Flight planner help please

[Nexusys]

why everytime i got this message, and asked me to contact the tower and the tower just said fly striagh in bla bla bla.. instead, guide me to the airport and ask me to report airport on sight. but with this message i just kept going straight without guiding or lining me up to the airport..?? i kept missing the airport. last time i remember, the tower actually help me line me up to the airport and asked me to report if airport on sight. in fsx, what is the best way to guide you to the destination. which in the flight planner i have to set to help me to reach from A to B and guide my altitude before landing, and line me up to the airport runway.

[loomex]

You are inbound at a slight angle. By this point you should have tuned your NAV radio to the ILS for the runway you have been told to land on. At the point that message comes on, turn on the heading your told, make sure you switch from GPS to NAV if you haven't already. Click the AP button labeled APPR (Approach). When your NAV detects the ILS, it will turn off the AP heading and start the turn to the airport. As you glide down you AP altitude will turn off as your plane start to go down the glide scope. Make sure you slow the plane down (turn off the auto speed), use flaps. Just before you cross the airport, you can turn off the AP and hand fly the last few feet.

[Brett_Henderson]

This gets into the area of situational awareness. Just like in real life.. the last heading you're told to fly, as you hear the words, "Cleared (fill in the approach)", will be a heading that will take you to a point where you  can turn runway heading, far enough out to stabilize the approach.

You know you're 28 miles out, north of the airport.. And you know runway heading will be aprox 140 (runway 14).. so you need to visualize the approach. You'd fly the 180 like you were told (because there's not much left for the tower to tell you on an instrument flight.. you've been given a heading that will intercept the ILS), until the localizer starts coming in, and then turn runway heading. In short.. you know where you are.. you know where the airport is.. and you know what runway heading will be.. "situational awareness"  ;)

What loomex has suggested works, but relying on an autopilot, until you get the whole picture, and can do it manually, is kinda pointless. The beauty to MSFS is that it can teach you to do piloting stuff  :D.. not just be a passenger as the autopilot does it.

Flying instrument approaches in big jets, before you can find an airport (without the GPS) and line yourself up with the runway (or just enter a pattern) in a little Cessna.. is like trying to run, before learning to crawl.

[Nexusys]

Im learning... im learning!!... yay!! ok, i've been to situation where i tried to land at LFBO, it was soo overcast! i only can see the runway at 3 sec before i touched down. my way of doing it by using GPS. because i set it in flight planner, so im only have to control altitude, speed, flap, and gear to land. by doing that, is the pilot use this method in real life as well?

So, which sort of thing when the ATC guide you to the airport and ask me to report the airport on sight?

[Brett_Henderson]

OK.. park those jets... fuel up the C172 and start here:


http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2 ... 1195085337

[macca22au]

I'm with Brett.  Learn to walk before you run.

Get into something slow, like the C172.  Use the Learning Centre.

Of course you own it, so you can do what you like, but ab initio (from the beginning) training in a heavy jet is not the way the airlines do it!

[Nexusys]

thanks for the advise.... i'll learn to crawl before i walk, then run
cheers everyone.