The ILS Approach

From Virtual Skies MRC

The first thing to know about ILS is it used in bad weather with poor visibillity. Also you have to find the ils frequencies for the runway you intend to land on.

You can find these by double clicking an airport in fsx and it will bring up a list of frequencies for the runways and facillities at that airport. Take a note of the ils freq of your chosen runway. Later on in this article you will see what significance this frequency has. Now you have this frequency start up your flight.

Before you go flying tune this radio into your nav 1 radio. This is assuming you are flying the Boeing 737-800 just to let you know. Press shift 2 tom bring up the radio panel and lets say you are flying to Stansted Airport (EGSS) then tune 110.30 into the nav 1 radio on the left display. Then click the middle switch to swap the two frequencies making 109.35 the active Nav1 frequency. This frequency is now tuned into that beacon. The rwy at EMA has a beacon at either end for the ILS freq. say your landing rwy 27 at EMA then you are tuned into the ILS frequency located near the runway.

This beacon comunicates with your plane sending and receiving information from your plane. The information most important to us is the information transmitted which tells us were we are and how high we are relative to the rwy touchdown zone. This also enables a Automatic Approach and Landing if chosen (more on this later in the article). Now start your flight, lets skip right to the approach.

Your on approach to rwy 23 at stansted. Now What? well one thing i forgot too mention witht he radio panel. Bring back up the radio panel and look at the bottom where it has all the names of the different radio types and switches of them. Click the button underneath where it says Nav 1 to enable this frequency.

Now when your entering the approach set your autopilot at an altitude below 2500 for the ils auto approach to work. If being vectored by ATC then click the GPS/NAV Switch to NAV enabling the ILS 110.30 frequency. If you are facing the runway then your plane should start lining itself up providing you have nav hold on and you are within the ILS Beacon Range. Both of which are important factors. also another key factor is you should only engage ILS when you are facing the runway.

Otherwise the ils seems to get confused. Now your plane should be lining up for rwy 23 and you should be at 2500. Now some more terminology before you go further on.: Localizer: This is what you intercept just before touchdown. This Localizer helps planes to land automatically and too show wether the pilots are on the glideslope and lined up. Also you must understand what the glideslope is.

The glideslope is a systems that helps the plane to descend or help the pilots if flown manually. This glideslope system puts the plane into it;s final descent for the rwy avoiding ground obstacles such as buildings and trees. This is a cruicial system for jet pilots in Modern times and makes flying much safer.

Ok enough of the terminology lets use it in flight: 10 miles from the localizer which at EGSS for rwy 23, you should enable Appraoch Hold switch located next to altitude Hold. Depending on the range of the ILS transmitter you Approach Hold may kick in at 20nm out or 4nm out from the localizer then plane will capture the glideslope and start it's final descent assuming you choose to approahc automatically.

The distance at which aircraft capture the glideslope varies with airports and the altitude at which you approach the runway. When the plane has captured the glideslope and descending towards the runway this is known as "fully established on the localizer". Then right before touch down or whenever you feel comfortable too disengage auto pilot to land. This is roughly how to land using ils in automated mode.

This is useful in extremely thick fog.

Flying An ILS Approach Manually

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