Backcourses are, in my opinion, a waste. And not at all because here in Italy are forbidden (you can't hope to use a backcourse in landing here), but because they only offer a FALSE horizontal guidance (false because inverted) and no glide. Why not to go in a visual, then? Or, if an instrumental approach is called for, a VOR-DME? After all, backcourse approaches (wherever they are legal) are pretty much a non-precision approach, just like VOR-DME.
The BC function on the AP is useful for other things, namely like when you're cleared to land on a physical runway with ILS on both ends that share the same operative frequency. IRL the tower would keep in use the ILS beam of the actual in use runway only, shutting the other off, but in FS this doesn't happen. Both ILS beam are always active at the same time. This means that on one end the ILS works fine, while on the other end it's a backcourse with glide (personal experience).
Particular attention must be used when approaching this kind of runway (at Rome LIRF there is one, another one you can find in Toronto, and they are far from finished here), as FS doesn't give you a head-up on which runways has what, and you must be VERY careful, lest the AP going loco on you while trying to land.
There's but one real cure for human stupidity. It's called DEATH.
At the moment mourning the assassination of sarcasm and irony for the good of the "higher".
Proud FSIX user. Active user of FS98, X-plane and novic
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
