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A320 Power settings - Pattern, 2 Eng ILS, SEL ILS?
Good day, In preparation for new training in the A320 could some shed light on approximate power/thrust (N1/FF/etc) settings for the A320. What should I see mainly settings for visual pattern work, ILS & SEL ILS?
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Your scan is better used by looking at the attitude and the speed, then moving your hand on the thrust levers (assuming you’re talking ATHR OFF here) back a bit or fwd a bit to acheive the outcome than memorising numbers.
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The scan is conventional. Like Compressor Stall says, don’t bother about the N1 setting. With experience, you will get to know them roughly but personally I don’t use them when flying raw data. Your scan will be already very demanding at the beginning on the PFD; No time to waste looking at the Ecam upper display. I usually move the levers very gently one by one until I reach the target speed and the speed trend is gone. The speed trend is your best friend when flying with ATHR OFF. The more you will do the easier it will get. It’s not rocket science. I found it challenging at the beginning tho. But that’s probably because of lack of practice. For fine tunning, I sometimes look at the N1 values to match both engines. |
CFM: 55 n1 IAE: 50 n1 (yes N1) or five less if light / tailwind. That’s your “normal” for everything except level flight with LG down. AFTER THAT, stick to the advice provided above. Do not overscan head-down. If you have had learned pitch plus power = path before, you will do great. If not, do not worry, it is designed to require no great skills and push-pull works well too. Understandably, to slow down more TL movement is required (40 n1), but to speed up only much less of it (60 n1). Any larger reduction of speed whilst descending requires IDLE. my 2pc |
Below 10.000” with IAE engines set EPR at 1.05, that will get you close enough to 250 clean, 210 F1, 180 F2, Vfas Ffull (N1 stable, fully configured 48 for A319, 53 for A320, 58 forA321), Idle for descend, 1.2 for 1500FPM climb. Also for cruise set EPR at 1.LVL, where LVL is your cruise flight level, so 1.350 for FL350. The reason for setting EPR, is that you can use the blue donut to set a power quickly. Use small throttle movement to fine tune . These numbers are for medium weight (180 pax, 8K pounds of fuel) A320, little les for A319, little more for A321. Or leave the AT on during training, as recommended by Airbus. |
All excellent information, thanks to all.
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Just use the speed trend arrow and glance at the N1 or EPR gauges to check they're balanced. Lazy but remarkably effective.
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I wouldn’t say it’s lazy at all. I’d say it’s management of a human’s mental capacity. If you can only fly by memorising numbers with the autothrust off on a nice day, what hope do you have when it’s something serious? Can you remember every power setting for each emergency at each weight and each config? You should be thinking about something else. Set the attitude, check the speed trend, make an appropriate adjustment Start sorting out your other problems, in a bit flick back to trend arrow, check again. Refine and go back to sorting out the problem. Works on any aircraft. |
All pilots should have a basic idea of the(ballpark) power settings and attitudes for every stage of flight (and the adjustments for weight). Anything else is negligent. Not every aircraft has a speed trend arrow and even if it does it may not always be there.
Dear god how many more AF447s do we need to make this point? |
moving your hand on the thrust levers (assuming you’re talking ATHR OFF here) back a bit or fwd a bit to acheive the outcome than memorising numbers. |
Put me in with the "know your power settings" crowd. Yes the trend arrow is great, and yes it's another piece of magic that is foolish to become reliant on, for obvious reasons. And even when it does work, during a config change, level off, etc., it takes less of my attention (i.e., more of it available for the remaining items in my scan) to A) quickly set the thrust to the rough value from the list, scan through everything else, and then (about when it's stabilized) come back to the thrust and fine tune it with the trend vector, than it does to B) continuously watch the trend vector during a long slow thrust change to the precise final value (over the entire duration of the level off) where it's taking most of my attention.
Of course this is not helped by many EFIS setups omitting tick marks. A genius human factors move! So in the CRJ, my memorized power settings are where the right engine N1 needle is relative to the little "N1" label between the two gauges. 250 knots level clean below 10K is slightly above it, final approach with full flaps is slightly below it, etc. |
IAE engines have another problem. The ball park figures are always in N1 while the doughnuts are on the EPR guage. So you need to know appx. EPR value. Then you can just set the doughnuts to that value and get back to PFD to manage the trend. 1.05 is a good figure. Progressively increases to 1.18 to 1.2 with gear down and full flaps. Then again around 1.05 on the glide. Fine tune with trend arrow.
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