So here I was, flying into LOWI, crowded airspace online. Got set up for a LOC/DME East approach into RWY26. Had to deviate for separation, was told to hold over RTT for spacing. Finally vectored to intercept the localizer at 10000, gear, flaps, approach armed yada yada yada. When 2 nm from the missed aproach point, I´m asked to kindly circle and land 08.Online.Crowded aispaceAt night.I was so scared of circling in that valley that I´d never tried it before when practicing to fly online. Always went for the straight-in shots into 26.So here I am, flying online faced with the snap decision of aiding the friendly controller who was having one helluva day controlling pretty much all of Austrian airspace AND handling numerous TMAs and CTRs.Well, I thought - "to hell with it" and replied "Austrian 913, yep we´ll take 08, wish me luck though".I quickly checked the approach plate, disconnected the autopilot and autothrottle, turned on the terrain feature on the ND and left the localizer for the circling approach. Immediately I started lagging behind the airplane, feeling it was way ahead of me.Then I remembered the magical HGS and was awarded with a beautiful landing into 08 after completing a pretty descent traffic pattern.The moral of the story is: Fly into LOWI at night on VATSIM/IVAO because it´s flight simming at its best. You´ll be grinning from ear to ear.Oh, the second moral of the story is to deactivate the HGS feature of the NGX because you´ll grow highly addicted ot it.

I removed the HUGs as an equipment option. I prefer instrument and visual landings in the dark at LOWI and LSGS without the HUGs. True test of your pilot skills on those 2 airports at night

Hehe awesome story! I took off from Innsbruck once (not on VATSIM) at night, but I've only landed in the day. I definately need to look into that, so I can try it too!Were you online during the "rush hour" where Europe is crowded with ATC? Like at 3 Central Time?

How come planes land there at night? I don't get it.Anyway great story Victor. Innsbruck is so much fun!

Nope, not rush hour. It was just this one awesome guy in charge of Wien Radar but who was handling pretty much all approaches in Innsbruck, Vienna, and Salzburg. That´s why I decided to help him out and comply with the request.Dario, it´s also a mistery to me how they allow turbojets to operate at night in that narrow valley as well. Oh well, I guess they are trained to do it. BTW, I clicked on your link. Awesome sight! Loved the pics and the soundtrack. What is that btw? Loved it. Thank you all for taking the time to read it. g´night

Nope, not rush hour. It was just this one awesome guy in charge of Wien Radar but who was handling pretty much all approaches in Innsbruck, Vienna, and Salzburg. That´s why I decided to help him out and comply with the request.Dario, it´s also a mistery to me how they allow turbojets to operate at night in that narrow valley as well. Oh well, I guess they are trained to do it. BTW, I clicked on your link. Awesome sight! Loved the pics and the soundtrack. What is that btw? Loved it.Thank you all for taking the time to read it. g´night

Thanks to you for sharing :) It really takes brass balls to circle into RWY8 at night (yeah, even in FS haha)That's another friendly community I'm member of. Check it out if you want :)

Nope, not rush hour. It was just this one awesome guy in charge of Wien Radar but who was handling pretty much all approaches in Innsbruck, Vienna, and Salzburg. That´s why I decided to help him out and comply with the request.

Daniel Conrad?

Awesome story, I'm actually enroute there from Samos, Greece right now, but offline only I'm afraid.

Isn't there a way to program in the FMC an approach into RWY08? It´s very dangerous to fly by hand at night on that valleys!Teo Halfen

I guess when they get custom waypoints to work correctly than we'll be able to program the pattern into the fmc. However, in my opinion it is a visual approach and you should handfly it looking more outside than at your ND. And remember that at Innsbruck the HUD is your best friend.Diego, I'm not sure of the controller's name. But he was a very friendly guy. As a matter of fact all Austrian controllers are very nice and tolerant of us hehe.Have a safe approach Paul. You'll love it. Btw if you have time I'd like you to check something out. I noticed that the airplane did not capture and fly the glideslope, but rather an FMC glidepath. In other words, I flew a Localizer-only IAN approach, when the glideslope should've been available. I later re-flew the loc dme east approach to see if it was something user-related, but the FMC didn't give me the usual G/S on or off option. It appears in the NGX's database, LOWI's Localizer approach does not have the coupled glideslope (which it should have according to Austrian AIP). Can you please confirm this? Have a safe landing!

