Thanks for all the useful input, everyone - it has been passed on to my students, who were most grateful, and I've learnt something new too.
Although some of the STARS we fly have a DME arc to bring you onto the localiser in reality we never fly them. Nice to see in training I guess but I wouldn't get hung up on them. Like most training you do such as full procedural turns/timed turns etc ATC will give you a vector onto the localiser..
Absolutely true in the real world. But as an IR instructor, the procedural stuff is my bread and butter, and although we do plenty of radar vectored approaches, I rarely get to see an autopilot, and the GPS is always disabled for approaches, whether vectored or procedural! It's really handy for me to learn more about how you guys work in the real world, so that I can pass the information on to my students, and, where possible, adjust the training I give to suit real world flying.
Thanks again!
FFF
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