What to do

The first stage is to decide weather or not you can use the ILS approach or not. There are a few things which greatly affect weather or not the ILS works. Firstly you need to be in the range of the ILS, if you remember from the last section I told you that you are directed by a radar station, well the problem is this.

You need to be in range of the runway with the ILS, it works from about a 30 mile radius. If your not in that radius you wont be able to receive that information.

Okay in this case, you can tell if you are in range by using the GPS system or the map. In fact you can tell allot from these 2. By just looking at the GPS, you can get a general idea of how far away you are from the runway. I will admit this might be a little confusing, so I will do a full example in a minute.

Then you need to consider weather you are in some sort of line with in it. You can receive a signal from the side of the runway. Although ILS is used to line you up, it acts not as a navigator, but as something on which to land perfectly.

Again, in this case all you have to be doing is looking at your GPS system and from looking at that turning to go in the general direction of the runway. The GPS is really simple and gives you a more general idea.

You need to be tuned into the correct ils frequency.

This one seems quite obvious. Well at least to me it does. There are a fair few ILs frequencies in one area, you need to tune to just one. So where do you find out the runway frequency? I think its time I brought out that example.

The example.

Okay for this example I want you to go into the "learn to fly section", in flight simulator 2002. Then go to the instrument rating lessons. Then select the flight "lesson 2: ILs approach", I thought having rod there might help. Select that flight, and when you get into this flight change the weather from the top menu bar, World, weather, then go to clear all weather. That makes it easier to see what your doing. I recommend taking this flight later in foggy conditions, but for now lets do it nice and easily.

Let rod explain himself, he will just go over what I said earlier, and possibly a bit more.

Okay now lets have a look at what we are going to do visually, take a look at the map by pressing the maps special button in the cockpit. It should look like diagram 1. Its a bit small, but you should be able to see that your map looks much the same as this, apart from the black lines. Those black lines indicate your basic flight path, you fly towards the runway centre line, and then you turn to face the runway. You will turn when the horizontal(up right) needle starts to move, and then you will just follow the runway in, trying as best as you can to stay on that path. Of coarse that would be too simple, wouldn't it. Unfortunately whilst doing that at the same time you have to stay at the altitude rod tells you to stay at until the glide slope starts to move down. Wait until the glide slope is centred (on the middle line), and then begin to descend at about 600 feet per minute.  If you descend too fast and get too low, don't increase your altitude, just stay that your current altitude and wait for the glide slope needle to centre. If however you descend too little then start to descend more. I would say that the most difficult thing about this is trying to get the altitude and staying on the runway centre line at the same time quite a challenging thing. When you get it right however and land perfectly on the runway, you will feel good about it. If ever you find that exercise a little difficult look out the window and see where you are, then look at your Vor 1 indicator. It will tell you much the same thing as what you would see outside the window. When you think that you have mastered this challenge, try it in foggy conditions. Remember that when you do it fog, its not cheating to look at the map and see where you are, it helps you too visualise it. Remember of coarse that you are landing at KBFI, not KSEA.

Tuning the radio's.

Now being able to land using ILs is pretty good, but it doesn't work unless you have tuned the radios. In that flight rod tuned the radios for you. On your own you have to tune your own radio. When you think you have mastered this challenge, move onto the section tuning the radios.

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