I removed the HUGs as an equipment option. I prefer instrument and visual landings in the dark at LOWI and LSGS without the HUGs. True test of your pilot skills on those 2 airports at night

all the hugs does is bring up your displays in front of you so it still testing you at night time any which way u want to fly

Sorry Victor, I just landed and only just saw your request. However, I did notice that the approach was abnormal in the sense that it didn't display on the MFD as I'm used to. I held at RTT at 10000 to get my head straight, I was a little behind the aircraft to be honest, flew 210 to intercept the localizer at approximately DME 21 and pressed VOR/LOC to lock the localizer. At this point, I hold my hand up and say I'm still not fully conversant with the 737 systems, so my belief is on a regular ILS I should now be locked into the ILS, but with LOWI being a Localizer only, I expected no vertical guidance. However, the aircraft did follow the glideslope while I followed along checking against the approach plate to make sure it was correct. I was a tad fast, as I was only using flaps 5, but it all worked out just fine. I put it down to not being that familiar with this aircraft yet, until I read your request. I'm thinking the FMC provided VNAV, except I had already gone to VOR/LOC, so VNAV wasn't illuminated...can anyone else shed any light on what I'm not understanding?Edit: OK, so the DME has a Glidepath and seeing as I manually dialed into 110.10 for OEV, that explains why VOR/LOC also provided vertical guidance I guess.

Edited November 13, 201114 yr by tutmeister

Paul, the thing is the LOC DME East chart points out that there is a glideslope available between 18.2DME OEV and DA. Therefore if you arm the app on the MCP the plane should capture and follow a glideslope accordingly.However, after I pressed approach to capture the localizer, the FMA accounced it was capturing and flying a glidepath, which is a very different thing. The glidepath is an FMC-computed vertical path down to the runway (usually -3.0º, like regular glideslopes) that enables you to fly non-precision approaches (LOC, RNAV, VOR, NDB) with a "ficticious" glideslope (the glidepath) displaying on your PFD just like an ILS glideslope would.But since LOWI approach is indeed equipped with a glideslope (although it´s only called a localizer approach) you should fly the glideslope, not the glidepath! I´ll try it again and see if I´m missing something.edit: I also saw in your other post that you flew the localizer at flaps 5 with no gear down. Perhaps you should try it with gear down and landing flaps, which will give you more drag and permit you to fly a stabilized approach. This particular glideslope is set at 3.80º, so if you fly it at 160kt your vertical speed will be around 1100 fpm. See where I´m going? If you fly the approach at approximately 200kts with no gear and flaps 5, you´ll have a hard time slowing down while maintaining the correct vertical profile. That´s why KLM does it with gear down and landing flaps from 10000´down. It also diminishes the workload as you descend into the valley, where you want the crew´s attention to be out the window! Hope you enjoyed flying LOWI! take care

LOWI and the NGX is indeed SUCH a great combination. I spend about 50%-60% of my NGX hours on that approach.If you have Flightsim Commander, it IS actually possible to setup the rwy08 approach in the FMC, though a little tedious setting up a circle of fixes. I also do it with the CTL Madera approach too.

LOWI on Vatsim is one of mine favorites:)I fly there almost every Thursday when the Austrians have their weekly event (17.00z-22.00z).With the aerosoft scenery it's a lot of fun, but also challenging when u get the 08 circling. What I'm doing now is putting LOWI in the fix page, with 260/6 in the rad/dist.....but I would shore like to be able to make custom made waypoints for that visual procedure, If someone knows how to do it I'll be glad to learn how?Yes the ATC is very friendly & sometimes there is an nice Amerikan on LOWI App, he once commented me on my landing.....so from now on I know he's watching the landings