BATUMI IFR / ILS Landing A-10C

IFR landing at Batumi. DCS A-10C SP & MP misión & tutorial.

(last updated: May 2014, DCS-World 1.2.8.)

Note:

You start flying SW of BATUMI

Within the first minute the HUD and both MFDs will stop working so you can concentrate on the analog instruments. Turn off master caution alarm after the failures.

Step by step:

1) Fly North, trim the aircraft as needed.

2) Turn on autopilot in ALT/HDG mode.

3) Set TACAN: On right lateral panel. Turning the knobs to 16X (1) and the rotative switch to TR (2).

4) Set ILS: Frequency to 110.30 (3) and switch to ON (4, left mouse click).

5) Set HSI course to 119 (1).

6) Connect TACAN (2).

7) Set altimeter to current QNH (2994) (above sea level corrected by pressure) turning the left knob (1)

8- Intercept and fly on course 119 to Batumi (2), descend to 7000’ QNH. Disconnect de AP before you start banking, if you wish reconnect it again when you’re on course.

9) The distance to Batumi is on the top right corner of the HSI in NM. You will know you are flying over the TACAN because: Distance will be close to 1nm (altitude is included in the distance), needle 1 (1) will begin to rotate and the the To-From needle will be at your 6 (2).

10) When crossing over the TACAN beacon bank left in a 15 - 20 degrees turn (1) into a heading of 299. Descend (2) and maintain 3500’ QNH.

11) Maintain a heading of 299 at 3500’ until the TACAN it’s at a heading of 143 degrees (needle 1 in HIS)

12) Maintain altitude, bank left 15-20 degrees and intercept course 119 to TACAN (BATUMI)

13) When on final, connect and intercept ILS

14) Land

IFR Batumi 1.1.miz

Thank you. Shall give it a whirl.

Regards,

Milli

Thank you!

Great mission, something that I need to learn! Thanks for the work!

Great mission, thanks for taking the time to create and share this.

Strangely I managed to land on my first attempt, although I was about 20 feet to the right so I had to quickly correct that. Oh and my "glideslope" was rather bumpy, but I managed to get it right when it mattered.

Still, thanks to your mission I know where I need to improve and I can practice further.

Very nice tutorial! :clap_2:

You can see the approach here in video although be advised I was intentionally busting the minimums (Visibility and ceiling was ( 0/0) just for testing. :music_whistling:

I'm glad you like the tutorial, trying to get the most out of the sim here.

@Furia: Very nice (& reckless, jajaj) landing.

If you want something harder try it for fun without HUD or MFDs (only analog instruments).

If you master that then you can ad some 20-30 knots side wind, it's quite hard without the HUD and its VVI.

Saludos, Tango.

Isn't tacan straight in the runway, shouldn't you wait till you're about 10 miles away before you start banking?

Isn't tacan straight in the runway

No. TACAN is not directional in that way.

Nice training mission.. First time off I crashed in to the Black sea... I just cant work with the QNH - So I asked the QFE from the Batumi Tower and used it instead.

On the second try I nailed it, not perfect, but a nice touchdown and landed safely.

Any plans on making IFR charts for other airports?

Hey JorgeIII, I was so impressed with this mission I made a Youtube video out of it!

Hope people find it useful. (I edited the mission slightly to make it a bit more beginner friendly!)

C2aZi_dXRm4

Brilliant mission, scary as hell, but nailed it first time (after one go round).

Brilliant ILS chart, JorgeIII! Do you have such (and other) charts for all airfields?

Nice videos, glad you like it, thank for the comments.

Just updated the training mission, same steps for IFR landing with the A-10C.

Nice mission, I enjoyed it a lot. I made a video but it is in spanish, sorry, since I edited the footage for my squadron.

But, you can jump to minute 11:16 and mute the speakers ;).

