Hi

Is it possible to talk to the tower of an airport before you reach it, it seems you have be nearly right on top of an airport sometimes, especially if its a densly populated airfield area, before it appears in your menu of airports.  Obviously flying a big plane takes a while to line up, I like to give myself at least 20 miles for the operation. but I can only get in touch with the tower from about 10 miles out. Now if you've approached an airport with the intention of landing on a certain airstrip and when you get there they direct to land from the opposite direction, that means having to set yourself all up again.
I've tryed tuning the radio manually to the tower but I dont see any landing options appear.

Phil (still flying happy  )

yeah which means listening to ATIS and trying to get the bearings into your head, which ways the airfield point, which ways the coming.  its headspinning some days.

Phil

No your not wrong, and is it me but when your landing isn't it proper procedure to give wind direction along with landing instrunctions  ???

Phil

you can talk to the airport at a range of 30 miles.

You can pull in ATIS as far out as 60 miles in most cases.  That will give you the active.  I put the ATIS frequency into COM2 (and turn on COM 2 in the radio stack of my Garmin 530) and keep contact with Center and Flight Following on COM 1 (not all a/c have 2 com radios).  COM 2 will be silent for a while but will suddenly light up when I hit its range and begin indicating the active.  I select an approach to the active on my GARMIN (or from approach plates from Clearance Unlimited's website) and begin following the approach.  Normally, I still won't see the airport in the ATC menu until 10-20 miles out (almost too late, as u pointed out, if you want to be lined up for the active ILS and don't already know it), but I am already inbound anyways and I then I just request a full stop. They seem to 'know' my approach, and just give me the final instructions and, at the FAF, clearance to land.  Things at non-towered airports are simpler of course.

One thing to factor in is the ILS/FAF intercept height and plan ahead so you have time to descend.  I use STARS from Clearance Unlimited site if available and they include arrival routes and heights. The Garmin provides arrivals too, but they don't have vertical guidance like plates do.  I use FS Nav also and it gives obstacle heights along the flight plan, but I have found they can be off.  Last nite I made an approach from Las vegas to San Diego without looking at a real plate.  When I planned my route in FSNAv it appeared that the highest point anywhere near this segment of the of my flight plan was 4500.  I had leveled off at 6500 and was working on setting up my approach  when I noticed the outline of the side of a mountain looming ahead (it was dark outside) and my ground radar said I was only 500 feet above ground level.  I had to pull up to clear.  Spilled the virtual coffee and wet the virtual pants.

Could be, but that was my original dilema, 10 miles is not a whole lot of time to set up an approach.

Not to worry, as I keep practicing my landings at different airfields/ports I'm sorta getting to know where their gonna tell me to land.

Phil