A bit lost about ILS procedure

User Support Hub ATC, Traffic & NAVAIDs
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Once upon a time, I decided to engage in a long flight in career mode. I was tasked to transport 3 passengers from Rotterdam to Southampton in a 172 Skyhawk on a windy day and “Oh boy, was I in trouble!”.

Firstly I noticed a bit late that the fuel was going to not be enough (was running at 2300 rpm with an adapted mixture – I followed the rpm trick to get as lean as possible). When I start to think I’d not make it, I decided to run very lean (23%) and lower the throttle to keep flying, just barely. This is not quite the main issue, because I made it, but I think something wasn’t right with the flight plan the company gave me.

Wind aside, everything was fine – except the warning for low fuel, until I reached Southampton. The tower asked me to get up to 9000 feet (from 7000), which I did quite reluctantly looking at the fuel gauge the entire time. To add to the injury, they told me to descend back to 7000 shortly after I reached the designated altitude (my tanks thank you good sir, they feel lighter). And finally, the tower told me I was allowed to land from SAM on runway 20, as I was approaching from the south.

And that’s where issues really started. The GPS on my G1000 told me to take a route around southampton to reach SAM. And there I didn’t knew if it meant I had to reach SAM directly or if I should follow the GPS. I figured I should start my descent, since, if I understood correctly, I should be at 3000 feet when reaching SAM (tell me if I’m wrong, this is all terribly complex to me), so I went a bit nuts, did nothing good and reached a point where I was about to land (I was allowed to at the moment), when the game crashed as I was 100 feet over the runway.

So I thought that was enough for the day (it was 5AM in my real time, not the best time to make good decisions), and I tried it again today, with more fuel.

Fast forward, everything went well, I’m coming at southampton by the aforementioned south passage (don’t remember the name of the VOR/DME I was coming from) and I’m clear to reach SAM for landing. Yet again, the GPS tells me one thing, the blue gates of the flight assist in game tells me another thing, and I’m a bit lost again. So, here am I, and I’m telling myself this : Tower tells me to reach SAM but not how I should reach it, so let’s head directly for SAM and disregard the GPS. But here I have an issue: How can I go to SAM without looking at the ingame maps (convenient, but I don’t think in a real plane, you have a map telling your plane location, and the G1000 doesn’t tell me where is SAM). So I check about SAM in the flight plane, get its frequency, enter it in NAV1, and it does not points to SAM (I’m sure I didn’t made a mistake on the frequency stated in the EFB). Since I’ve noticed SAM is just above the airport, I decided to go straight for the airport as I was descending to 3000 feet. After that, the ingame flight assistance started to be useful again, but I never saw the indicators for localizer and glide slope and resorted to a landing by sight (which was fine, it was windy, so windy I thought I’d never get on the runway, or would glide off it, but the visibility was good).

So, here, I’m looking for some kind of assistance from you guys, to explain me what I did wrong, what I should have done, how I should have known what I should have done, and how I can make it with in-game (or external if there’s no other way) resources.

Thank you for your patience for reading this, I hope I didn’t made it too boring, and thanks in advance for your precious insights.

By the way, I’m playing full vanilla at the moment, and you may have noticed that I’m not quite used to ILS terms and procedures, so if there are things i MUST read to understand your answer, please be kind to point me to the right direction.

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My guess is you might have forgotten I switch the OBS in your primary display to LOC.

ILS RW20 should be 110.75 which you put as NAV frequency and then toggle from GPS to LOC

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You mean I should have activated the frequency to get the ILS LOC and GS ? I think I overrode NAV1 with SAM’s frequency.
But what is SAM’s frequency for, since i don’t think it was pointing to SAM.

Wait a second. I have one more question. You said I should have put the Runway 20 frequency in NAV1, and it would affect the GPS? ■■■■, I don’t undertand my instruments :-/
I don’t know how to put it to LOC, for example.

Is there a guide about using the G1000?

But can you tell me if I was right to head right towards SAM or if I should have sticked to the registered approach?

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I’m not a great expert when it comes to approach charts, but the basics are relatively simple. I’d recommend that you look up some tutorials on youtube, there are many good ones (for ILS in general, approach plates and for the G1000). Just take your time, it’s fun starting to understand it :slight_smile:

So from what I understand on Southampton:

The approach procedure starts at SAM at 3000ft, so practically over the airport.

From there you need to fly northeast until you are approx 7.2miles away from SAM, then left-turn. You can track that with SAM frequency in NAV2 for example

At the same time have 110.75 tuned on NAV1, and as soon as you finished the left turn, switch the OBS to LOC. Only then the plane will pickup the ILS signal and let you activate APPR for taking the glideslope down to the runway.

1 Like
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There’s a lot to unpack here. First of all, awesome that you’re getting so into it and I think you’ll find plenty of help. But you’re basically asking “how do I navigate,” which is a very large subject. And the answer is complex, starts with “it depends.” Depends on weather conditions, aircraft performance (specifically, climb and service ceiling), and depends on which regulations you fall under, as they vary throughout the world.

