Airport for landing

[wingshigh.g]

Hi, I am new to this and have been practicing landing. The mission for take off and landing training requires a long flight before I can land at the designated airport. I have been landing at the same airport I have been taking off of, however when I turned on the ILS there is no steering bar showed up.

 

My question is that, do I need to do anything special before I choose to land on an airport so that I get the correct ILS information? Or even get AWACS to give me the "closest" airport?

 

Thanks for any help.

[Lord_Pyro]

There is a button which switches through the waypoints. If you are in ILS Mode the same button will switch through the different airports. The F15 and A10a won't show you any hints of which airfield is selected though. All you can do is to check heading and range (shown in HUD and HSI) to guess what airfield you have selected.

 

Don't forget to inform the Tower via Radio that you are inbound. They will tell you what direction you have to use for landings. If you land from the opposite direction, no ILS will appear and keep in mind that not every airport aupports ILS so you should consider to switch to an other airfield.

 

Also you should tell us which plane you are flying. The russian fastmovers have some optical supporters in NAV mode giving you somewhat of a tactical view.

(But i guess you are flying an F15?)

[fitness88]

Hi, I am new to this and have been practicing landing. The mission for take off and landing training requires a long flight before I can land at the designated airport. I have been landing at the same airport I have been taking off of, however when I turned on the ILS there is no steering bar showed up.

 

My question is that, do I need to do anything special before I choose to land on an airport so that I get the correct ILS information? Or even get AWACS to give me the "closest" airport?

 

Thanks for any help.

 

The MIGs and SUs have 'landing' as one of its NAV sub-modes, this will allow the ILS to steer you in provided the airport supports ILS.

[wingshigh.g]

I fly both F15 and Su27 as they are my favorate.

 

Lord_Pyro, thanks for giving me the directions, I was not paying attention to the necessary communication to the towers (although in the ramp start mission the tower did not respond to my request for taxi, request for take off, etc); also, I guess I need to read the article about the HSI again, it has been sometime since I read last time...

 

fitness88, thanks for the advice on the MIGs and SUs. I will try that. However would it help me to find the closest airport that supports ILS? You are refering to when I get in range of the airport that the ILS will steer me, correct?

[lumpypilot]

This one has been bothering me as well. I am also pretty new to this and am currently flying the F-15. I notice on the second campaign mission that on returning to the airfield to land the tower always responds with 'go to alternate'. Now I know from the briefing what the alternate airfield is supposed to be but how can I know which ILS to select if there's no indication which airfield they relate to? Seems a bit odd to ask you to land at a different airfield but give you no way to navigate and land there??

[Lord_Pyro]

If you contact Tower they tell you the desired runway AND they guide you to the point where the ILS will start guiding you by saying something like "fly heading xxx for yyy". xxx would be the heading and yyy the range in miles.

 

Taht "go to alternate" i never experienced so far (and i fly these sims for almost a decade now O.o) If there is some traffic they would tell you that you have to orbit, to turn cycles until they are free to handle you. But that doesn't affect the ILS in general, you still can land with ILS on your own without even noticing the tower beforehand. If you already know the direction.

 

Let me recommend this app for you:

 

http://simhq.com/_mobile/mobile_001a.html

 

There every airfield is listed with all frequencies, runway and ILS directions and even pictures of the airportlayout. By pressing F10 und centering the map on your plane (even if there are no symbols) you get your position and so you can also get the names of the airfields next to your location. Then simply check the availability and direction of ILS in the app. You wont need to inform the tower then. Its not nice to land without noticing them but hey, it's only KI and you are flying offline, it's a crime without any victims ;)

[fitness88]

This is a great source of runway and chart info...a must view!

 

C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Doc\Charts

[wingshigh.g]

Lord_Pyro, where could I find the procedure for each task? For example, take off, landing, to inform and communicate. For real pilots there might be known procedure, however for someone like myself would not know this unless we are provided with direction by someone like you.

 

Or did I miss something in the DCS documentation?

[lumpypilot]

Interesting that Lord_Pyro will give it a go. The 'go to alternate' seems to happen every time on that mission, I tried to land anyway one time ( just for giggles you understand :) ) and there was a huge crater in the middle of the runway so i assume the idea is the airfield has been bombed hence cant be used??

[Lord_Pyro]

@wingshigh: In FC3 you only need to open the radiomenue, press F5 and select the proper airfield and announce the ready for taxi/takeoff or startup.

In Bs or A10 you would have to setup the correct airfieldfrequencies.

 

If you ask for taxi, the tower will tell you which runway to choose. (he will tell you a two digitsnumber which are the first two digits of the course, so 24 would be hdg 240 and 01 would be 10) But there won't be any advices which will guide you to the runway so make yourself familiar with the airfieldlayout and know how to reach the right side of the runway.

 

For landing you just have to call inbound and the tower will talk you to the ILS turning point.

 

@lumpypilot: If there is a hole in the runway they will divert you to the other base, right. I would suggest you check per map your distance to the diversionbase. There is a rulerlike tool, which provides you heading and range to the field. Alternately you can select the airfield through the radiomenue and call the inbound. Again they will guide you to their ILS turningpoint. (where you would have to turn into the runway)

Another idea would be to check preflight where the field is located, fly (following the waypoints) to your normal airfield and then head to the diversionbase by just remembering where it was. You should be able to find it that way and if you are close you can just cycle through the airports in ILS-Navmode and take the one which has the closest range (should be somewhere around 0-2nm) That way you will be able to get the ILS Steerbars.

[lumpypilot]

Thanks Lord_Pyro, yes that makes sense to me. I think I was just expecting there to be something I was missing on identifying the correct ILS on the HUD that referenced which airfield it was.

I will jump on later and attempt to follow the alternate airfield Towers instructions, as you say as I approach it I should then just be able to manually select the closest ILS and land from there.