I usually fly IFDG's A320 with Ken Mitchell's A320 panel and the Project Tupolev's Tu-154B-2. The Tu-154 intercepts the set course perfectly (begins turning ahead of time to level out exactly on time). But the A320 tries to intercept the course almost perpendicularly and levels out too late which causes it to swerve back and worth about four times before it levels out. This also happens to almost all the other aircraft such as the Project Fokker's F-100 anf F-70 and POSKY's 757-200 with Lonny Payne's panel. Is there anyway I can alter the panel.cfg or the aircraft.cfg (or any other way) to make the A320 interecept the course smoothly? Thanks in advance and sorry if I am unclear about my problem.

that is a very common problem for fs2004 planes,and all sims before.iirc you can only get that behaviour out of the plane by building a custom autopilot,which is why the PT Tu154 doesn't have said behaviour.to lighten it up a bit:it is my understanding the swerving is quite normal irl too.at least on the 727(or so i thought,it might be another craft)i mostly follow radials by using heading select,then i don't have the swervy behaviour.tataJP.

>>it is my understanding the swerving is quite normal irl too.Certainly not the modern stuff, but I wouldn't be suprised with some of the older autopilot systems.I haven't experienced this as I set a heading to reasonable angle intercept and then switch for VOR capture once established on the heading.However, here is a rule of thum to help predict the turn so that you can tell when this is going to happen. It is also very satisfying when hand flying to roll out on queue:90deg intercept VOR CDI anticipation deg = ((Ground Speed/60) * 20) / Range to the VOR). You halve the result for a 60deg intercept, 1/4 for a 45deg and no anticipation for a 30deg).If you are travelling at 240kts GS and are 30nm from a VOR and intercepting the radial at 90deg then: Anticipation Deg = (4 * 20) / 30 = 2.5deg anticipation. Therefore, you simply wait until the CDI (Course Deviation Indicator) has closed 2.5 off track before starting a RATE 1 turn to intercept. If you are intercepting at 60deg then it would be a 1 deg deviation.

>I usually fly IFDG's A320 with Ken Mitchell's A320 panel and>the Project Tupolev's Tu-154B-2. The Tu-154 intercepts the set>course perfectly (begins turning ahead of time to level out>exactly on time). But the A320 tries to intercept the course>almost perpendicularly and levels out too late which causes it>to swerve back and worth about four times before it levels>out. This also happens to almost all the other aircraft such>as the Project Fokker's F-100 anf F-70 and POSKY's 757-200>with Lonny Payne's panel. Is there anyway I can alter the>panel.cfg or the aircraft.cfg (or any other way) to make the>A320 interecept the course smoothly? >>Thanks in advance and sorry if I am unclear about my problem.>This behavior is normal in real-life aircraft too.Autopilots are things you have to learn to work with in real life, icluding their shortcomings, so that you can use them as workload savers. Many autopilots specify that you only press the NAV button to intercept a radial when the CDI is "alive", so most pilots would simply never ask the autopilot to do intercept a radial being too far from it.It's kind of a common-sense thing in real autopilots to intercept radials first using the HDG mode than switching to NAV mode when the CDI is actually close to the center. Many autopilots have this "Jerky" behaviour otherwise, and you know how PAX tend to be upset at jerkiness at the controls...Same thing for APR (Approach mode) capable APs. Most of them do not engage the APR mode unless you're neatly stable BELOW the glideslope first, THEN press the APR button. I don't know of ANY autopilot out there that would intercept a Glideslope from above, like I've seen in some posts here...The autopilots I work with simply do not "engage" the APP mode if the Glideslope is below you.

Thanks for help and info guys.