Posts by 4535jacks

Overloaded, I got bored today and created an AF2 specific SID for Montery airport. Fancy trying it out?

Roger, I have using the dme to track my progress towards NDBs . I have been using sky vector to work out the distance between the NDB I am approaching and salinas and then I use the DME to calculate when I am approaching the NDB.

I am currently practicing full approaches by flying over head the airfield so nav 1 loads the destination freq and I can then track away from the threshold, turn back and I will have glide scope and localiser data much further out, say 10 miles. This is a standard approach procedure in the UK as many UK airfields have the NDBs located on the airfield itself where in the US it seems that NDBs are located on the approach path meaning that there is no requirement to pass overhead the airfield during the approach.

The problem with the 3 miles wake up on the ils is that it does not give you a lot of time and also you need to be a 1000ft AAL to have a good chance of intercepting the glide slope.

Once I have mastered this, I will create a few AF2 approach charts that are simplified and use SAL DME to marking turning points and descent points. I will then do a short tutorial on flying the full approach instead of the the straight in approach I explained in the "added challenges" thread. I will then set a challenge I have created that will involve track to or from 4 NDBs, intercepting and flying VOR radial, using SAL DME to estimate location along a track and final flying a full approach from the airfield overhead. Each pilot will also have to plan their own route.

I am doing this because I think radio nav opens up a whole new element to flying on AF2 and many users how no experience of it and are unsure how to start.

Overloaded, thanks for the heads up on the 747, I have now located the adf freq and noticed that the transponder is set to 7700 for mayday! I am not a fan of FMC flying and prefer flying VOR/loc/DME approaches. I have no real world commercial experience or an IR but learnt to fly using radio nav as part of my ppl and found rnav particularly interesting. When flying FSX on vatsim, I always fly vintage non-FMC aircraft and navigate the old way.

Obviously the 747 and a320 are designed to be flown by an FMC driven FD but the older 737-500 has potential to be a great old school rnav aircraft with an RMI, HSI and DME. Pity that it does not display adf freq.

If the DME was working in the 172 then it would be just as capable as the baron..........

Could you explain how I can use the salinas VOR to help fix my position during approaches to airfields to the North?

Gary

The autopilot speed display bug was fixed on the 737 as part of the recent update but there is still no speed display on the 747 and A320. I will check the Learjet and king air tonight and edit my post.

The RMI does not work correctly in any aircraft as the VOR needle points permanently to 090deg.

If you load a new aircraft during a flight then the controls do not calibrate properly and the aircraft pitches violently nose down and crashes.

DME not working in most IFR capable aircraft. Most aircraft don't display the selected ADF freq and some don't display nav 2. This makes most aircraft vfr only machines.

Donka, thanks for the feedback. I realise that my post was very descriptive but I had to assume no prior knowledge of rnav. I recommend that someone use this guide, reads a section, flys it and then pauses the flight to read the next bit. My future flight plans will not be as description and will assume some basic knowledge and experience.

Gary

I have an ifr challenge which will act as a good introduction to those with little or no radio nav experience. The scenario for this flight is that you are required to fly a Baron from Modesto Airport to Montery Regioanl Airport for maintenance but the baron has no working gps. The day you fly, a warm front has moved in from the NW causing low lying fog and poor visibility. Strong winds prevented you from conducting the flight in daytime. You are therefore required to conduct the flight at night in IMC using radio nav to find you way to Montery and conduct an approach using the ILS. Before starting the flight the following conditions should be set:

Wind - 300deg strength 1/3 of the across from calm
Vis - the left hand edge of the vis box should sit in the middle of "low"
Time - 0600hr UTC

Start location - Modesto Airport Apron.
Aircraft - Baron

for realism autopilot can be used to maintain a Hdg and altitude but not to maintain speed or vs. I don't the baron has auto throttles.

Navigation System:
sitting on the apron you need familiarise yourself with the baron's navigational instruments, namely, nav 1, nav 2 inc dme, the adf and the RMI.

