aircraft cant capture the localizer

[trazee]

seems the plane cannot capture the localizer during approach, what happen?

conditions

1.flying about 2,500-3,000 ft upon approach
2. AP is armed
3. ILS freq. has been tuned and set in NAV 1

am i too high during final? what is the recommended alt during approach?

[ReggieF5421]

Which aircraft with which panel?

Which airport ?

Which runway ?

Which ILS frequency ?

Normal ILS intercept altitude is about 1,500 feet above the airport elevation. As you note, in Flight Simulator - it is critical to be below the ILS glide slope when engaging the Autopilot APPR button/ mode.

There may be some individual variations to the standard rules based upon aircraft, panel, airport, runway or ILS frequency - that's why I asked for that info.

[Kurtvw]

The default answer to this question is to make sure you're in NAV mode and not in GPS mode...

Double check that setting, otherwise, as Reggie mentioned, we'd need more detail to help you out.

[n4gix]

Aside from what has been mentioned already, yes... you are too high.

You should be at or below 2,500' AGL and well established in your final, and > 10 nm from the threshold.

[Michael E.]

You should be at the altitude the chart specifies for the approach.

[Kurtvw]

Well, I think he was asking about the altitude from the perspective of 'could this be why i'm not getting the capture'... So I'm not sure that the procedural answers are what he's looking for..

Him being 500 feet high of the 'standard' would not cause the AP to fail. We also don't know his distance from the airport.

[barty]

As long as the needle is alive, his altitude is not important, particularly in FSX. There is a maximum range that the localizer can be sensed (18-20mi IIRC) and probably certainly a hard altitude limit as well. But you could probably be 5,000 feet high and still receive it in FSX. In the RW, that might not be realistic because of the characteristics of each individual installation, but everything is pretty standard in FSX. Though I typically hand fly approaches, I have had some difficulty with the autopilots in some aircraft handling the approach hold function properly, just a bug in FSX I guess.

Depending on the aircraft being flown, localizer intercept can occur a minimum of 2mi from the final approach fix.

[n4gix]

I have not once had any problems with a functional localizer or glideslope signal in FSX. Not once...

[jwenting]

me neither, unless as already stated I'd forgotten to set the AP to the proper mode.

there are some (freeware addon) airports with disfunctional localisers or glideslopes, but nowhere I've ever seen in the default scenery.

[scott967]

I iike to test with an aircraft with flight director, so I can observe the command bars and see if it "thinks" it should be turning in the correct direction.

scott s.
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