a Newbie need help!

[anderslpi77]

Hello guys!

I

[Poseidon]

Hi and welcome to FS.

I am flying with FS2002 but I think your problem is about the landing using autopilot, right?
Flying with GPS with autopilot enabled is fine. When you are close to the airport (20-25 miles) set the NAV1 frequency to the ILS and the autopilot course (not the heading) to the bearing of the runway you want to land on. Do not forget to press the NAV1 button on your radio stack.
From this point change the navigator selector from GPS to NAV1 and maintain your course with the HDG button of the autopilot. Once you see the glideslope become active, just press the APR button of your autopilot. The airplane will do the approach (allign and descend). Keep in mind this method will not actually land your airplane but will bring it close to the runway in a very comfortable position. When you are about 300ft above the ground disengage the autopilot/autothrottle and do the rest of the landing manually.

I hope it helps.

[The-Next-Round]

lol im a newbie and i cant land either in my boeing, i use auto pilot too, and when i get close and take auto off the plane goes all over the place, theres no way i could land manually, all i try and do is decsend on auto pilot down to 00000 and hope it doesnt crash at 200 speed, i can kinda do the auto appraoch thing

[Poseidon]

Hi and welcome to FS.

I am using FS2002 but things are not different regarding your question.

I assume you fly with GPS and autopilot on and you are able to bring your airplane from the right side of the runway to land as well as you know how to use the autopilot to climb, descend and to change your airspeed and heading (HDG) as well as follow GPS navigation (NAV)
Based on the above here are a few hints.

Plan your position prior ILS landing. This should be at 2000-3000 ft altitude at about 15-20 miles from the runway and with a course which does not deviate more that 30 degrees from the runways direction.

Plan your descned. To calculate the distance you will need to descend use the rule (FLc/10 - FLr/10)*3 + 10 where FLc is you current Flight Level and FLr id the required (target) FLight Level.
Here is an example:
You fly at 32000 ft. Drop the last 2 digits and you have the Flight Level which in this case is FLc=320.
You want to descend to 2000ft. So FLr is 20. APplying the rule above you have (32-2)*3 + 10 = 100 miles. Thus you need 100 miles to descend from 320000ft to 2000ft at a standard rate. Standard descend rate is between 2000 to 2500 FPM (Feet Per Minute). So, about 100 + 15 miles (see previous comment as well) start descending putting 2000 at the altitude field and something between 2000 to 2500 in the Vertical Speed field. Once there select the correct ILS frequency in your NAV1 radio and press the APR button (you must have NAV activated and not HDG) and let the autopilot do the approach. Disengage the autopilot and the autothrottle at 500 ft altitude and land gently on the runway.
If fly with no weather (no wind) you don't have to change anything in your direction. Just maintain a 2-3 degrees nose up pitch with pulling backwards the joystick (and trim if necessary). At 50 ft altitude set the power to idle and increase the pitch to 5-6 noseup and you will have a perfect landing.

One other thing you should take care is the airspeed. For 737 start the descend with 280 KIAS.
Before 10000 (at 11000-12000) reduce to 250.
At 25 miles from the airport reduce to 210 KIAS set flaps to 1, and arm the airbrakes (press ALT+/).
At 17 miles from the airport reduce to 170 KIAS and set flaps to 5 or 10 and extend the landing gear.
Gradually decrease your speed and add more flaps as follows:
160 KIAS and flaps 15
150 KIAS and flaps 25
140 KIAS and flaps 25 or 30 (depending on how much fuel you have and therefore how heavy is your airplane).
You target in simple words is to be at 8 miles with a speed of 140. Once the airplane starts descending for the runway you may reduce to 135 and immediately to 130. This will be your final configuration. Remember to disengage autopilot just before landing as explained before.

[Nexus]

No offence Poseidon, your guide is truly great for newbies. But I'd like to add some things.

Never use KIAS speeds as descent speeds above FL280-310 (depending on temperature)
Descent speed for the 737 [Econ DES] is M.75, and at Mach-to-KIAS transition, descent speed is 280KIAS as you correctly stated.
Using VNAV PTH, the aircraft will level off at 10500ft and let the speed bleed of to 240.

The use of flaps will start rather late, because airlines often practice low drag approaches. gear extension occurs as late as 8nm out (right before FAF, marked on the approach chart)

But overall, great "approach for dummies" you made, maybe some of the mods can put it in a FAQ or something  ???

[Poseidon]

No problem at all Nexus. Your comments are always welcomed especially when talking about a 737. I intentionally omitedthis details because my message was a reply to a newbie's question and I felt it would become complicated. Anyway, thanks for your additons.

