BATUMI IFR / ILS Landing A-10C

To look at an example. You are coming back from a mission to an airfield in DCS. While you have been in the target area the weather has closed in at your home plate. They have a 500ft cloud deck and it's overcast up to 3000ft. You note the wind is strong and the direction of runway that requires has no ILS. You have no charts for this airport. How do you get down safely?

1. First. Look at the map. If there is any terrain within a 10nm radius around the airport, add 2,000ft to the highest peak and pick that as your holding alt. Now look for terrain up your approach and note any height restrictions.

Example: Hill at 12nm height 4,000ft. Hill at 8nm, peak height 1,800ft. Hill at 6nm, peak height 1,000ft.

Add a safety margin to these of 1000ft and they will mandate your safe descent altitudes. "I have to stay above 5,000ft until I am established inbound and inside of 12nm", or, "I cannot descend below 2,000ft until I am within 6nm." Use a notepad and pen, really!

2. Now tune the TACAN in and home on the needle to get straight to the beacon.

3. Hold at the beacon at the atltitude you choose as your MSA (Minimum safe altitude) for the entire area. You can just do a standard orbit, but if you like the challenge try looking up "Holding on a VOR" on how to fly a proper hold and proper hold entry procedures. If you wish you can do the scoping out of the approach terrain while holding here.

4. Lets say our runway heading is 274* inbound. Set the TACAN course to 94* and fly away from the beacon on heading 94*

5. Track in on the TACAN radial and watch the distance. Stay at your holding altitude.

6. When you are 8nm outbound make a 60* right hand turn. A 30* bank level turn will do.

7. Hack your clock or some other way start a timer for 1 minute.

8. When that minute is up, start a left hand 180* turn.

9. Start a descent in the turn, noting your distance and your terrain notes! Based on the terrain above I would aim to descend no lower than 5,000ft.

10. Swing your TACAN course around to the runway heading, 274*

11. As you come round to complete the 180* turn you should see the TACAN lateral bars are offset to the right and you are intercepting by about 60*. Note the direction needle and as it closes on the runway heading turn that last 60* to intercept and track the inbound course.

12. As the distance drops below 12nm, begin a descent while keeping aware of the other restrictions. As to how quickly you should descend, you can work it out based on speed and distance, so typical A10 numbers assuming a 180kt approach with 7* flaps (cause it's easy to work out)... you need to descend 5,000ft in about 12nm at 180kts. 12nm at 180kts = 4 minutes. 5,000ft divided by 4 minutes = 1,250fpm. Which is actually extremely quick, but hey. If you bring the speed back to 140kts it will improve :)

13. Continue a gradual and stable a descent as you can, keeping above your restrictions, even if it means descending in steps.

14. Level off when you get to your minimum descent height of about 400-500AGL, use the radar alt if you can or be very good at calculating with QNH and Airfield height or get the QFE.

15. Look for the runway. If you spot it, go visual and land. If you don't and you get within 1nm of the airport, pull up into a 1,500fpm climb on runway heading until reaching 3,000ft then do a 180 and fly back to the beacon climbing back up to holding alt to try again.

Note: The runway may be off to one side. The TACAN station is often offset from the runway by a few hundred feet. I'm not sure if you can see them on the F10 view, but what usually happens is you offset the inbound course 3 or 4 degrees so that the TACAN inbound course intercepts the runway centre line at about 2nm. Ideally you will be visual by that stage and make the small dog leg correction to line up. It can often be easier than tracking in parallel to the runway by 200ft. DO NOT pass the missed approach point/distance as you will be flying straight for the terminal building in a lot of cases.

You could try this with the above mission, just don't tune the ILS. However, the visibility is way, way too low. A VOR approach with a visual landing usually requires a cloud base above minimum descent altitude and visibility under the cloud of at least 2nm. (I'm sure there are genuine/official figures out there in the CAT specifications but I'm not looking them up!). You could do the approach portion from above and switch to ILS of course.

If you want a real challenge, try making an approach onto runway 30 at Batumi. Terrain scoping will be important :)

To look at an example.

paulca- thank you for the time and effort in putting those post together.

I'll print them out and work on the process/procedure.

Greatly appreciated!

Mike

Great posts, paulca, thanks a lot! :thumbup:

Probably my longest set of posts in years, but I'm a bit bored :)

Here is a real Civi arrival chart for Batumi. (Note not an approach chart).

