has to be something in the rendering I assume. We will have to investigate that, thank you for pointing it out.

    Edit: already found the mistake - a single "1" in the ADF frequency name messed it up.