Alright, here's the nice simple way to fly an ILS. That I've used about 700 times in the last 12 months.
1) Establish on the localiser at the lower step Height/Alt/whatever you've been cleared to establish at.
2) Start bringing the speed back whilst level, depending on the speed you are going to use on the approach, this can be gear limiting speed down to slightly above the approach speed. Get it trimmed.
3) One dot fly-up indication. Gear down.
4) Half a dot high, props to max, approach flap down. Trim it again. This should bring you down from your slightly higher speed, back to the approach speed you are using.
5) On the glide, bring power back to a nominated (lowish) setting. Down you go. If it's trimmed correctly you shouldn't have to do much.
6) Maintain the LOC and G/S with small corrections. Remember as you descend the wind often changes both in direction and strength. Also as you get closer to the field it all gets more sensitive. Halve any correction you are going to make. If you notice a trend away, stop it initially, then re-establish, don't try to do too much at once and certainly don't fiddle constantly with the trim.
Having said that however, as a very wise old pilot once said to me, Trim in VFR flying is important, in IFR it is essential.
Make all corrections small ones and if it all goes up the spout, go around and try again. It's happened to all of us at one time or another. I remember a controller at a certain large airfield offering to lose the tapes on one approach I made once. Ahem....
Getting bogged down in the semantics of point and power Vs. anything else is a waste of time, since there isn't really two different ways of doing it. Watch someone who knows what they are doing and they'll be manipulating the attitude and power at the same time without even thinking about it.
At the end of the day the aim is to get safely onto the ground, the minutae of how you got there is irrelevant.
What works for you?
7) get visual, stick it on the numbers. Go get a cup of tea.
As for the comment about only some topics needing idiots guides, not true at all. Every student is different, some find Nav difficult, others engine theory or aerodynamics. I personally have different explanations for virtually every topic we cover and at some time or other I've had to use all of them. I'm still trying to think of more since there are somethings I don't think I explain in easy enough terms.
The attitude that says untechnically minded people shouldn't be allowed near aircraft is rubbish. There are many things that 'convention' says we should understand otherwise we aren't safe. Again nonsense. Knowing exactly how some highly technical piece of kit works isn't the most important thing. Knowing how to cope if it fails or what the signs are of it's imminent failure is far more important than what some random widget does.
Flying is sometimes so far up it's own backside it's untrue, these barriers to entry are usually perpetuated by people who aren't exactly ace of the base themselves. Have a look in any flying club and the person holding court is usually the biggest muppet there. As you can probably tell, it's one of my pet hates!!
Last edited by Say again s l o w l y; 17th February 2005 at 22:47.