Hello Guys. I've been playing P3D for a few months now, and I am very fascinated with the product as well as its add-ons. I have learned the general concepts, but now I am ready to ditch ILS landings and go on to something more manual. I feel the next step is RNAV takeoffs/landings, and eventually, getting rid of autoland. Can someone provide me with a guide or a tutorial that would help me out with such things? Are there any tips you'd like to share on this thread for beginners such as myself? I also want to ask if landings can get more "manual" than removing the automated runway glideslope and eliminating autoland?

 

Help and tips are greatly appreciated, thank you.

Check out the YouTube offerings from PilotEdge and tutorials by PE's owner and president Keith Smith...quite a lovely and charming Brit ex-pat now residing, ironically in New Jersey...ironic since PilotEdge only covers the west coast for now....so if you are serious about IFR, join PE for a month...and

 

DO NOT BE INTIMIDATED!!!!

 

I was at first, and it only slows down the learning....remember..."If you ain't fV(king up, you ain't doin' nothin", to that I will add, "certainly not learning"...

 

Grinnnn

 

Chas

Have a look at this,...

 

http://www.recreationalflying.com/tutorials/groundschool/umodule12.html#landing_performance

 

Jorge

Hello Guys. I've been playing P3D for a few months now, and I am very fascinated with the product as well as its add-ons. I have learned the general concepts, but now I am ready to ditch ILS landings and go on to something more manual. I feel the next step is RNAV takeoffs/landings, and eventually, getting rid of autoland. Can someone provide me with a guide or a tutorial that would help me out with such things? Are there any tips you'd like to share on this thread for beginners such as myself? I also want to ask if landings can get more "manual" than removing the automated runway glideslope and eliminating autoland?

 

Help and tips are greatly appreciated, thank you.

Sounds like you are learning to fly going backwards. In real life you start out on small single engine planes with no autopilot and learn to fly them manually. Why not start out properly with a good single engine plane like a Cessna 152/172, learn how to land it by just flying patterns and doing touch and goes, navigating using the GPS and/or VORS, etc. Once you've mastered this and have a handle on how planes fly using manual control, then move onto more complex aircraft.

 

Btw, whatever airliner your flying now, you should practice flying manual approaches using visual clues like the VASI/PAPI systems and hand flying ILS approaches with no autopilot help. Forget about all those complicated procedures for now until you get the basics out of the way. If for some reason you ever learn to fly in real life with the hope of being a private pilot or more, you're going to need to learn the basics of flying anyway, and that doesn't mean trying to learn an airliner and IFR procedures right out of the gate.

I fully support what cmpbellsjc said ^^^^.

 

It is possible to learn manual ILS landings starting with some airliner, but it is much much much easier to learn it with slower, less complex plane.

• You have much more time to react to any change (slower speed).
• You arent't distracted with any complex stuff.
• Smaller planes are more responsive to controls, so you can adjust your position more easily.
• You have more time to figure out how to counter wind.

practice-Practice-PRACTICE

I neglected to add under the practice practice practice notion, the wonderful FSIpanel!

 

Sorry JP

 

Chas

Some quick hints:

 

- Know your plane. In particular, know the approach speed for the given weight of the plane. If you are coming in too fast (more then 10 Kts above approach speed), it is much harder to land. For most jets, this speed is between 130 and 160 Kts.

 

- At the 10nm mark, make sure you are in a stable configuration with flaps down, gear down, aligned with the runway, and 2000-3000' above the airport's elevation. If you get better you can lower the gear later and have the flaps only slightly extended at this mark, but initially it is a good idea to have all these things settled early.

 

- While on approach, keep your speed and decent rate (at about -700 or -800 fpm) steady.

 

- For most planes you should flare at the 20' callout and reduce the throttles to idle. Don't do the latter with advanced turboprops, though.

 

- Cautiously(!) try to reduce the speed to almost stall speed on the last nautical mile.

 

Peter

Every Airline Captain I have ever met, and I have met quite a few, learned to fly on a single engine prop plane.  

Agree that learning manual landings in an airliner is the wrong way to do it.  