[ame]http://www.aopa.org.il/userfiles/files/AIP/cd/2010-06-03-AIRAC/graphics/UGSB-STAR-13-0210.pdf[/ame]

It's an interesting one. First off, the TACAN is not there and there is no civi equivalent VOR either. They only have an NDB. Does DCS even do ADF receivers? Anyway, you can just use the TACAN with the same bearings and have the added bonus of directional tracking. If you want to simulate an ADF approach in an A10, just ignore the TACAN course and set it to something random, or cage it if you can. Also ignore the distance! Using the steerpoint needle might work better if it hides the HSI distance.

The next thing of note are the references with arrows in the form:

R228* D 53.3

113.6 KTS

That is NOT 113.6 knots. It's referring to the KTS VOR on 113.6MHz. It is 'off the chart' (been waiting to say that when it's not a pun!), somewhere to the north east.... 53.3 miles away in fact :)

R228* D 53.3 means 53.3 nm on radial 228 FROM the VOR. Obviously range and bearing don't need explanation here, just that in radio navigation you will have multiple "bullseyes" those being radio navigation installations.

There are a few different arrivals shown. From SOSED, NEDEK and SARPI. All of which are basic waypoints. They will usually be defined as both an LL point and usually as a point where two VOR/NDB radials cross. Hence their other name "intersections". For completeness sake as airliner would be following defined airways (You can see the area here: https://skyvector.com/?ll=41.610177778,41.599438889&chart=302&zoom=3 ). They will be on the B147, the J11 or the G67/N37. They will then pick up the arrival route at SOSED, NEDEK or SARPI. Thus the arrival chart defines the standard way ATC would like airliners to get off the airways and approach to land. Enroute (Airways)->Arrival (STAR)->Approach (IAC)

Routes typically have a bearing and distance with an arrow along them. They have names usually their starting waypoint and a 'version' such as 1B or 4C. Often they also have outward arrows with the name and radial from a navaid on them suggesting you can "track the radial with the VOR or ADF"

So... if your CDU is up you could enter SOSED et al's coordinates and make them waypoints, but that's boring. So where the hell is SOSED then? Well if you look at the SOSED 1B line running south east, straight in on Batumi, it shows the bearing 133* and the distance (in the white arrow) 41. So SOSED is 41nm from Batumi on radial 313* (reciprocal of 133*). That's "Bearing 313 for 41" in USAF speak. ;) The chart even has a cross check with KTS so it's "313 for 41 LU 262 for 65 KTS"

There is one more hurdle though. While you can fly around in a circle until the ADF needle points to 133*, how do you know your distance from 'LU' (the ndb at batumi) it provides no distance, just bearing. Here you are kinda stuffed without RNAV (GPS, INS, EGI) or at least a DME for distance (you 'can' use the ILS for distance if it's in range, but I reckon it's inaccurate and taboo).

But all is not lost if your CDU is down and you are trying to pretend we don't have a TACAN. You can look at your bearing FROM KTS. If you are somewhere on the 133* inbound to 'LU' and your bearing FROM KTS is greater than 262, you are greater than 41nm out. If it is less than 262* (further south) you are inside of 41nm. You should start to see how you can fix your location relative to not just one nav aid with bearing and distance, but multiple navaids with just bearing. (Note: NDBs often have reliable ranges under 30nm and ILS even less, so YMMV!)

You can even fix your position with nothing more than distances to 2 known points (for another time!). You can also get your distance from an NDB, by turning to put it 90* abeam, fly for one minute and note the deviation in the angle. Do some sums with your speed and some trig and you can work your distance based on triangulation. This is not something an ATC controller will expect you to do on a busy arrival route though.

If I was trying this arrival out I would just use the TACAN signal for distance, or enter SOSED, NEDEK and SARPI as mission waypoints, then fly to the NDB.

Note that the 1B routes fly to the radio beacon. The 2B routes do not. It will become clear why in a minute. The 2B routes are short cuts to the top of the ILS 'direct in approaches'. However. They are not flyable accurately without RNAV; area navigation system such as GPS, INS or EGI. In most cases you could probably get away with just flying a wind corrected heading from SOSED or NEDEK and hoping to intercept the 126* inbound to LU for approach or the ILS.

You will also see holds at each arrival point or overhead the beacon. It works like this. You do NOT proceed past the arrival point hold until cleared to do so. In an airliner your flight plan will have a hold pre-programmed that you will need to cancel or skip once clearance has been received. If you go for coffee or to chat up the air stewardesses and get carried away the plane will enter the hold while ATC howler at you.