In most cases if you’re in a light aircraft and the weather is good, you just fly visually, under Visual Flight Rules (VFR). The sim is more than good enough to allow for that, but there are some techniques involved. What can help this is using your GPS for general guidance, or using radio navigation (VOR and NDB, both of which are getting thinner in coverage). The career mode has a lot of suggested pathing, but you don’t necessary need to follow the exact path during cross country flights under VFR. Same with ATC - I fly in the US and I tend not to use it unless it’s required. The in-sim ATC is pretty poor, so I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in it.

If the weather is poor, or you’re bound by regulation (or maybe you just want to), flying under Instrument Flight Rules has a lot more stipulations. A more organized and regimented method for sure, but it has a lot of rules and requires a lot of knowledge; not just how to follow a procedure, but how to orient and navigate the aircraft without outside visual references. Here you’re bound to ATC, which again is not great in the sim.

To get into the specifics of your question, if you are IFR and flying an ILS approach, you have to press the CDI button so it says LOC and the needles are green. You can’t just use GPS course guidance (magenta line/needles) for the final portion of an ILS or LOC approach - you have to use the actual (radio) localizer. But if you’re just using it for lateral guidance while VFR you can kind of do either.

As far as following the “full procedure” on the approach chart - instrument-rated pilots have to know how to do this, however most commonly ATC will give you vectors to the final approach course. This varies, of course, by region, traffic, weather, and whether ATC facilities exist at your destination airport. And it’s fun to practice the full procedure, but it’s not super realistic to do them every time. Sometimes you’ll start a procedure from an initial approach fix (IAF) and ATC will give you a shortcut or break you off entirely. Same with departure (SID) and arrival (STAR) procedures.

Bottom line, it’s never really wrapped into a nice, neat package - it’s variable and flexible and all that background knowledge is used in bits and pieces to put together an entire flight.

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Thanks for the support. I’ve played on older simulation last century (now I really feel old :smiley:), and never really got to the point to fly IFR. Here, the game encourages you to (the career mode is a nice incentive to run different flight types in different regions).

I think I need to practice more and maybe invest in a AI ATC software. I’ll ponder about that while trying to get a better grip about ATC procedures and VFR/IFR.

1 Like
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That’s awesome, I’m probably right there with you in terms of using ancient sims back in the day. I love how far it’s come!

While VATSIM or PilotEdge services are the closest thing you’ll get to real-world ops, they can be somewhat unforgiving to the uninitiated and aren’t always available in the area in which you want to fly. In the latter case, I will often use BeyondATC as it’s much closer to what in-sim ATC should be. Say Intentions also comes highly recommended by folks, but I’ve not used it.

That said, the primary point of ATC in the real world is to keep you from running into other airplanes and in the sim it kind of loses the plot - more bound to following by-the-book procedure, oftentimes even if there’s not other traffic. In that sense, you will still have to learn “the code” to use it successfully, which also acts as a reasonable primer to the world of IFR (BATC is still working on the VFR part). But like I said above, it’s not necessarily how these things work in the real-world, where charted procedures are as often as not overridden and adjusted when conditions allow, based on the premise of maintaining the flow of traffic and avoiding touching other planes.

I’d love to add some specific insight where I can and I’m sure others will as well.

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Try KIP ON THE GROUND on you tube. I’ve got his vid in my watch later vids, he explains ILS in the garmin1000 brilliantly, that’s how I learned it. Good luck

1 Like
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Ignore the blue gates, ie. landing ribbon, or better yet, turn it off completely.

Then in a nutshell…

Enter your approach into the Garmin from the PROC page or via the EFB.

Bring up the FPL page and fly direct via GPS to the IF or FA, depending upon how far out the IF is. If you activated the approach when you loaded it, you’ll have to press OBS to switch back from VLOC to GPS

Upon reaching the FA, activate the approach either with the Garmin PROC page or the APR button on the autopilot.

Confirm that the Garmin now says VLOC TERM and you should be able to capture the localizer and glide path. Intercept the glidepath from below.

Disconnect AP at 200’ agl and land manually.

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Hello and thanks for your advice.
Even after looking at some videos, as was advised by others, it’s still not quite easy to get it. I have to learn how to use the tools in the plane and outside the hard way.

I’ve managed to get intercepted by ILS yesterday at RJOA. Had to understand why the AP wasn’t descending (because it was in ALT mode), why the AP didn’t want to get out of the ALT mode (don’t know exactly, but I had to change it to VS mode, in order for GS to get armed).

And to add to the difficulty, you have to be quite precise for the AP to pick-up the LOC and the GS. When you’re fiddling around, it’s easy to drift out of the intended path, disarming LOC and GS from the AP.
I need more practice, but I’m starting to get it.

I’m a bit disappointed that the game does not gives any tutorial about it. In career mode, there is an IFR certification, but it’s a joke and it does not helps you in any way to really start any IFR flight yourself.

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I know the sim autopilot can be wonky, sometimes not acting like the real aircraft and doing unexpected things. I’d always recommend starting out hand-flying in clear weather, tracking nav courses, then work up to instrument approaches - this is part and parcel of how it’s usually done in real-world training (heck, I didn’t fly a plane with an autopilot until well after I received my certificates). Then you can add the flight director (without autopilot) and see how the various modalities engage and disengage (were it engaged, the autopilot will notionally do what the flight director is cueing). Then once you know the flow and setup, you can couple the autopilot and let it do most of the work. I rarely, if ever use the autopilot in the sim; only in longer cruise legs - hand-flying approaches is really challenging and fun.