Possible Dumb Newbie Alert!

https://forum.flyawaysimulation.com/forum/topic/8281/landing-via-atc-vfr/

Let me know if thats helps!

Thanks for the amazingly quick response.

Its a good posting, but it says that the ILS only gives me headings to the vectors, which I would have thought the APP would the take over?

Am I correct?

bud thats outta my hands now, i somehow end up on thr runway with no other planes near by so im ok 😛 sorry i cant help you more. someone else might tho.

You have to make sure that you have the little toggle switch marked GPS/NAV switched to GPS in order to use a GPS approach, and if you want to use the ILS with the NAV 1 Radio, have the little switch pointing at the NAV part.

Let me add a few quick notes, I apologize if you already know all this stuff:

When you want to fly from airport A to airport B IFR (Instrument Flight Rules, meaning "not looking at the ground at all"), there are a few distinct phases:

SID (Standard Instrument Departure): You can't just leave an airport and fly around. There are "roads in the sky" and the SID is your map to following a road from the runway to the exit point from the airport area. While flying an SID, you are usually in contact with Departure (or Approach/Departure).

En Route: At the exit point, the airport is no longer responsible for you and you change frequency to a "Control center". They follow your flight path and assign altitudes etc. Again, you don't fly willy-nilly, you follow your flight plan on "roads" called "airways". Jet airways are high altitude (above FL240) and "Victor" airways are lower. The en route part of your flight drops you off at an airport entry point (an exit point, just the other way 😉 ). Now it's time for the...

STAR (Standard Arrival): This could be considered the opposite of an SID. It takes you from a point high up in the sky and deposits you (via a sequence of specific directions and actions) not on the runway, but at a point where the last part begins (which I think was your main question).

The Approach: The approach is.. well, just that. It's the final leg of the flight, from a point near the airport (both horizontally and vertically near) to the runway. Approaches can be visual (but never under IFR), which is a non-precision approach, or ILS (a precision approach), or VORDME (another precision approach).

The ILS approach (since you asked), requires you to tune the NAV radio to a frequency of a beacon (the "ILS localizer"), which stands at the runway threshold and emits two directional beams, one for altitude (up/down) and one for heading (left/right). Each ILS frequency is accompanied by a heading, the only correct heading that will put you on the runway and not on the fields. You put that heading into your CRS (course) selector (NOT the HDG).

Now, I am not going to explain how to establish on the beam, but I will say this: When ATC tells you "turn left heading 020, cleared for ILS approach, runway 05, report established on the localizer" or something to that effect, it means that they have vectored you (guided you) to the last point of the STAR and now, if you follow their heading (020 in this example) you will cross the localizer beam at such a point, that you can easily track and follow it to the ground. After that, you don't get any more ATC guidance, except the clearance to land. It is up to you to follow the ILS.

For all the above (SID, En route, STAR, Approach [VOR/DME, ILS] there are charts. A few examples can be found in FS9 I think, but most of them are out there on the internet, most of them free. Get a few, study them, read some tutorials and ask any questions you may have.

Hope it helps 🙂

Here are some guides that will also help you.

https://forum.flyawaysimulation.com/forum/topic/8080/ils-approach-guide-tutorial/