Got an interesting ATC request on Vatsim last night, flying out of PDX towards BOI the twr cleared me to take off rwy heading for 9000ft on approach's freq. So I took off and approach immediately wanted me to intercept a VOR heading (out of BTG VOR)and then follow that to join an airway J15.

 

I asked for a vector, but I could have made it I reckon, with some I help from the enroute charts on skyvector. I do remember how to fly VOR-VOR, but I was wondering is there any "intercept BTG on radial 100 to intercept J15" capability in the FMS?

 

(BTW don't kill me if you're from PDX I got the heading wrong, can't remember exactly :Big Grin: )

You tune in the VOR frequency on the NAV1 radio, set the CRS to the desired radial and simply fly it by either selecting VOR/LOC or with the HDG bug, following the FD and path on the ND. After he asks you to join the J15 airway, you redirect the flying to the FMC.

Using the VOR to start is a safe method and once you've got the jet pointed in the right direction, you could use LNAV.

 

If the controller gave you DIRECT to BTG and join J15, no problem. Just go direct to BTG and then enter J15 on the RTE page. It should already be there, or the controller would have to give you some more info when he gave you that clearance.

 

If you were supposed to fly a heading (say 140) to join J15 past BTG, it gets a little trickier. I'd do it like this:

 

MCP HDG 140.

HDG SEL

 

 

on LEGS pg

DIR to BTG

take the next fix and bring that up to 1L

(in R6 there should now be the correct course (eg. 115) from BTG to the next fix)

LSK 6R twice to "make it big"

 

The jet should now be on an intercept heading to join the airway. If it looks good on the ND, then when you are wings level, select LNAV.

As BTG is on J15, the controller probably wanted you to join the airway itself. This can be done by moving the next waypoint to the top of the legs page, but before hitting execute, change the intercept course (Bottom left of the FMC IIRC) to the course you want to fly to the waypoint on. The next time you hit LNAV, the plane will level it's wings, and will then track to intercept that radial to the waypoint.

J15 starts at BTG, so you would have tracked whatever radial he told you to until BTG then joined J15 on your merry way.

 

The key is you would NOT have used the FMC for this. Everyone always gets so locked into trying to do everything with the FMC. The plane has a VOR/LOC mode for a reason :)

 

The FMC is great if you're flight goes as planned, but if something like that happens, pilots should take over and go back to the basics until they are at a point where the FMC can take over again. No real pilots would be wasting time during their departure trying to re-program the FMC.

Easily done with LNAV. Copy BTG to 1L and enter the inbound course to BTG in 6R. Define the desired airway after BTG and you are good to go.

His question

 

s there any "intercept BTG on radial 100 to intercept J15" capability in the FMS?

 

Yes.

 

The FMC is great if you're flight goes as planned, but if something like that happens, pilots should take over and go back to the basics until they are at a point where the FMC can take over again.

 

Agreed.

No real pilots would be wasting time during their departure trying to re-program the FMC.

True, but if everything is under control and you're cleaned up, etc, there's no reason the PNF can't set the FMC up to follow your routing. It takes a few seconds if you know what you're doing.

Actually I may have asked the wrong question. I must have been told to fly heading XXX (100 I think) and turn to intecept J15 which crossed in front of that path. That must have been it, looking at the enroute charts. I was looking for a quick way to punch that into the box, "intercept J15 at heading 100" and NOT at the VOR or at any particular waypoint. So I think the "intercept course" trick might do the trick, Joseph. Never even noticed that on the FMC. I'll have to experiment a bit with that.

 

That's why I asked, wanting to learn more about the FMC, not VOR navigation which I feel I understand pretty well both in real life and in FS.

Hey I was working TWR that night. It was radar vectors to join J15. BTG was just used as a anchor for departure.

 

Cheers!

Use heading select for the radar vectors and a direct to an airway waypoint (not clear if it's BTG here or the next one after it since people said J15 starts with BTG) with an intercept course for getting onto the airway. Arm LNAV once you're on the vector heading.

I hear that a lot in real life on south bound departing KBOS flights,

"Join the 067 degree radial of Sandy Point,Rest of route unchanged".