On the baron the radio nav freqs are shown on the central stack where there are 2 rows of 4 freqs. in each row of freqs, the second number from the right shows the active nav freq. the top row shows nav 1 and the second row shows nav2. Nav 1 will automatically select the ils for the nearby runway and set the obs to the runway heading. You will use this for the approach into Montery runway 10 (freq 110.70). The freq is Nav 1 should read 110.70 which is default freq. Nav 2 is alway set to 117.30 which is the salinas VOR and the obs is set to 090deg which means nav 2 will show our deviation from the radial running. Exactly East to west from the VOR station located at Salina airport. The Nav 1 instrument is located to the left of the yoke and nav 2 to right. Both of these instruments are slaved to the nav system in the radio stack.

The DME (distance to the VOR station) is also located on the central stack, second from bottom. The red number on the left is the DME and it should read about 65nm. The number next to this should read 117.30 (Nav 2 freq).

The bottom of the working panels in the central radio stack is the ADF. The adf automatcially loads the freq of the nearest non-directional beacon (three digit freq) and it should currently read 367 which is the freq of the WOMAR NDB wich sits 6nm to the SE of Modesto Airport.

The final instrument to identify is the RMI which is located to the left of the Nav 1. The RMI instrument has a green pointer and a yellow pointer. The green pointer does not function correct and always points to East so ignore it. The yellow arrow however is working and points the NDB station whose freq is currently loaded into the ADF.

You will see how these instruments work during the flight.

The flight:
starting at the apron at Modesto, taxi to the threshold for rwy 10R. Hold short of the runway. Ensure that the controls are working correctly. Set flaps to 50%. Now check that the adf is set to 367 and look on the RMI to what Heading the yellow adf needle points to (should be 110deg) and set this heading into the autopilot. As you change the autopilot heading you should see a heading bug move around the central HSI instrument, this tells you heading the autpilot is set at. Next set the autoplit altitude to 5000ft (you may have to switch to HUD view to do this). You are now ready for takeoff.

Enter the runway and line up for takeoff. Take off as usual and establish a climb initially at 120knots and then once above 500ft, retract the flaps and increase the climb speed to 140. Turn on the autopilot. As soon the undercarriage leaves the ground and the VSI shows a positive rate of climb, retreat the undercarriage. Check the RMI to ensure that the yellow arrow is pointing directly up I.e you you heading directly toward the WOMAR NDB, if not adjust your heading to bring you back on track. Continue to climb to 5000ft. Once established at 5000ft, level out and set throttle to give a level speed of 180kts.

Once you are 6nm miles away from Modesto, you will pass over the WOMAR NDB. You will know when you pass over the beacon as the RMI needle will swing 180degs. As soon as this happens, change heading to 180deg. To ensure that you are flying directly South of the NDB, adjust your heading to keep the RMI needle pointing to 000deg. It is now time to look at the nav 2 instrument and DME as you will ow intercept the 090 radial of the salinas VoR station. Currently the DME reads 65.3nm and if you look at the Nav 2 instrument, you will see a red flag which shows the instrument is in active as Salina VOR is too far away. Keep flying south with the RMI needle pointing North until the DME decreases until about 54nm at which point nav 2 will become alive and the red flap will disappear and the White arm will swing to the right.

Continue to fly 180deg away from the WOMAR NDB until around 33.7nm DME when the ADF will automatically switch to 263 which is the CHUALA NDB which is located 12nm SW of Salinas airports. Adjust your heading to fly directly toward this NDB (heading will be around 201deg). You are now ready to accept the Salinas 09 radial. Watch the Nav 2 instrument and at around 13.2 DME you should start to see it swing to the left which shows that that you are approaching the radial and need to turn onto a heading of 270dwh to fly towards the Salinas VOR. The trick is start the turn early so you roll out on the new heading with the vertical vor needle straight down the centre of the instrument. To do this, I recommend that you start your turn before the needle touches the second dot from the centre, this will be around 11DME. Once you have completed the turn onto heading 270deg, you can adjust your heading to bring your aircraft onto course and keep the needle in the centre of the vor display. Unfortunately you are fly the wrong way for the 090 radial and ideally you would set the vor obs to 27 but this is not possible in AF2. You can still however fly the 27 radial but you need to be away that everything on the VOR display is in reverse. Therefore the VOR display will show that you are flying 'from' the VOR station when in fact you are flying 'to' it. The VOR needle will also work in reverse so if the needle is left of centre, the runway is actually to the right of the aircraft NOT the left and a turn to the right would bring the needle back to centre. Try to keep the needle in the centre of the VOR display and continue to fly directly towards Salinas VOR. Using the DME to track your distance to go. Fly direct,y over the Salinas VOR