 

Get yourself a copy of FSIPanel http://www.fsipanel.com/ and look at the aircraft it supports and get one of them (the A2A C172 would be my recommendation), then start on 4 mile finals, once you are comfortable with that then in the pattern or on vectors, then gradually ramp up the weather difficulty with wind (head on then cross).

 

Once you can nail a visual landing in a C172 in a stiff cross wind, you'll be much better equipped to cope with the more complex airliners which have more toys to guide you, but move faster so you have less time to react.

 

On the question of "how manual can you get", it would be unusual (in the absence of a late runway change or a tight circling approach) not to tune the ILS (and have the glide slope bars visible), even if the landing is manual, no sense in not having aids set up and ready to go if you need them.

For the landing phase, use the "Rule of 3" or "3 to 1 Rule." In other words, you want your descent to be roughly 1,000 feet for every three nautical miles out. So for instance, if you are cruising at 30,000 feet, you would start your decent at 90 miles out from your destination airport. Then you would want to descend 1,000 feet for every three miles you travel. Someone please chime in if I missed something here as I am feeling a bit loopy at the moment. I am a private pilot but my home airport is 8 miles directly west of O'Hare, so when flying local this rule of three doesn't work due to low maximum altitudes in the class B airspace. I do always used this rule when flying my beloved PMDG 737 though.

 

Cheers, Pete

I learned it a little differently. Take the altitude you want to descend in 1000's and multiply by 3. Take your groundspeed and multiply by 5 to get the rate of descent.

 

These are ballpark figures and can be adjusted if conditions warrant.

 

 

Vic

doing an RNAV approach is probably -more- complicated of a path. i agree with the above folks that it's a lot easier to get the hang of it in a trainer plane since you can really drive and feel it, at slower speeds it is much more forgiving.

 

that being said, if you are comfortable with setting up an autoland on an ILS (presumably this is a 737 or something that you are flying) an easy way to transition is to just get used to turning off the autopilot once you are descending on the glideslope and stabilized. in the 737 you can simplify things by leaving the autothrottle on to keep your speed and just fly the thing. look up the MDA on the chart for that approach and make it your goal to turn off the autopilot well before that. if the plane is already stabilized, it is mainly just a matter of keeping it pointed at the runway, paying attention to keep proper speed, and aiming straight for the PAPI lights and landing zone. when you get near the ground, flare by pulling the nose up a bit and you nailed it.

 

after some practice it becomes second nature and it is a lot more satisfying than autoland, plus it opens up a huge world of other places and other aircraft you can fly.

 

cheers

-andy crosby

doing an RNAV approach is probably -more- complicated of a path. i agree with the above folks that it's a lot easier to get the hang of it in a trainer plane since you can really drive and feel it, at slower speeds it is much more forgiving.

 

that being said, if you are comfortable with setting up an autoland on an ILS (presumably this is a 737 or something that you are flying) an easy way to transition is to just get used to turning off the autopilot once you are descending on the glideslope and stabilized. in the 737 you can simplify things by leaving the autothrottle on to keep your speed and just fly the thing. look up the MDA on the chart for that approach and make it your goal to turn off the autopilot well before that. if the plane is already stabilized, it is mainly just a matter of keeping it pointed at the runway, paying attention to keep proper speed, and aiming straight for the PAPI lights and landing zone. when you get near the ground, flare by pulling the nose up a bit and you nailed it.

 

after some practice it becomes second nature and it is a lot more satisfying than autoland, plus it opens up a huge world of other places and other aircraft you can fly.

 

cheers

-andy crosby

 

I was taught on an Airline full motion sim by an instructor pilot for Delta, to always land with the autothrottle on. His theory was that this gave you much more time to be instrument scanning and looking out the windscreen for airport area traffic without having to stare at airspeed gauges. 

Agreed Bobsk8, as long as the airspeed gauge is included in the scan. The Asiana Airlines crash in KSFO was mainly caused by the pilots "setting and forgetting" the A/T and not being aware their speed was decreasing until it was too late.

 

Absolutely NO excuse for a professional.

 

My instructors used to say - First and foremost FLY the aircraft.

 

Vic