ILS at Ronald Reagan in Washington DC

[dmorzo]

Has anyone tried to land using the runway 1 ILS at Ronald Reagan Washington National? Seems as if the approach course is off and the touchdown point is in the rabbit beyond the north end of the runway. Please let me know if there is a fix.

[mattn]

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I very well may be), isnt
rwy 1 NOT an ils but a VOR approach, geared intentionally
to be at an angle to bring aircraft down the patomac river
and keep them out of restricted airspace?

Or are you talking about just a true fs2k2 screwup where
the ILS is just mis-aligned like rwy 33 at KBOS, where it
actually lines you up on the taxiway next to the rwy?

*shrug*

[CoryWilsonCFI]

Yes, I BELEIVE (not sure here) that the approach to Washington National is an SDF approach, basically the same as an ILS, without vertical guidance usually, and misaligned from the runway. I'd have to see a chart... anyone have one?

Cory Wilson KHUF

[eagle013]

LAST EDITED ON Dec-21-01 AT 08:46PM (EDT)[p]Would this approach chart help?

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3c23e5a767fe6a90.gif

and for KBOS, this is the one you're looking for:

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3c23e4ff665dd435.gif


Approach charts found and available for entire US at http://www.edj.net/cgi-bin/echoplate.pl
http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3bdc89f43f0c6741.gif

[CoryWilsonCFI]

Eagle,

They would help a lot, but for some reason they arent showing up on my screen :-( Do you know much about instrument flying? If so, could you give us the answer, is our theory right? If not, could you read the name of the approach off of the top of the chart for me? Thanks

Cory Wilson KHUF

[eagle013]

LAST EDITED ON Dec-21-01 AT 08:51PM (EDT)[p]Sorry, i messed up with the web addresses for them, they should work now. I only know enough about insturment flying to pass the Flight sim instrumnet checkride. They do appear to give both a glide path and approach headings... no procedure turns though. I think both are as much ILS as you can get for a straight in only approach.
http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3bdc89f43f0c6741.gif

[eagle013]

dmorzo, what does your dme read when you touch down in front of the runway?
http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3bdc89f43f0c6741.gif

[CoryWilsonCFI]

Thanks Eagle, the pictures worked that time. Both are standard ILS approaches, and due to the fact that they both seem to show standard minimums (200 feet AGL), they should be aligned with the runway. I was wrong about the SDF approach, they are ILSs. The reason for no procedure turns is because they are radar-vectored approaches. This is why it says "Radar Required" for the approach. No full-approaches here. The problem you are encountering must be a mistake on microsoft's part, unless i am mistaken...


Cory Wilson KHUF

[wesl]

That ils is setup worse than KBOS. I thought maybe you were referring to the LDA 19. that is pretty cool. it looks like the GS on the ILS 1 at DCA is 200 ft too high.

[dmorzo]

1NM at the touchdown point.

[metz]

I left another message on this topic - the ILS is definitely not set up right.

Basically the localizer portion is not aligned correctly, and the glideslope is not located correctly on the airport. The localizer is correctly positioned, as touchdown point is at 1.0 DME.

I'm glad others have noticed it - I was worried that it was my airplane.

The bummer is that I simulate going in and out of there often, and now I have to mark that approach out of service, until there's a fix for it.

-Tim Metzinger
Commercial Pilot, ASMEL-IA
http://www.metzair.com/atop/sm-captain-tim.jpg

[metz]

The BOS approach is vectors-only, but the DCA ILS 1 approach can be shot without radar, using the Nottingham (I think) VOR as the approach fix.

> The
>reason for no procedure turns
>is because they are radar-vectored
>approaches. This is why it
>says "Radar Required" for the
>approach. No full-approaches here. The
>problem you are encountering must
>be a mistake on microsoft's
>part, unless i am mistaken...

Tim Metzinger
Commercial Pilot, ASMEL-IA
http://www.metzair.com/atop/sm-captain-tim.jpg

[acaldwell]

Tim, we need to be able to correct these faulty ILSs somehow. It is a VERY widespread problem. I'm sure some of these Gurus know how to do it. It might be done using airport 2.60. does anyone know and if so how about a little guidance.

Major Alan L. Caldwell (mostly B-47 and C-130)

[jase439]

LAST EDITED ON Jan-01-02 AT 01:16AM (EDT)[p]I don't know about Airport 2.6, but in ASD 2.1, you would create an exclusion area for navaids (a geographic area in lat/long that is entered in the scenery.cfg file) that "blots" out the default navaids in that region. You would then (at your option) import the underlying airports into the tool to use as a visual template. This is not absolutely necessary though if you have all the "hard numbers" on the navaids (position, frequency, signal strength, glideslope angles, marker placement, etc...) I like to do this as a sanity check so I can visually correlate the placement of a navaid with the airport. From there, you just drop in the navaids where they *should* go, generate a navaid BGL and drop it in your ADDON SCENERY folder.

For localizers, the exclusion area would be quite small, so at most you might have to recreate a VOR or NDB stationed at the airport.

I don't know what facilities Airport 2.6 has, but this kind of thing can be done relatively quickly in ASD.

J