#1 - you cant change planes on missions

#2 - try IFR. on the free flight screen, select "create flight plan" i believe and then select the airport to depart from and the airport to arrive at. then from there select altitude and gps i bleieve and it will automatically set the course for you. then the magical voice in the sky will tell you to turn when and how much and they should line you up for your landing when it comes down to it

Hi Viridans,

If you create the flight plan, it will load into the GPS and if it's an IFR flight plan, ATC will give you altitudes and headings. Even if it's a VFR flight plan, you can slave the auto-pilot to follow the flight plan, and all you have to do is dial in altitudes and airspeeds. When you near the airport, you can even use the GPS to select your approach and the auto-pilot will follow that too (unless there's an unusually sharp turn) and again... all you have to do is control altitude and airspeed (use flaps accordingly and lower the gear).. and just turn the auto-pilot off for the flare and touchdown.

There are a few steps that need to be learned to do this:

-dial in your desired/appropriate altitude/airspeed
-engage the auto-pilot after take off
-select 'GPS' on the NAV/GPS selector
-activate the 'NAV' function on the auto-pilot

Then you can just sit back and watch.......

... but you said the key words..

Quote:


Hop in the old C172 and practice practice practice, navigating. Plan your flights yourself (all aspects; time/distance, fuel burn, wind, weather, etc.).  Learn VOR/NDB/ILS use until it's second nature (leave the GPS off). Work your way up to the jets and then use the GPS because you want to (not because you have to), but still plan the flights yourself. If you do use the built-in flight planner; study that flight so you "could if you had to" fly it manually. And even as you are flying by GPS/auto-pilot, back it all up and confirm you position periodically by VOR/NDB.

If there is one aspect to simming (I think there are many) that you could apply tomorrow, in a real plane... it's navigation 

DME - Distance Measurement Equipment

ILS - instrumental Landing Sytem -  that´s the term you´re looking for... i know, it can get very confusing at first

to get the ILS to work, first you should know the frequency of the desired runway´s ILS (provided that the runway IS equiped with an ILS), then you set you NAV1 radio to that freq. (you don´t have to do that in missions, your co-pilot does it for you) when you do that press X, or click that little buton to swap the active freq with your recently dialed one... after that, it´s a matter of flying close enough for the ILS to start working (same principle as in when you go out of town and you start getting poor reception on your local radio statios)...

there´s another little button that´ll give you a beeping sound once you´re in range....

if you don´t know how to find the frequencies for the desired runway´s ILS, click WORLD, then MAP, double-click the airport of your liking on the map and look in the list it will display for the runway you intend to land in, next to it, there´ll be the ILS frequency


happy landings,

Moach

i'm sorry, to add to this question, i was wondering if i can start a flight in the air. i would like to practice my approach to a certain airport and i was wondering if there is a way to do it without having to take off and fly into that airspace. thanks

in the caribbean landing mission there is a green marker that shows you when you are lined up with the runway.