I did a load of IFR missions way back but I never had a tutorial attached and some of the old bugs are now rectified but as a way of practicing after learning from JorgeIII excellent guide you can find them here http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=75189

:)

Good video Astiles, gracias por compartirlo.

con razón poniendo 130 estás tan desviado! no sabía que georgia tenía tanta desviación DIP... tampoco sabía que estaba simulada en DCS...

This is nice but there's really no point in establishing in the race track when we have a TACAN with DME, just fly inbound on track 119 at 3500 feet and switch to ILS around 11 miles.

Though learning how to fly a race track is great for pure NDB approaches!

Just discovered this excellent mission, very well done! :thumbup:

Had to go around once and I ignored the limits but made a smooth landing on the second approach. Though I'm sure any flight instructor would immediately send me back to basic training, judging from the problems I had to keep the aircraft under control without the HUD. :joystick:

This is nice but there's really no point in establishing in the race track when we have a TACAN with DME, just fly inbound on track 119 at 3500 feet and switch to ILS around 11 miles.

Though learning how to fly a race track is great for pure NDB approaches!

Yes, there is a point. Unless you're receiving radar vectors, you have to do the full approach. Do you have to do it at home? No, but technically and I think that's what we are talking about, you do unless you are being vectored to the localizer by ATC.

<---Multiengine, Commercial, ATP

Loved the mission! Had some difficulty at first, but on the 3rd or 4th try, it finally clicked. 3rd try saw a hard landing. 4th try saw a nice landing with a "pucker-factor 9" final approach. Adding this to my practice regimen until I have it down. Great idea to knock out the HUD, as I think most pilots (myself included) need more practice with the steam gauges.

Thanks for making this!

Cool mission. Got it first time. It had me on the edge of my seat wondering just how low the visibility was going to be and if I would ever actually see the runway or just feel the bump.

I did cheat though. Not that I modified the mission or used F10, but that I have 10 years of IFR Flight Sim practice in Civi land. VOR/DME, VOR, ADF, Circle to Land approaches all under my belt. Including the Innsbruck approach in heavy cloud and snow. It's notorius as you have to make a 180 turn between two mountains, though you are meant to be visual and under the clouds by that stage, it's fun to try it when you aren't.

For those asking for IFR charts for individual airports, the real ones are often available on line, though in Civi format. Search for flight sim virtual airline sites for the area, they usually link to charts. In the UK there is AIS, in Europe there is EAD an online database that allows hobbyist registration and in the states there is AirNav.com.

If I understand it correctly a TACAN is similar to a VOR, so you can pick civi charts for VOR/DME approachs or ILS approaches. Note, often they are split into two sections. The VOR/DME approach and a separate ILS approach. You basically join the two together. The VOR/DME gets you inbound on a fairly accurate heading and you pick up the ILS approach at the FAP (Final approach fix).

The reason for the long winded-ness of VOR approaches has more to do with ATC and traffic sequencing than the navigational requirement to "Join overhead the beacon". They are often used at airports with no radar control when conditions means a VFR pattern can't work.

So pilots hold overhead the beacon and the controller uses a notepad (or spreadsheet) to note where aircraft check in to and out of. When a pilot arrives and reports holding on the beacon at 7,000ft, the next guy reporting inbound can be told there is an aircraft on the beacon at 7,000ft and he will probably select to hold at 8,000ft or probably 9,000ft.

The controller in this case cannot see the aircraft, he has to trust their position reports. He clears them into the approach from the beacon and they report "Outbound". They will be requested to report turning inbound or be requested to extend the outbound for traffic. There are also tight restrictions on altitude and when and where the stepped descents are to keep inbound and outbound traffic separate. The controller can have one outbound and one inbound and a number in the hold. This isn't that common though as it's not often you find a non-radar controller airport with enough traffic to design an approach to support concurrent traffic.

For this reason the descent out of the holding level is usually down to say, 4,000ft and a descending turn back inbound drops you to 2,500ft giving 1,500ft separation between the inbound and outbound aircraft.

