Gauging distance to ATC waypoint for landing?

Hi.

When you advise ATC you are inbound and they say fly a course for a certain distance, how are you meant to gauge the distance?

So if they say turn to bearing 180 for 12 miles, how do I tell where 12 miles is along that flight path if that makes sense?

Is there a way to mark it and make a waypoint?

Thanks

Im not sure but that 12 miles should be between the point where you talked to atc and the point they tell you to go to. So in your case, when atc tells you to go 12 miles on bearing 180, the course line corresponding to that distance value should be on N-S.

Edit: and ah i wouldnt bother but if you really wanna do it, you can use the mark point button on cdu to mark your current position while you are talking to the atc. Then you can use the bearing and range values that you get from the atc to create an offset waypoint from the mark point you ve just created. To create an offset waypoint you need to use the offset page of the cdu.

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If you want a steer point quickly that is less accurate than the method above you can do so quickly using your TAD. If he tells you to head bearing 90 for 35 or something, zoom your TAD out to show 40 miles and put a mark point down due east of yourself about 3 quarters of the way between the first second rings on the TAD.

It's not super accurate but will help you from going off course and can be done in just a few seconds.

As an alternative to the high tech solutions above, you can just use the stopwatch. :D

... or just don't listen to the ATC. They are all incompetent fools in DCS. Luckily the ATC is being reworked... though no-one has spoken about the progress in ages.

Pardon if I come off snarky. But the ATC is a joke.

Thanks for all replies

Actually....

ATC gives you vector to the entry point for the approach for the given RWY

Put the heading on the HSI and fly the given heading.

When you see the airfield on your 2 or 11 o'clock start turning in, so you can align yourself. Congratulations, you should be on the very beginning of the approach

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If you go in the mission editor and make yourself a custom WP on the beginning of that echelon, and you call ATC, you will see that he will guide you to your own WP.

If you are flying the given heading and have the airfield as a WP selected. Have the HSI to the RWY heading, and you will see a an arrow with the azimuth to the airfield under your heading bar on the HUD

You have to be careful with ATC messages. It says "068 for 24" but it doesn't say miles! Is it miles or kilometers? Depends on the country!

Some will say that it depends on red/blue but if you make red USA and blue Russia it is found the country matters.

Heading is true or whatever the F10 map is in, not magnetic, in both cases. For nm distance or km distance it is a direct vector from your position to a position along the active runway centerline ~18km/10nm on the approach side. This leaves no allowance for the radius of turn required which can be up to 180 degrees.

The precision in heading should be considered proportional to the distance. Twenty miles a few degrees off doesn't matter. The distance should probably be mentally converted to minutes. "15 miles? oh that's 5 minutes."

Getting in the correct direction while keeping a rough idea of how long should be good enough. Looking out the window and recognizing the runway is the most important thing and all this direction-distance is for. There's no requirement to pass through this point or hit it exactly. As soon as you see the airport disregard the vector and navigate visually instead.

For poor weather, night the vector is usually insufficient. You want a more robust and proper approach than just a direction and a distance.