You will know when you fly over the Salinas VOR because the DME will count down to zero and start counting up again. Also the direction indicator on the VOR display will flip for 'from' to 'to'. Once you have flown over the VOR station, continue to fly along the 27 radial and keep adjusting your heading to keep the needle in the centre of the display. Now descend to 2500ft. Continuing to fly along this radial, the ADF will retune to 385 which is the MUNSO NDB which is located 5nm to the W of Montery Airport and is situated on the localiser for runway 10. Continue along the 27 radial until the the NDB is located 180deg for the aircraft, to do this watch the ADF needle (yellow) on the RMI. Just before the needle reaches 180deg, turn onto a heading of 180deg and then adjust your heading so you fly directly to the MUNSO NDB.

Now descend to 1500ft and reduce speed to 140kts. Watch the DME as the the MUNSO NDB sits 16.3nm from the Salinas VOR. Once established at 140kts, select 50% flap. You are now about to turn onto finals for runway 10 and so need to start a turn onto headin 110 before reaching the NDB (start turn around 15.7-16.0 DME).

Once you have complete the turn, reduce speed to 120kts and watch Nav 1. Nav 1 will switch to freq 110.70 shortly after the turn, the freq will switch and oth the HSI and nav1 will display the ils localiser. This is like the VOR indicator and will show your deviation from the runway centreline. If the needle is off the left, the runway is off to the left and you must turn to the left to line the aircraft up with the centreline. Now adjust your heading so the vertical needle on both the HSI and NAv 1 is in the centre of the display. You will also see the horizontal line on the nav 1 move down the instrument. This indicates the glideslope and as just before it reaches the centre of the display you should start a descent of approx 400fpm. You are now flying the approach for runway 10 and you should be constant,y adjusting your heading and rate of descent to keep both the vertical and horozontal bars on the nav 1 display in the centr of the instrument, lined up with the dots. Now extend your undercarriage and select full flaps. Decrease your speed to 100kts. You are now ready to land. Maintaining your approach and keeping the ils bars in the centre of the display, at 750ft, look up out of the front of the aircraft and you should see the runway in front of you.

You can now disengage the autopilot if you were using it and hand fly the last stages of the approach with a an approach speed of 100kts. Perform a normal landing. Once you have landed, vacate the runway to right, fully retract the flaps and taxi to the hanger. Flight complete.

This is a simple ifr flight that will introduce novices to fly both inbound and outbound of a NDB, inception and flying a VOR radial using DME and then intercepting and flying a localiser and glide slope at a runway in order to land in low visibility in AF2. I have writte this as a simplified step by step guide and in the future I will detail some ifr routes without the step by step detail. Using this technique I can take off from any airport and land at either salvinas, Montery or Watsonville airport without looking at the map or using the navigation feature and with terrible visibility.

I hope you all enjoy this route and using AF2 radio nav. I would appreciate any comments or feedback.

I hope people find this useful.

Please note that the approach flew here is not a real world approach and is once that I have created for AF2.

Gary

I really hope that as soon as the of version has been released, the iOS version will be updated so that all IFR equip aircraft can select and display nav 1, nav 2, adf and dme. This will make this app a great tool for pilots to practice rnav from the comfort of their sofa!

Gary

Decided to try other ifr capable aircraft tonight to see I could complete an ifr flight to salvinas but I could do it in a single on for the following reasons:

172 - displays nav1, nav2 and adf and there corresponding freqs. Has no dme and nav 2 is permanrntly set to 158.25 which to my knowledge is not a valid VOR or ils freq.
737 - no display of which adf freq is set, both nav 1 and nav 2 are set to the same freq and neither display dme. Adf is displayed on the rmi but there is no way of knowing which NDB it is pointing to.
747 - only displays Nav 1 and ADF although it does not display which ADF freq is set. There is no dme and there is no display of nav2.
A320 - The rmi displays nav 1 and nav 2 but both the obs are permanently set to 90deg.Therefore the rmi is useless. There is no diplay of the adf freq and no dme for either nav 1 or nav 2. The PFD only seemed to diplay ils localiser and glide slop and would not display the VOR radials.
King Air - displays nav 1 and adf nicely and displays selected freqs. Does not display nav 2 and has no dme.
Learjet - display freqs for nav 1, nav 2 and ADF but does not diplay VOR or ILS for nav 2 and has no dme. It does diplay nav1 and adf.

