frustrating! can anyone help me?

[chase s.]

This has really been bothering me, im still learning about how to fly and that stuff, but the only thing i cant figure out is how do you get lined up with the runway like however many miles out? when i watch the planes land at my local airport, they are lined up for miles, and on videos i watch.

how do they do it? because im always having to make sharp turns at the last minute to gte lined up. can anyone help?

[ThomasKaira]

Read the article about the Instrument Landing System.

Before that, read the article about VOR approaches.

All your answers will be right there. 8-)

Just make sure you have a chart for the Non-Precision (VOR and NDB) Approaches.

If you do not yet know about how to use a VOR, though, you are not ready to learn about approaches, so make sure you do.

[Brett_Henderson]

If you're learning to fly.. come join us in the Flight School forum.. We'll be getting into pattern entry and approaches soon...

Sounds like you're trying to learn in a jet.

Just as important as being lined up to a runway, is every other part of a sound, stabilized approach. All of this is much easier to learn in smaller, slower airplanes first.

Nav-aids, like NDBs, VORs and ILS all help getting you established... and we'll be getting to those soon, too

[Mothball]

Yeah what they said above. In addition, don't give up, practice, practice, practice... Stay motivated, Semper Fi, Dave

[garymbuska]

If the runway you are landing at has a ILS you can use the VISUAL GLIDE PATH to paint triangles,telephone poles and a yellow road to  guide you in. You will need to know the ILS frequency for the runway you are landing at and you can use the Map view to find this out.
Just enter the frequency into NAV1 and set you COURSE to the run way heading. DO NOT CONFUSE COURSE WITH HEADING
if you do not know the differance between the two you need to go back to the BASICS and learn them. You must first crawl before you can run. 8-)