Hi Guys,
Apologies if this has been answered before but I have googled and seerch here and cannot find an answer.
If I’m flying a standard flight plan in 787 loaded with Simbrief etc and aircraft is following the GPS waypoints - how do I temporarily switch to following a VOR or NBD instead ?
To fly the 787 using VORs, in SimBrief during flight plan creation, scroll down to “Route Finder” and select it. Use the drop-down box for “Route Type” and select “VOR”. Then select “Find Route”. Remove any fixes or segments not needed. The route and flight plan will be generated using only VOR except for the approach (if using an ILS or LOC approach). VORs are displayed as waypoints on the LEGS page. The VOR radial is displayed on the NAV RAD screen. I’m not sure if SimBrief uses NDBs.
So in other words there’s no way to simply press a button to switch from GPS to VOR/NAV as you can in other aircraft ?
I assume that means that if you’re in middle of a planned GPS flight and need to switch to VOR you have to insert that VOR into the FMS in middle of GPS flight plan ?
To fly using VORs in 787 There are two ways of doing it.
First Method - You need to manually input the VOR in rad/nav page in FMS including the radial you want to fly. Once you have done that this will appear on your ND (Navigation display) assuming course lines are visible on ND (In reality this is a airline option). You can then use heading select with autopilot to fly onto that radial.
Second Method is to input the VOR into the legs page in FMS including the radial you wish to fly, then assuming you are within +/- 30 degrees of selected radial, You can use LNAV to fly to that VOR.
To fly NDBs - Same story as above.
There is no GPS/VOR NAV select switch in 787.
I don’t understand why do you need to fly with VORs only? Simbrief will generate a route which includes airways (which includes VORs/Fixes) which can be flown in LNAV throughout. Unless of course if you want to practise flying VORs or flying VOR/NDB approach.
There is a very good tutorial on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRsaoYaUJ-k.
Some approaches legally require the VOR reference to fly the approach. Thankfully, the 787 automatically tunes any required approach radio references, which satisfies this legal requirement. There’s no need to switch to a VOR-only tracking mode as the computed FMS path is already more accurate than flying by the radio reference and the system has the nav radio tuned. This is simulated in the sim 787.
Yep I am aware of that requirement and that is why I said above “Unless of course if you want to practise flying VORs or flying VOR/NDB approach”. Which in latter case, Having raw data navigational information is essential even if still flying the approach in LNAV/VNAV.
OK your first method says to enter VOR in FMS then used Heading Select wth Autopilot - but what tells the aircraft to fly to VOR instead of the actual selected Heading !?
See image above I have a VOR but using Heading Select it just always flys my selected heading …
I think you may be misunderstanding the information being given here.
The 787 doesn’t have a VOR radio nav following mode, as is the case with many modern airliners. There is not a way to directly fly using only the VOR. Instead, you can add the VOR as a waypoint in the FMS, and then you must navigate to it in some manual fashion (heading mode, direct-to, etc).
See the post by Bishop398 above - Most Modern airliners don’t have VOR tracking function as such and crews will normally use heading select mode or LNAV mode (using direct to function in FMS) to fly to/from VORs.
There are some exemptions however - for instance, In B737 you can use VOR/LOC function of the autopilot to track a specific radial from/to VOR.
In your situation lets say you want to fly to AV VOR which you have pre tuned, Use the heading select mode which you are already on to steer the airplane towards the beacon.
You can also put in AV in your legs page on the top (Make it active leg), execute and then use LNAV to fly to that VOR.
Ok thanks guys understood yes I had a feeling they was the case (ie manually dial the HDG to match the VOR) but just wanted to make sure.
As a side note thanks for thet video !! It’s now taught me how to fly am IAN approach for RNP only runways which is awesome.
I believe Airbus doesn’t call it IAN just FMC GS or similar
