OnCourse Software

Is it PFE or PF2000 that determines the vectors we're given to intercept an ILS approach? The final turn to intercept is consistently way too close to the airport and therefore almost always above the glideslope. My experience with pretty much every plane I've flow in FS9 is that the autopilot ILS function won't capture the glideslope from above. The plane has to be a) below the glideslope and b) the localizer must already have been captured. Being turned in so close to the airport also means the localizer is often not captured until you're practically at the runway. Whatever faults people may find with RC, it consistently gave superb vectors...a downwind leg parallel to the runway, then base, then intercept. 99% of the time I would not be turned to intercept until I was far enough away to be below the glideslope. As far as I can tell this problem with PFE has nothing to do with how the flight plan is set up...I'm plenty low enough for approach to give me good vectors if it would only take me further from the airport first. I don't suppose there's any fix for this other than asking to be cleared to fly my own approach?

Regarding the final approach vectoring, there are two important settings on the "settings" page of PF2000. Towards the bottom of the page are settings for the final intercept angle and the FAF distance. The default intercept angle is 30 degrees and this seems to work fine, but the default FAF distance is 7 nm and I found this too cramped for a comfortable approach, especially with heavies. Someone on the forum suggested changing the FAF distance to 11 nm and this has worked great for me. No more cramped approaches. Note that this setting is factored in during the compiling process, so you will need to re-compile your flight plans if you change the FAF setting. (Also, remember to exit PF2000 and re-start it after changing settings.)

Thank you Dan! Just what I needed.

Spent some time tinkering with the settings. Setting the FAF at 12 miles and the intercept angle at 50 makes a huge improvement. I'll continue to tinker, just out of curiosity. It also helped a lot to finally figure out that I wasn't setting the autopilot on the A330-200 properly for an ILS approach. This is the first time I've flown an Airbus and the autopilot works differently than anything else I've seen.