Pilot Instruction - From simulation to reality

.Pilot Instruction

From simulation to reality

Passing the checkride
As the instructor's voice tells you, take off and climb to 2000 ft. Set to full throttle and climb at 80-85 kts. At 1900 ft, reduce throttle to 2200 rpm. Continue climbing and level off at 2000. As instructed, turn to 090. Recheck tach for 2200 rpm. Maintain 2000 ft, airspeed should increase to about 95 kts. Level out at 090. As instructed, look right and left for aircraft.
Now the tricky part! Left turn to 45 degrees, quickly but smoothly (on AI, Left wing on second solid white line). Increase throttle to 3/4 (about 2350 rpm) and ease back on the elevator. Ease into left full rudder. Watch your airspeed and VSI closely! Airspeed should be steady at 100 kts. VSI will bob a little, but should be close to 0. Maintain 45 degree bank.
To reiterate, if you've entered into the steep turn well, you are maintaining 45 degree bank, at about 2350 rpm, 100 kts, full left rudder, no change on VSI. You need to roll out at 090.Watch your altitude as your plane will want to pitch up. Ease off rudder and decrease throttle. Level at 090. YOu should get the green light from the bitc.. er a instructor.
Now to give you a heads up on the second half of the flight. You will be instructed to turn to heading 120 for the Tacoma Narrows Airport. You are to enter a Left Downwind approach. The airport can be spotted around DME 15 (I didn't check to see what VOR we are tuned). You will see a bridge pop up on the right, the airport is directly in front of that. At about DME 14.5, I changed heading to 150; for some reason the instructor has been quiet unless I make this small heading change. I also began reducing altitude to about 1500 ft. The instructor will come alive about DME 14 and tell you to turn to a heading of 180 and descend to 1300 ft. Your almost there.
Level at 1300 ft, turn downwind and enter a standard traffic pattern to RWY 35. Land, come to a complete stop.

Charts for ATP and Commercial lessons
These are charts that didn't make it to the production press of FS2002 and are for the commercial and APT lessons.
http://www.microsoft.com/games/fs2002/articles_charts.asp

ATP check ride
Even though the instructor tells you that it's okay to fly the 60 degree radial for 1 minute and a half after reaching the Calverton holding point and then turn right to intercept the inbound 90 degree holding point, you will fail if you attempt it this way.

So rather than do that, fly parallel to the 90 radial outbound for 1 minute and a half and then turn left (tear drop entry). Hold 8000 feet and do a right turn holding pattern when you reach the Calverton VOR. Fly one revolution and you'll be allowed to proceed with the rest of the checkride.

Mastering the autopilot
For Autopilot tutorial click >> here

Not failing the hold on checkride
If you fly a parallel entry instead of the teardrop entry she (The examiner) suggests, you will pass this part of the checkride. Once you are established on the inbound radial and she asks you to request the approach, you will know that you have been successful.

Some suggestions for the hold: fly the reciprocal for about 45 seconds before turning LEFT towards the VOR. You will have to turn onto about 210; watch the RMI & DME and at about 2.6 NM, start a right turn towards 270 - this should get you almost overhead the VOR so that you can continue the turn onto the outbound heading of 090. If you maintain about 200 KTS with flap 1 or 2, your radius of turn will be smaller. Once you are cleared to proceed to Lokks (21.3 miles away), clean up the flap and increase the speed otherwise you could be up there all day or night, but DON'T exceed 250 KTS ... and now for the ILS.

Pass criteria ATP checkride
The pass criteria are actually rather lax, compared to the real life values.

For instance, the airspeed can be anything between 80 and 120 KIAS, and the altitude may vary between 1800 and 2200 ft. However, the examiner also checks how you handle the controls. You must not exceed 75 % aileron or rudderr reflections, 95 % nose up elevator or 55% nose down elevator. If you exceed these values more than three times during the turn, you will fail the checkride!

Instrument Checkride only:

In addition, the instrument checkride seems to have the following attitude limits:
        nMaxLBank               = -40;
        nMinLBank               = 0;
        nWarnLBank              = -35;
        nMaxRBank               = 40;
        nMinRBank               = 0;
        nWarnRBank              = 35;
        nMaxPitch               = 25;
        nWarnPitchUp            = 20;
        nMinPitch               = -15;
        nWarnPitchDn            = -10;

Commercial test
You won't find the charts for the commercial checkride anywhere in your FS2002 install. There are some charts in the charts folder of your install directory, but only for some of the lessons and the adventure flights.

