FAPE to FACT - Route planning riddle I cannot solve

[aprodigyyy]

I’m trying to get my head around this but there must be something I just don’t get yet.

Intention: Going from FAPE to FACT while using ILS 01 as my arrival.

Using Little Navmap I chose FAPE (Port Elizabeth) as my departure and FACT (Kapstadt International) as my destination. FAPE has no SIDs available so I just go direct while leaving from RW26. So far, so good.

For Kapstadt there are a few STARs and Approaches available and trying them out in Little Navmap I though going with the STAR GETE1A would be quite a good idea:

However, it seems to get me just directly to the airport without even trying to align me with what the STARs chart is showing to me:

So i thought adding the approach ILS 01 would be an idea and it kind of looks good in Little Navmap (even though there’s some quite steep turn down at the southern coast) but trying to import this plan into Navigraph Charts the route got kind of messed up again.

First of all, Navigraph doesn’t like the “Heading to manual termination” (not even sure what that is but oh well), so I just delete it there but in the end it looks kind of this:

which is still somewhat different from what it looks like in Little Navmap - and I’m not even speaking about this little green notch going nowhere.

So, I’m wondering what I’m doing wrong here and furthermore, why is Navigraph bothered by these “manual” entries Little Navmap puts in the route.

[OffSchedDescent]

The purple path on your last image seems to show the full ILS01 approach, beginning at CTV overhead the airport, then backtracking on a heading of 189°, followed by a procedure turn to the final approach course.
The STAR, however, assumes that you will not fly the full ILS approach starting at CTV, but intercept the localizer directly from a heading of 190°. The reason the route in LittleNavmap does not seem to match, is that there is no defined waypoint for your turn from heading 190° to the final approach course. As the STAR description says, the last part of the STAR is radar vectoring by ATC, so there is no way for LittleNavmap to depict that in your flight plan.
When flying the approach, when passing D120I (= D9.0 CTV) you should switch to HDG mode, fly a heading of 190°, and then (lacking proper ATC) at your discretion make a 180° right turn to intercept the localizer, staying withing 16 DME of CTV.
If you still want your flight plan to reflect what you will be flying (which in this case it normally wouldn’t), you could try defining custom waypoints to match the last segment as shown on the STAR chart.

I hope that helps! And happy landings, you have definitely chosen a beautiful destination to fly to!

[aprodigyyy]

Thanks - what you explained about flying that STAR makes perfect sense to me now. Just a few quick questions if you don’t mind:

1.) You wrote that “the STAR description says that the last part of it is radar vectoring by ATC”. Since I’m still going through this and still have some way to go and didn’t stumble over it yet, just what makes it indicative that the STAR is working like this? Is it the A at the end of GETE-1A? From studying the STARs chart I just don’t know where one is getting information that from, yet.

2.) So, that little green notch going south and ends all of sudden in Navigraphs Charts, as in my last screenshot shown, is where D120I is located and where I’m supposed to be doing the heading south 190°, stay within those 16 DME of CTV and I should have not chosen the ILS01 approach in the first place since ATC would vector my in (in a perferct sim world) from where this green line leaves off?

3.) Flying the “full ILS01 approach” aside from going for a STAR seems pretty crazy to me considering that it’s going right over this probably somewhat busy airport and the workload ATC has to deal with separating all the planes coming and going. I read that the initial approach altitude is supposed to be at 6500’ but I’m still wondering how viable it is to go directly for ILS01 instead of a STAR designated for such an airport.

Thank you again for sharing your knowledge, @OffSchedDescent - very much appreciated!

[OffSchedDescent]

I’m glad if I could help! Regarding your questions:

1. The flight path indicated by those arrowheads instead of a black line indicates that it is a visual or vectoring segment. The chart issued by the South African Civil Aviation Authority is more explicit in this case. The letter “A” in the name of the STAR is a “route designator”. The way it is used varies across different parts of the world. (The digit before that indicates the revision of the STAR. So if the procedure is ever altered, the new one will get the designation “GETEN 2A” and so forth.)

2. Practically, yes. You will still be flying the ILS01 approach as per the published chart but simply use a different entry point, so to speak.

3. As you can see from the description in the STAR chart referenced above, one example of the full ILS approach being flown would be in case of radio failure. In any case, the altitude of 6,500’ should prevent any conflicts with traffic landing or taking off. While all the STARs for runway 01 seem to have a similar vectoring segment at the end, the full approach may be useful for GA IFR traffic not arriving via a high-altitude airway. However I am not familiar with the actual ATC procedures at FACT. Generally, when traffic and terrain allow it is not unusual for ATC to provide vectors at some point during any approach to simplify things.

[aprodigyyy]

Awesome - and again, much appreciated.

You lifted quite some clouds hovering over many questions I was having!