August 17, 20187 yr 10 hours ago, w6kd said: So if I'm at FL380 and a GS of 440 knots headed to a field with a final approach fix on my side of the field at 2000 ft, I need to lose 36000 ft (38000 - 2000), and so I should start down no later than 118 nm from the field (3 x 36 = 108 + 10 miles since the FAF is on my side of the field). I'll need an initial descent rate of at least 2200 fpm (440 x 5) to hold that descent gradient. The most significant adjustment to this is that you will not be maintaining 440 KIAS throughout the descent. Frank Patton Corsair 5000D Airflow Case; MSI B650 Tomahawk MOB; Ryzen 7 7800 X3D CPU; ASUS RTX 4080 Super; NZXT 360mm liquid cooler; Corsair Vengeance 64GB DDR5 4800 MHz RAM; RMX850X Gold PSU;; ASUS VG289 4K 27" Display; Honeycomb Alpha & Bravo, Crosswind 3's w/dampener. Former USAF meteorologist & ground weather school instructor. AOPA Member #07379126 "I will never put my name on a product that does not have in it the best that is in me." - John Deere
August 18, 20187 yr Author On 8/16/2018 at 11:53 PM, cmpbellsjc said: In addition to what was mentioned above don’t forget to put in the forecast winds in the descent page. Leaving it blank can make it harder for VNAV to control the descent. Dont be shy about using the spoilers either. The last 4 flights I was on the pilots used them every time to control the descent speed. There seems to be a “sim-ism” that they shouldn’t be used or are rarely used but that hasn’t been my experience in many real world flights. Also if you’re using the FSX ATC I wouldn’t abide too much by their instructions as the vectors and descents will often send you way out of your way and with sometimes very unreasonable descents. Yes thanks a lot for the help, I use vatsim, and following everyone’s advice I managed a very smooth descent and landing with a decent -275fpm landing
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