Here is a link to a good source of free approach plates on the net:

http://edj.net/cgi-bin/echoplate.pl

The chart you need for the checkride is TIX ILS RWY 36 (Titusville Space Coast)

Mastering a 747 approach
When you are above FL290, (From FL290 you just start your descent directly with the Autopilot in the speed mode to maintain 300kt descent), you start your descent with the autopilot in the Mach Mode maintaining .82M and the throttles between 55 % to 60% (this RPM is required to keep the Nacelle AntiIce going if you are descending thru icing conditions) and accept whatever rate of descent you get. It will be around 1800 to 2000 fpm depending on your flight level and obviously as you keep descending the autopilot will be increasing the nose down attitude to keep increasing the speed to maintain the mach at .82.

As the speed keeps increasing you will come to a stage when the speed is now 300kt to maintain that .82M . At this time, you change the autopilot to Speed mode so that it maintains a constant speed of 300kts from now on and this will occur close to 29000 to 30000ft.

From now on, you can throttle back all the way to idle. In this configuration gradually you will settle down at a rate of descent of 2500ft per minute.

Now You are to keep checking your descent progress in terms of your height (I mean the aircraft's altitude ;-) vis a vis distance to the landing runway. If your distance to landing runway is say 100nm then you should be at 28000ft. For each 10nm deduct 3000ft. For example at 40nm you should be at 10000 ft. This caters for descent at 300kt.

If you are high then use the speedbrakes which will increase the R.O.D. and assess the situation at the next checkpoint (It is a good idea to have these checkpoints of 100,90,80,70, nm from the landing runway.. If you want to be more proficient, you should also cater for this as TRCK miles to run.

ie If you are coming in the landing direction itself, then TRACK miles = DME distance if DME is on airport and not remotely located.

If you are coming at 90deg angle to landing runway,
TRACK miles = DME+ 10nm for final run.

If you are coming in reciprocal direction to landing rwy,
TRACK MILES = DME + 10nm for final run +5 nm for the reciprocal turn+10nm for the extra run to reach turning point on the other side of the rwy.

The TRACK miles will be constant for the height and so you should assess the DME accordingly)

At 10000ft you reduce speed to 250 kts. You will use about 7 to 10 nm in this slowing down process.

Now maintaining 250 kt, your descent profile should be,30nm should be 9000ft 20nm should be 6000ft
and from 20nm onwards , start your flap extension schedule and get on to initial approach condition of Flaps 10 and speed around 180 kt and then on once you get ILS intercept clearance take F20.

Once on Localiser intercept, one dot glideslope up, take gear down. On glideslope intercept Take Flap25 speed around 150kt(it will depend on weight but 150kt is a good figure. Say at1500ft to 1000ft take full flaps and fly at your vapproach speed which is dependant on weight, and the thumb rule is:

For 250Ton weight, 140kt

For each 10Ton variation Deduct/increase this by 3kt.

Instrument checkride
Firstly, you will need the VOR 34L/R approach chart for KSEA. Found in your charts/lessons folder KSEA-VOR.gif. Follow the information on the chart and the examiner will be silent while you make your approach. Do not go below any of the published altitudes for the approach or you will fail. At some point, your examiner will tell you to "go around". Perform the published missed approach. ie: climb to 2100ft and fly to PARKK.

At PARKK the examiner will tell you to climb and maintain 3000, turn left HDG 160 direct to the SEA VOR to hold on the 140 radial. Or something to that effect.

Use a parallel entry to enter the hold. Check out figure 18-3 on page 178 of Rod Machado's Ground School Book. You are in position 'A' coming from PARKK toward SEA. Cross the VOR and turn left HDG 140. Fly HDG 140 for one minute then turn left and come all the way around to intercept the 140 radial on HDG 320. Again... refer to the parallel entry diagram (figure 18-3). This will help you "see" what you need to do. To complete the hold you would make a standard rate right turn to HDG 140 and fly for one minute, make a standard rate right turn, intercept the radial again on HDG 320 and keep this up till you are given another clearance. However, in the checkride, you will not be required to do even one "lap" of the holding pattern. Once you successfully perform the parallel entry, you will be given your clearance for the ILS 13R approach at BFI.

Now you need KBFI-ILS.gif from your charts/lessons folder. Continuing from the hold, you would cross the VOR on HDG 320, then turn right to 323 and track that radial to NOLLA and continue with the published ILS 13R approach to BFI including the procedure turn at NOLLA.