As pilots report different stages such as "Outbound", "10nm outbound, turning inbound", "At the FAP", "On the glide" and so forth the controller can create a picture of where everyone is until he can finally see the landing aircraft and clear them to land.

You don't need charts either. 90% of the charts I have seen all gravitate into one of 2 or 3 types of approach, so you can make up your own pretty easily.

The one in this mission is actually a fairly uncommon one. It's a race track outbound. The issue with these is that outbound leg is non-precision. It does not use any reference for the outbound course and as such it can drift due to wind or a heading off by 1 or 2 degrees. If there is high terrain around approaches can require fairly high accuracy. Glasgow International airport has one of these approaches for the ILS 26 approach. It runs outbound for 12nm before turning inbound directly over a hill which can set off the "TERRAIN! TERRAIN!" alarm. Very disconcerting. "Am I really where I think I am?"

Another two more common types are the "tear drop base leg" and "Procedural turn" approaches.

The tear drop base leg approach takes you outbound on a VOR/TACAN radial, so using the TACAN for guidance it's a precision leg and you can correct easily for wind drift. At a fixed distance (DME) you do a 180* turn and pick up a different inbound radial for the runway, then go ILS. Often there are multiple outbound headings. A Cessna doing 100kts might only need a 10* heading offset, where as a 747 at 200kts might take a 20* offset.

Probably the most common is the procedural turn. Sometimes called the ILS back-course approach.

1. Set the TACAN to the reciprocal runway heading, so if runway heading is 274* set the tacan course to 94*.

2. Leave the beacon on a heading of 94*.

3. Be patient and around 2nm from the beacon start intercepting the radial outbound (Tacan lateral deviation needle aligned and vertical).

4. Descend when appropriate from the chart. These approaches do not allow for concurrent in bound and outbound traffic very well, so often it's descend to FAP height at your discretion after you leave the beacon.

5. At a set distance, around 8nm-12nm, usually concurrent with the FAP position makes a 45* or 60* right or left turn.

6. Hold this heading for 1 minute and then do a 180* turn in the opposite direction.

7. If you did trig in school you should work out that you will be intercepting the runway heading by 45* or 60* in just under a minute.

8. Set the TACAN back round for the runway heading and intercept that heading.

9. Switch over to ILS once readings are good.

The approach looks a bit like a hockey (or hurling) stick. Straight out and back with a slanted teardrop turn around.

You 'can' fly the back-course off the ILS (more correctly the localizer), ie. fly back up the beam. However this was never the intended use of an ILS and the precision gets worse and worse the further out you go. It also gets confusing. This ILS back-course approach has been so frowned on that they are almost entirely gone these days. Some civilian aircraft even cage the ILS indications to stop you doing it. The autopilot modes for holding a back-course are also gone from modern planes.

You will find all sorts of variations. For example it is common (and in DCS) that an airport only has an ILS on it's main runway and only in the direction it is most used. Having to land the other way due to wind means you have no ILS. How do you do an IFR approach in low cloud?

These are VOR/DME approaches without an ILS at the end. You just keep tracking on the inbound heading, descending at a calculated rate and levelling off at your minimum descent height. This is usually around 400-600ft AGL. If by the time you cross the MAP (Missed approach point), usually 1-2nm from the threshold, you haven't spotted the runway, you go around. In the real world pilots tend to favour getting down early, with obvious knowledge of any obstacles or restrictions, so they get plenty of time to spot the runway.

Other variations are partial VOR approaches, which are common in the USA. In particular JFK in New York uses a VOR approach for easterly winds to steer pilots to a turn in point for the runway as they cannot come in straight over Manhattan. The radar controller sequences them into one of more lines and merges them onto a VOR radial which is about 90* on to the runway heading. The pilots track the VOR to a certain distance and make a sharp right hand turn to line up with the runway. They have to be visual when they turn, but if they don't get visual, they continue straight on to the North away from harm and go around again on vectors.