What is...

[aviationfanatic87]

I have a few what is questions. What is autofeather on the beechcrafts for and what does it do? Secondly what does it mean when you get clearance from the tower,"Beechcraft N16472 landing on runway 32 left number one for landing." What does number one for landing mean? Thirdly I don't get the whole VOR ILS approach thing what is that all about and how do I do it correctly?

[MattNW]

I believe Autofeather is to keep you from over reving your engines during high power output.

Number one for landing simply means there's nobody ahead of you for landing. That's kind of misleading however since some of the AI traffic thinks nothing of running you down and cutting in ahead of you (I think it has something to do with the relative speeds of aircraft when you are flying a small plane).

Instrument flying is a pretty complicated topic and would take a lot more explaining than possible on a web board. In short VOR is a directional signal that your avionics can detect and measure your position relative to the broadcast station. By using this you can tell the direction and sometimes distance from the station. If you use two or more stations and get  a fix from each one you can find where the bearings cross which should be the position of your airplane.

ILS is a beam that's broadcast from the edge of a runway upward at an angle that your airplane can home on for landing in bad weather or at night. It can lead you down close enough to the runway for you to visually find it and land. Optimally a plane flying down an ILS beam can land it'self but not many pilots actually do.

[Brett_Henderson]

Auto-feather is a function on advanced variable-pitch props. In the event of an engine out, the props will feather,, meaning the blades will pretty much line up as to present the least ammount of drag. That way you won't lose as much airspeed or have as much yaw to fight with one engine out,,or ,, be able to glide further with both engines out.
 

[siemerh]

I agree with MattNW on number one to land.  Recently flying in to Myrtle Beach in my ultralight, I was given number two to land.  By the time I got lined up on final at 35 KIAS, numbers 3,4 and 5 landed and I was told to go around.  Not wanting to spend anotherr half hour in the pattern, and it was getting dark, I ignored them and landed on an empty taxi way amoungst a lot of of "you are not cleared to land".  Oh well.

[packercolinl]

Don't worry about the airspeed I still that at 140kts approach. Then I land anyway because I am #1 for landing,I mean,did not the controller just tell me I was!!

[fisharno]

Maybe take the lessons on the CD. Very helpful. Also see here in the Simviation Tutorials. There's a really good one on ILS approaches.

http://www.simviation.com/files/1misc/ILSTUTORIAL.zip

Download the zip file and read thru it. Maybe even print it out for future reference.

Good luck.