Gumbodadfs

OK, so here's an update. Went back into the same flight (plan), but with an added STAR before the ILS. Also, reinstalled the WT 530 update to the stock 530. All went well until the last waypoint just before final, when "msg" in the 530, and sure enough: "approach not active". So I decide to proceed without the GPS, set nav to vloc, check that loc and GS are lit up, and - plane flies right over the glideslope - and yes, I did turn nav on and off several times before. And what makes it worse (of course this all has to happen in fog too, so zero ground reference 🙂) is that during the go-around my trim goes haywire too with the plane, until the end, is trimmed up massively, no matter what I did. To cut a long story short, I managed to land, but only by flying everything manually, and because in the fog, I did have the MSFS guides for the glideslope turned on, so I could keep the plane on the glideslope. With the trim being totally off as well, I had to push the nose down all the way to touchdown to stay on the glideslope. Crazy, and again totally reminiscent of flights two years ago when I flew a Twin Otter under similar conditions, also with a stock 530, and ended up in exactly the same kind of situation. After that, I changed plane and flew (until yesterday) the stock Beech King Air with the glass cockpit which also has its quirks, but never messes up in this way... there must be something I don't get, but I really don't know what it is.

Thanks for the reactions. I'm always happy to remove mods - the reason for installing it in the first place was that the 530 does not natively have access to the flight plan in the main msfs folder. I'll pass on commenting on that issue... but now it turns out that the mod does not have access either... Anyway after reflecting some more, I think the problem is with the way the flight plans are set up I'll try a flight today with a modified flight plan that includes a different approach routing. The flight plans where this happened in the past as well always included an ILS, and a routing where the plan would lead me to the airport first, then make a turn to follow the final in the opposite direction, a loop to get onto final and then glideslope in the right direction. And it would always mess up, completely, as we approach the waypoint where that turn above the airport needs to be made. I also looked up some recent tutorials about the 530. Will revert.

Unfortunately, I never got this far... Indeed I had set the loc/ILS frequency. What happened was that before hitting the waypoint directly at the airport, which was the "starting point" to bring me to final (sharp right turn, heading away from airport, planned "u-turn" then straight on to final/ILS glideslope), the 530 suddenly tells me "the approach is not active", and shortly after that proceeds to send me on a course directly away from my planned track, and away from the airport. I remember the exact same thing happening to me two years ago. And then, you get all sorts of other things happening, resulting in the AP doing one thing, me trying to correct/turn AP off, and the plane which is already slow and sluggish, ending up in a stall. I wish I had kept the recording I made, but it is incredibly frustrating. Edit: maybe the 530 allows to load flight plans, but then I'd like to know how to do it; until now, the only method I'm aware of is to export the plan with a name which cannot be different from fplx.pln (where x is a number) in a folder in the GPS community folder.

So here goes. I just installed the FSW C414 which is a great plane. First flight with stock 530, went fine, notably because there was no flight plan in the GPS and I had to follow the MSFS stock ATC which went OK, warts and all. Then, I added the mod which allows to load flight plans into the 530, and all went fine until, you guessed it, the approach, and I had happen to me something which I thought was a thing of the past: the AP basically crashed the plane. At some point, the AP sets the plane into a curve, and since I was set up for landing, full flaps, gear down, low speed, I had an unrecoverable stall (a couple of other things happened to as in new keyboard and trying to manage all this with a VR headset on). This happened before in I think the Twin Otter, with the same GPS, and its similarly losing the plot at the end with the approach. I know better now and will not use this GPS anymore and fly flight plans with just the VR map and the ATC guidance. The thing that amazes me though is that I used the same flight plans (LNM) with the stock Beech King Air and its built in GPS/FMD, and it all went perfectly, every single flight. Maybe a couple of interesting moments also with the approach, but none where the GPS essentially tells the AP to fly in circles around the ILS or runway endpoint to the point of making the plane uncontrollable. So since it worked in one of the stock MSFS planes it cannot be a limitation of the sim, it has to be a problem with the implementation of the 530. Amazing that this still happens after 2 years that I did not use this type of set-up. I'm happy to be told that I'm doing something wrong somewhere btw, so if there's any advice, I'll gladly take it...

On the engine start, both the mixture levers and the fuel switches have to be in the right position.

Thanks again to all who reacted. Just a quick update and a question. I've now figured out how to properly plan and execute a flight including landing on ils runways - very enjoyable, MSFS does follow the flight plan except for altitude, and for this I now follow the flight plan in the plane's FMS so I can (no kidding) request the altitude changes as I need them. I also have regularly MSFS ATC telling me to climb to say 9000 from about 4000 on the last leg before I'm supposed to capture the glide slope. Go figure. Anyway, I'm now finally back to the type of planned and controlled flying I was used to in FSX, plus all in VR which is the only way I do things in MSFS now. I still use the stock King Air, but here's two rubs: 1. When I land, and I am at a correct (I assume) approach speed (90 or less), stall horn goes off just before touch down etc, I mostly float for a bit, or touch down but the nose does not unless I push it down. What am I doing wrong? Too fast? Should I not flare at all? 2. I cannot seem to be able to feather the props. I know this is an issue with MSFS (I can't feather in the Twin Otter either), but I just want to check this once again here, just in case there is a way to do this including with my controller... Many thanks!

Ha. But here's an interesting one: of course, one example is most definitely not statistical certainty. However, I did another one of my flights yesterday. When preparing the flightplan in LNM, I proceeded in the following order in terms of adding elements of the flight plan : departure (parking) - destination - ILS at destination - STAR to ILS - SID at departure - calculate flightplan. Then save, export as pln. To my surprise, the whole process went perfectly start to finish. The AP followed the whole flight plan, flew the STAR (added a wider curve towards final but OK), switched to LOC1/ILS automatically and led to a perfect landing. What MSFS did mess up, was that their ATC kept telling me to climb to my cruise altitude up until I turned on final and I was directed to contact approach, despite the correct altitudes being displayed in the plane's FD, and therefore presumably somewhere in the "consciousness" of the MSFS ATC... I of course ignored the AP's altitude calls and followed the flight plan in the descent.

Interesting discussion, not sure anyone if still watching this thread, but, I'm using LNM, and can confirm: flying the stock beech KA, I finally realised that MSFS pushes the star approach to after the destination runway. Trying to edit this in the plane's FD basically destroys the LNM flightplan loaded before, and I ended up having to re-enter the whole flightplan manually. So here's a question for Asobo: what is the point of allowing third party export/import of flightplans if MSFS is then going to do whatever it wants with them?