In the real world changes are, if there is radar approach ATC they will give arrivals a heading off SOSED or NEDEK with descent clearance and merge the two flows on to the ILS with vectors. Some thing along the lines of "Hawg 1-1, leave SOSED on track 135 degrees, descend altitude 7,000 QNH 1013, expect ILS runway 13".

Here is the second page that has the english directions to follow. If you have trouble tracing the routes, try using the text page, it's often on a separate page or in little boxes on the chart:

[ame]http://www.aopa.org.il/userfiles/files/AIP/cd/2010-06-03-AIRAC/graphics/UGSB-RSTAR-13-0110.pdf[/ame]

The approach chart:

[ame]http://www.aopa.org.il/userfiles/files/AIP/cd/2010-06-03-AIRAC/graphics/UGSB-IAC-13-ILS-0210.pdf[/ame]

This is pretty much as per the the OP's awesome mission.

First thing to look for is the continuation point from the arrival. There were two. Either overhead the beacon if using pure radio nav or AKAKI IAF (Initial Approach Fix) if coming in on the 2B arrivals. So you use the arrival chart to get to one of those points and then the approach chart for the rest of the way in. Some airports, such as Heathrow, have intermediate charts.

The very top panel is title information, frequencies and overall notes and cautions. The main panel is the horizontal chart. The bottom panel is the vertical / descent chart.

If you arrived at AKAKI you can just join the ILS, flick the autopilot on and go browse the internet on your iPad. Oh wait, the A10C doesn't have an ILS approach hold, sorry, it's a needle chasing fest instead :) If you are here for the challenge you can fly to the beacon and ... begin as the original mission did.

The two race tracks are for different category of planes. These can be googled, but basically A and B are prop aircraft, C and D are performance jets and airliners. It makes assumptions about speed basically. The A10C probably fits into the C category. If you drop the flaps you could pass it off as a B, maybe, it wouldn't be practical though.

You can also see the "Missed approach procedure." In this case it's very important! A heavy KC135 or 747 CANNOT overfly the runway on a missed approach as it will be heading directly into high ground, never able to climb fast enough to turn back out. It MUST break off the approach to the left early. Being in mountains is fine. Being in cloud is fine. Being in mountains in cloud is NOT fine!

Note .. referencing my other post about making these procedures up, the "MSA" boxes in multiple locations. This is "Minimum safe altitude" for that general area. If you want to get lower you need to find a specific route from the approach chart with lower altitudes... effectively on these charts that will only be the approach path. So if you are not established on the approach, do not descend below the MSA. If you have no idea where you are, it's night and a heavy thick cloud base, climb above the highest MSA for the area. 15,700ft! Also note there is NO IFR approach for runway 31. Most likely due to the 15,000ft mountains that direction.

What if you NEED to land on runway 31, say due to high westerly winds and it's cloudy? Typically this is called a "Circle to land" approach. You fly the IFR approach for any runway, the one that is most convenient or the one ATC assign you. You fly to the Missed approach point and if you are visual enough with the airport once under the cloud, continue with a visual approach, and fly a normal pattern saying close in so as not to loose visual. You will note the "OCA / H" heights 'Overhead circling altitude or height' for the different classes A,B,C,D at the bottom on the chart.

You will also note the descent profile, the estimated descent rates for different classes/speeds. The descent profile has both an outbound from the beacon; 7,000ft down to 3,500ft on heading 306* and the inbound descent on the ILS. Without the glideslope working you can use the table in the lower right. This is the same as the descent planning in my earlier post. If there were obstacles or high ground they would be shown under the descent profile.

These are all the things I said you could make up and if you browse enough of these charts you will start to see the logic behind them and how they are created. Being able to do this allows you to fly a safe IFR approach into any airfield (within reason) without a chart in 100% overcast or low vis / night time conditions.

My final point is a sad one. This style of navigation is dying out. The latest airliners don't even have "VOR HOLD" mode autopilots. The NAV radio tuning has been hidden in 'MISC' pages of flight management systems and charts are appearing that don't use radio navigation references at all. The Batumi one is getting close to this. Everything is going GPS, INS, Area navigation and LL points. The only planes that can't really do this are typically older planes and general aviation which nobody really care about. NDBs, VORs and DMEs are being decomissioned and removed from service at a fair ole rate. So when the USA switches off GPS we are all kinda screwed, left with INS and the sextant.