[Skittles]

...and when i get close and take auto off the plane goes all over the place...

Perfect example of over steering.  People always say smooth gentle inputs. But that says nothing. Yes be gentle and smooth but more importantly... anticipate!

As you're making a turn, use a standard turn rate... about 30 degrees.  The bigger the aircraft, the slower the turn.  So BEFORE you are heading the direction you want, start leveling off. The bigger the aircraft, the sooner you'll need to level.  I've watched my daughter and father fly zig-zag patterns because they didn't anticipate the roll rate of the aircraft.

Your descent needs to be consitant. Diving, leveling, diving, leveling only confuses yourself.  When landing, things work backwards. Use elevator to control speed and throttle to control altitude. This takes time to learn. If your too steep, throttle up a bit. As your airspeed increases, so will the nose.  Try to keep the runway lights white over red, or just white and red.  As you fly over the end of the runway, cut throttle.  As you approach touch-down, conduct the flare (pull back on stick GENTLY to maintain level flight).  You want to conduct the flare 50 feet above the runway.  As your airspeed decreases, keep the nose up pitch and you should gently land.

Practice, practice, practice. I can now land 737, 747 and 777 with no problems, completely manually.

Joe

[MattNW]

I think the biggest problem newbies to ACOF have with landing or flying in general is trying to jump right into a 747 or other large passenger jet and then fly it. Sure it can be done but not without a lot of crashing and failure in the learning process.

Sure, go ahead and take the heavy iron out for a long trip. Use the auto pilot and approach to make your flights. No problem with that but every once in a while take up a Cessna and learn to fly the right way. Eventually it'll pay off and you'll find youself landing the big ones as easily as you do the little planes.

It's a little work of course but you'll feel much better once you get the hang of it when you bring an Airbus in for a picture perfect landing without the auto pilot. For some of us it's a little easier. We've learned in a real airplane through hours of practice and when we get on a good simulator like ACOF we find many of the skills transferr. For others however it's a completely new experience. They have to learn from the ground up and the best way to do that is to learn in the same manner the real life pilots have. Start little and work up.

[Spiers]

Hi. I cant land aswell. I know the nav holds the planes current line of flight which i think is good. Also the lvl switch levels the plane which i think it good. However i dont know how to set out the autopilot to do anything through that gps thing. I press proc button and press the only lit up thing. Then this screen comes up which dosent make sense and you can only pick a few close airports. Then when you press set approach the autopilot when swiyched on does nothing. I though that flight planner at the start set the auto pilot. Ive read the replies and wondered if you could explain it simplyer with less steps maybe. I didnt even know that radio stack or shack was important. I though it was for talking to your friends online. You know tunning in to your plane.

[Spiers]

Can anyone help me here?

[Skittles]

However i dont know how to set out the autopilot to do anything through that gps thing.

In order to get the autopilot to fly to an airport you have to set the NAV/GPS switch to GPS.

You don't have to file a flight plan in order to autopilot to an airport. You can use the DIRECT TO button on the GPS, enter in the airport ID and hit the GPS ENTER (not the keyboard enter) about three times. Once to finish your entry, again to Activate and again to confirm.

Make sure the autopilot CMD is on, NAV/GPS set to GPS and altitude set if you so desire.

[ziliu]

Hi all! Not so long ago when I first bought fs2002 i was feeling just like you about the landings, anderslpi77 and The Next Round.

One thing that I think made the learning process easier was concentrating on vertical movement and horizontal movement separately. What I did was I first started a flight on some runway at some airport and set the nav1 to the runway's ILS frequency. .

Then I used the slew function, pressing the y key, and slewing backwards about 20 nm from the runway and about 9000 feet upwards. I then exited slew mode.

From now on don't move the stick sideways, only up or down. At this point the airplane won't have any airspeed, and I had to do a descent to get up the speed. Then I level off at about 3000 feet. Once established on that altitude with some airspeed, I saved the flight so I could start from here quickly the next time.

Now, the plane was perfectly lined up on the runway's extended centerline, with perfect runway heading, and so on. All i had to do was control the plane to go up and down.

At first I made quite a lot of crashes into the runway at like 200 knots. But some training I was able to catch the glideslope quite good, and do some really smooth landings.

When I felt I was comfortable with controlling the aircraft vertically, I started to do some full approaches and landings, training the ablitily to track the ILS horizontally too.

The point is, I think separating down a complicated task to a number of smaller task make it a lot easier.

Hope this help!

PS Actually I think I got a save file having the airplane lined up perfectly on the centerline some distance from some runway at ESSA Stockholm-Arlanda. PM me if you want it.