Instrument questions

Agree with above. If it’s my sector and I’m departing LHR at a busy time of day I’ll put the a/p in fairly quickly as we both need to be looking at the bigger picture in such busy airspace. If I was climbing out of, say, Delhi early in the morning I’d probably choose to hand fly until I got bored.

Difficult to generalise, but typically most folks tend to hand fly until after flap retraction. Depends on circumstances…flying a familiar SID at a quiet time of day is a good time for some manual flying. Equally, departing somewhere unfamiliar at 0300 with thunderstorms flashing away, far, far safer to enagage the AP ASAP….all down to common sense basically.

Thanks. 🙂

Flex 35

Moondance/wysiwyg,

Do you mostly “hand-fly” the initial part of the SID/Departure Route or do you try and stick the AP on as soon as possible?

Bit of a off-topic question but just interested to know. 🙂

Regards
Flex 35

Difficult to generalise, but typically most folks tend to hand fly until after flap retraction. Depends on circumstances…flying a familiar SID at a quiet time of day is a good time for some manual flying. Equally, departing somewhere unfamiliar at 0300 with thunderstorms flashing away, far, far safer to enagage the AP ASAP….all down to common sense basically.

Moondance/wysiwyg,

Do you mostly “hand-fly” the initial part of the SID/Departure Route or do you try and stick the AP on as soon as possible?

Bit of a off-topic question but just interested to know. 🙂

Regards
Flex 35

When do pilots get to practice raw data flights? :confused:

Is it still done in the Sim, or not fully to the same extent as once done?

Training philosophy these days is to operate the sim exactly as you would the real aircraft on the line. There are certain failures that are practised on the sim that require raw data flying eg failures that turn EFIS into dead, blank, black CRTs leaving only standby instruments….no brownie points for being a hero and hand flying with raw data when an autopilot and FMC available. Just about the only thing required that is required to be hand flown on the sim is an ILS with engine failed.

On what used to be called the Instrument Rating on the sim (which is now called a Licence Proficiency Check or LPC…don’t you just love Euro-speak) we are now encouraged to use the Flight Management Computer and all the navigation modes (LNAV for navigation and holding for example) to maximum extent – i.e. make it as realistic as possible.

In years gone by, you were expected to fly an FMC/EFIS equipped heavy jet manually on a short route (on the sim), with only the Flight Director for guidance…holds had to be manually flown using raw data. This was clearly unrealistic, so the current approach is to operate the aircraft exactly as you would in the real world…suits me!

– When arcing, are you always required to calculate turning points and lead radials yourself or may a computer deal with this?

Our software doesn’t have the capability to slave the autopilot to an FMS arc. Because of that we use the heading mode and rely on DME distance for our turns and corrections. In addition we also then figure out our lead radials/turning points for the approach. Soon we’ll have our software updated so we can fly RNAV approaches which will give us the ability to fly DME arcs.

I always mentally picture what I expect the aircraft to do on a hold entry but then the FMC does it just fine! Airbus and Boeing types don’tactually fly technically correct holds (eg they don’t actually do rate 1 turns) but the resultant they achieve through the FMC is way better than I could achieve in raw data and frankly at the end of a 15 hour sector I’m quite grateful!

Non-standard holds can be entered into a Boeing or Airbus FMC in about 10 seconds (with practice) so it’s not too much of a worry.

With regards to holding entries, is it hard to get used to shaping a mental picture when e.g. entering a non-standard holding, or may an ATC provide assistance?

Thanks for your answers, galdri. Stay put, I might want to ask some more in the near future.

First answer, is yes the CDI is independant from the course arrow and the TO/FROM flags (which are IIRC, hidden from view anyway, when an ILS frequency is tuned)

Answer two. When flying the hold, trippling the inbound drift correction when flying outbound is a good rule of thumb. But it is only a rule of thumb!

Point to point on flying on jets now-a-days is all done by the onboard computer (FMC/FMS or what ever the manufacturer calls it) Light aircraft would not be allowed to fly point to point (crossing airways and flying to a fix that is not a beacon) without being approved to do so with the installation of IFR certified GPS or RNAV radionavigation.

When flying an arc, no calculation is involved, just fly it 😀 You can use the FMC to help out, by drawing a the arc circle on your EHSI, but the antiqued equipment I’m flying can not fly it automatically in LNAV

Hope this helps!