Extended Flaps at the Gate

[Guest malcolmt]

Hi allI am a new PMDG 737 driver, enjoying this fantastic sim. Whilst I am learning something new all the time, a couple of questions have occured which the manuals or forum searching have not helped.1. In Timothy Metzinger's excellent tutorial, he mentions on one of the tutorial flights to make sure that on landing and taxiing to the ramp, make sure your flaps are raised, i.e. "Taxiing into the ramp with the flaps down is a signal that you wish to be met by armed law enforcement personnel". Why exactly??2. What is the purpose of the COURSE knob on the MCP? The manual explains what it is, but I cannot find an explanation of what it does exactly. I set the knob to the inbound ILS course, but do not know what would happen to my approach if I didn't.Thanks in anticipationMalcolm ThorntonFirst OfficerBritish Airways Virtual, BAW0154

[Kosta 122]

>2. What is the purpose of the COURSE knob on the MCP? The>manual explains what it is, but I cannot find an explanation>of what it does exactly. I set the knob to the inbound ILS>course, but do not know what would happen to my approach if I>didn't.CRS knob determines bearing from the VOR or ILS bearing. Entering false CRS for the ILS will not align you straight with the runway (you will be coming either from the left or from right). Notice that still you will fly directly for the runway, but on the wrong course, you would have to turn just prior to touchdown. Try it if you like experimenting! (Btw. some airports have course offset, few degrees, one of those is I believe LOWI - due to terrain). For the VOR it's all the same.Maybe you should check some navigation basics, to learn about those things.

[falcon999 24]

1) On reason is that the flaps hang really low and retracting them minimizes potential damage while taxing.

[Gnominator 0]

Well:1. I do not really know whether this is true for all countries worldwide. I flew with HLX from Cologne to Berlin and the pilot did not retract the flaps until we were almost at the gate (he might have just forgotten). I did not meet any "armed forces" at the gate, though ;)2. It is not necessary to set the inbound ILS course to intercept the localizer. But you will experience that the course knob is very helpful when you are not flying with the FMC, because you can set the radial of a VOR which the aircraft will follow. This is necessary sometimes and I constantly crosscheck, whether my airplane is following the right course by checking whether the aircraft is still on a certain VORs radial (where available)

[Guest TrafficTraffic]

The CRS knob does not have the same effect with an ILS as it does with a VOR. ILS's don't have multiple radials like a VOR, only one virtual "radial" of sorts. All that will happen is your ILS display on the ND won't be lined up straight, and it could be rather confusing to fly.I can't remember if I've tried this with the NG, but I have definitely flown automated ILS approaches on other aircraft (e.g., 767PIC) and the CRS selector has no effect. Now, I can't remember if you are off by more then 90-degrees if things could get confused between flying a backcourse and a frontcourse.Try putting yourself on an ILS approach and adjusting the CRS knob +/- 30 degrees. I'll bet you won't see the course deviation needle move."Maybe you should check some navigation basics, to learn about those things."Yes, maybe you should! ;-)Lee Hetherington, PP-ASEL (KBED)

[falcon999 24]

"It is not necessary to set the inbound ILS course to intercept the localizer."If you don't set the ILS approach course you will get an FMC error message. Also, the ND in approach mode (selected on the EFIS panel) will not display correctly and be difficult to use.

[Kosta 122]

Hm, really? Well, I could swear I saw opposite, but please, I do respect correction if I'm wrong.OK, I checked it right now, I was wrong. CRS doesn't have any effect on the localizer, but I do know wrong CRS will give you an error in the FMC. Sorry mate...About VOR, was still right :)

[Guest teeloo]

That "flaps-down-I-need-help" is, I think, BS.As far as I know anyone would know the sign by now, right? So no point in doing that.If it isn't a secret (which it isn't) there is no reason for not using regulare comms to get enforcements...Teeloo

[Guest malcolmt]

Thanks everyone.I will read up on the COURSE selector and its use. Yes, I do need to do more homework !!Do I take it Teeloo then that the "flaps down at the ramp" is a (previously) coded message (in the USA?) to the law enforcement agencies that some sort of security incident is occuring and help is required?Cheers allMalcolm Thornton

[Guest _sebastian_]

>1. In Timothy Metzinger's excellent tutorial, he mentions on>one of the tutorial flights to make sure that on landing and>taxiing to the ramp, make sure your flaps are raised, i.e.>"Taxiing into the ramp with the flaps down is a signal that>you wish to be met by armed law enforcement personnel". Why>exactly??Hehe, then what to do if it is foggy? ,-)Squawkcodes are usually assigned by the controllers exept for the following three:7700 = EMERGENCY7600 = RADIO FAILURE7500 = HI-JACKINGIf the pilot needs armed forces at the gate there is no other way to be sure than changing his squawk to 7500./sebastian

[Guest teeloo]

I am not sure if that flap think ever was a coded signal. Personally I think ik never was.Best answer I read so far was to avoid damage.....Teeloo

[Orlaam 306]

Those squawk codes didn't work on 9-11 :(I wonder if nowadays that squawk ident thing is something so well known by terrorists that the pilots can't even use them.

[Guest boxjockey99]

1) Flaps are raised after landing as someone said to minimise damage on the taxi in. They are sometimes forgotten but the professional embarrassment of having missed them once ensures you don't do it again! If you do forget just remember they take an age to come up on the elec hyd pumps as opposed to the normal rate on the rngine driven pumps! 2) On the -300 not setting the CRS window to the correct ILS inbound course will have a pretty major effect on the approach. I have seen it happen, the skipper hadn't set the CRS in his window on approach to Venice and when VOR/LOC captured the aircraft actually turned away from the runway! A quick a/p disconnect and we sorted it out but it was quite embarrassing. Before this I too thought it had no effect and the LOC would work as normal but we proved that wrong!Hope that helpsKrisPS on 9/11 the pilots were no longer in control having been removed and replaced by the terrorists so there was no-one to set the transponders to those emergency codes!

[Gnominator 0]

I was just refering to MSFS when I said that thing about the ILS course.The PMDG is quite adanced and outputs error messages when you don't switch it to the right course, that's true.I sometimes am a bit surprised that the FMC has got different approaches courses than those given on official approach charts. I tried to land on JFKs 31L two days ago and my FMCs (newest AIRAC and navigation data) information deviated one degree from the data given on the IAP I had downloaded from myairplane.com... That does not happen do often, fortunately, but I managed to find several airports, to which this "bug" applies to.

[Guest _sebastian_]

>I sometimes am a bit surprised that the FMC has got different>approaches courses than those given on official approach>charts.You shouldn't be :-) The FMC doesn't read from the track courses data in FS, but from the TRK XXX section in the terminal procedures files written specifically for the PMDG engine. Sometimes these are not up to date and may even have missed the correct track by a degree or two. Try landing in KMIA; apparently this airport doesn't even have runways! But it's not a bug in the FMC (or in MSFS for that matter). The FMC correctly reads the incorrect TRK./sebastian