It looks like I will have to stick to the baron for my future ifr flights.

Correction - although the 172 says that nav 2 is tuned into 158.25 with Salinas vor (117.30) on standby, it is actually tuned into to salinas vor with the obs set to 90. So although there is no dme, you fly to the Salina overheard using nav 2 and watching for the direction indicator to change from to from or visa Nerva depending which direction you approach from.

Unfortunately you cannot use live ATC at the same time as AF2. I used to use circle to land for approach charts but I can't get it to display charts for the US.

I thought they both had poor cockpits and so never really flew them. I am looking forward to the robin making a reappearance though.

Overloaded, thanks for the advice. I flew my first proper ifr night flight with minimal vis. I flew from castle airport to salinas in the baron but did not use the salinas approach chart (maybe next time). Instead I took off from castle and headed 200deg until I intercepted the salinas VOR 27 radial on nav 2 and then flew that radial until overhead the airport. I then flew a course towards the NDB on finals runway 31 dme 12nm (freq 263) using the RMI (is it me or does the VOR needle not work correctly on the RMI). As soon as I passed over head the NDB at 3000ft, I turned on the runway heading and intercepted the localiser. I then intercepted the glide slope and managed to maintain a good descent along the runway centreline all the way to 500ft which was what I had set as minimums. I then looked up for the first time since takeoff to find a well lit runway directly in front. A smooth landing followed.

I will try the correct approach procedure for salinas 31 tomorrow.

It looks to me like the 172 could fly this route and approach although it looks like nav 2 maybe permanent tuned into 158.25 instead of Salina VOR on 117.30.

Just tried the salvinas 31 approach using the NDB. I intercepted and followed the glide scope using the baron but it brought my round out point quite far into the field, beyond the threshold.

Which aircraft were you in?

Agreed. I sometimes use this technique and decrease my speed to Vfe for the first stage of flap before descending below 10000ft as I know I will then be able to reduce speed further by using flaps.

I tend to cruise at 12-15000 ft in the airliners and start my descent 30nm out with an initial descent of around 1500fpm. Remember that you can fly to New York if you like but the scenery is poor. There is no limit to the map and so you could easily, takeoff from one end of the map, climb to FL300, fly to any US city, turn around and fly to another airfield at the other end of the map. Start your descent 40nm out with a descent around 2000fpm and you should be fine. With this amount of sink, decreasing speed will be difficult.

At the moment the navigation feature is very limited. The hope for the future is that the navigation pages allows you to select waypoints and generate a PLog. It would be great if all VORs, NDBs, intersections and airways were marked on the chart as waypoints and even better if there was a way of adding your own waypoints and working out was radial of a vor they lie on and what dme so we can fly proper IFR. I hope to see a feature in the future that will allow us to select and change both nav 1, nav 2 and ADF freqs, preferably by manually entering them rather than just selecting them from a list.

At the moment I fly without the info bar. I choose a destination airfield in navigation and then take off and switch to HUD view which shows your project track. I then set manually the autopilot to follow this track and keeping following this track until of finals with landing flap set, gear down and I then turn off autopilot to land.

If I am flying a simple prop or vintage aircraft then I use the HUD view to get the aircraft on the projected track and then simply note the heading, switch back to cockpit view and maintain this heading for the remainder of the flight, switching to HUD every so often to check my cross-track error. I don't use autopilot when flying the C172, Corsair, P-38 etc to increase the realism. Personally I think autopilot should be disabled for all aircraft that doesn't have it real life. The autopilot should be tailored for those like the Baron which can purely maintain heading and altitude, removing the speed and VS functions. Anyway that is probably quite far off topic.

Gary

ILS does work although it only becomes live about three miles out from the Rwy threshold. The ILS will automatically select the nearest runway and will display on the aircraft's instruments. The ILS would be much more useful if it was live 10-15 miles out and ipacs have said that they are planning a feature that will allow us to select navaids instead of selecting them automatically.

Yes the live ATC app can be downloaded onto the iPhone. I generally use headphones when playing AF2 and so it would be nice for AF2 to allow audio inputs from a background app either Live ATC or the music player whilst still playing aircraft sounds.