I don't profess to be an expert at flying any of the PMDG aircraft but i learnt a small but valuable lesson (you can be the judge of that) today while flying my MD-11 from Amsterdam to Birmingham in the UK. I was about 45 miles from my decent point when i started to set up the FMC for runway 33 and the STAR, all was good. I had a really nice autopilot descent right down to the last way-point at the point where i arm the APPR/LAND but when i hit the button nothing happens. It was like it was just a blank button so of course like the idiot i am im thinking it can't be me? so i just keep pressing it in the hope that it will arm but no!So i check the FMC flight plan and goto the last way-point just before the runway to see if i have selected that ok and that there are no flight plan discontinuitys etc but everything looks ok so i re check the STAR and that's where i find the problem while i selected the correct runway i didn't select the ILS approach of that runway so with a few taps of the down key on the FMC i selected ILS 33 and as soon i pressed insert i got loc and glidescope after hitting APPR/LAND. ...............just a few miles out few! Lesson learnt!:)

I often set the ILS freq and track in the NAV/RAD page manually, just in case. Plus I also turn on the ILS identifier on the radio stack so I get aural confirmation when the FMS has autotuned and picked up the ILS signal (I also turn on and up my markers, I like loud indentifiers while flying :D )

Easily done Muley done that myself numerouse times. But as the reponse says you can manually tune ILS which i must say never tend to do (i hesitate and think because doing this manually im going to hinder all the 'auto' systems) and then hence mucking up an approach. But i guess taking control in this fashion you will be confident that all is fine for tracking ILS.Cant wait for the 777 and back to LNAV and VNAV !Good luck.Jeff

Thanks Jeff and cheers Viper for the manual tune tip :)