VFR Cross-Country




Our beloved Cessna C172p over ... ?? Does somebody recognize that airport ??

This tutorial simulates a cross-country flight from Reid-Hillview (KRHV) to Livermore (KLVK) under Visual Flight Rules (VFR). Both airports are included in the standard FlightGear package, so no additional scenery is required. But we will be referencing many additional, freely available data-resources which you may only use for simulation - for similar actions in reality you are not licensed to use them and they may be far outdated, so they may present an actual safety problems if used in reality!

We assume that you are happy taking off, climbing, turning, descending and landing in FlightGear. If not, have a look into the chapters before, especially "Solo Flight" and "KnowHow". This VFR-tutorial is based on applying those unique skills within an actual task, and provide informations on some of the slightly more complicated flight systems and procedures.

We also assume that many people like to fly - but only a few of them like the pre-planning, which may even take a longer time then the actual flight! But we urge you to go through that complete planning-scenario at least once - and then decide from case to case what you want/need to use for your own planning. Even if in future you only take flights "under perfect weather conditions, direct GPS from A to B, and do not care about others in the area" - you can do that in a simulator! But wouldn't it be nice to have at least some idea about what other pilot-friends are talking about?


Flight Planning

As we do plan each trip by car into unknown areas by checking maps and regulations to find the best route - we surely have to do that also for a flight.

So let's get to known the environment first:


Airports

For the whole USA lots of airport informations are available on-line, e.g. in http://www.airnav.com.
You can directly call up any unique airfield by adding that ICAO-code to it, e.g.: http://www.airnav.com/airport/KLVK.

You probably will be overwhelmed by all that many informations presented there - so learn to pick what you need. We suggest to first concentrate onto the pictures at the right side of the homepage:
» usually there is a nice "aerial photo" of that airport, giving you a complete visual overview
» and there is the "Airport Diagram", telling you where is what and how to get/taxi there:
KRHV Airport layout
KLVK Airport layout
We suggest you print out at least this kind of "Airport Diagram" to be oriented, especially if you fly in a "Multiplayer environment", may be even with an ATC telling you where to taxi and hold and ....

But as I said: To find that data for the whole world is a little more complicated. We suggest you start inside the VATSIM-Organization:
world wide start at:     http://usa-w.vatsim.net/charts/
leading e.g. for Germany to:    http://www.vacc-sag.org/?PAGE=airport_overview

The Sectional

Have a look at the so called Sectional for the area. This is a special map showing airports, navigational aids, obstructions, etc.. There are two scales of sectionals for VFR flight - the 1:500,000 sectionals themselves, and a number of 1:250,000 VFR Terminal Area Charts which cover particularly busy areas.

Again a little drawback for the nonUS-simulator-pilots: Those "Sectionals" are freely available (for simulations!) for the whole USA in a "Google-map style interface" in http://www.runwayfinder.com/. The rest of the world may have to buy them - and they are expensive! So many of you may have to use the FlightGear own resources like MPmap and/or ATLAS.

But for now we fly inside the USA and thus can use the http://www.runwayfinder.com/:
Die Sectional









By the way: The Sectional is oriented "north-south" like street maps. But you can see the difference to the magnetic North in any VOR-circle/scale. See e.g. VOR "San Jose" (just left of KRHV) that has a pointer directly to 0° - which on the cartographic map looks like 14.2°!

Do not be confused: On US-charts you often find the ICAO-codes without the international used leading "K". So "RHV“ = "KRHV“ and "LVK“=“KLVK“!

Let us see what (most useful) informations are offered in that Sectional, e.g. for KRHV (see (my) red arrow in the lower right):

REID-HILLVIEW (RHV)
Airport-name and ICAO-code (mentally add "K“ in front!)

CT – 119.8 * © 126.1 *
CT = there is a Control-Tower
119.8 = is the CT-Frequency to contact ATC
* = the tower is manned only part-time
©126.1 = the UNICOM-frequency for pilots to inform each other about their intentions, when the CT is not manned

ATIS 125.2
ATIS will inform about the active runway, weather, etc. on this frequency

133 *L31 / 122.95
133 = the altitude of the airfield in ft
*L = means lighted -- the * again means only part-time
31 = the longest runway is 31*100 = 3.100 ft. (~1 km).
122.95 = CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequencies) = Military-Unicom. i.e. this is a Military airfield!

RP 13R, 31R
RP = Right hand traffic pattern for runways 13R and 31R (there are no traffic-patterns for 13L and 31L, i.e. you should not use those for VFR approaches!)


or use the MPmap:

KRHV-KLVK on MP
See on the left a similar presentation on MPmap:
  • See in the left the area between those to airports, also how a NDB (REIGA) and a VOR (San Jose) are represented, inclusive their frequencies.
  • Sorry that you cannot see the actual terrain altitudes! So be careful, you may look for it on normal maps.


KLVK-MP on MP
Above you see KLVK by zooming into the MPmap.
  • You see the runways with their ID's and exact heading, e.g. runway 07R (ID) has a actual heading of 90.58°. Notice this hint for a rather big deviation between cartographic and magnetic heading!
  • Also see the ILS informations if you click onto that "cross in a square" to the right of the runway ID 25R. We do not use ILS yet - but You will need it during the "IFR Cross-Country".
  • And notice the difference between the cartographic/magnetic heading of the runway: It's name says 25, so that means about 250° (cartographic) - but in that right box you also see "270.57°" (magnetic)! That means a big difference of 20°! See the explanation to it under the following chapter "The Course".
  • You can also spot the taxi-ways - but not the names of them, same with the parking lots etc.. So you are not able to follow an advise "taxi to runway 25L via J": If you get such an advise from ATC you need to use the Airport-Diagram: There are 2 taxiways in parallel ("A" and "J") - and it may make sense to define which one to take - those things will become important on bigger airports!
For the KRHV layout on MP see the following chapter "The Start-position".



The Route

So, how are we going to fly from Reid-Hillview to Livermore?

We’ll be taking off at KRHV. As can be seen on the airport-diagram (as also on Sectional or MPmap), there are two parallel runways at KRHV. This is to handle the large amount of traffic that uses the airport. Each of the runways can be used in either direction. e.g. runway 31 is the same runway as 13, just from the other end! The 13 and 31 indicate that the magnetic heading of the runways is around 130° respectively 310° degrees, and the R/L indicates that it is the runway on the right/left. So, the runways available are 13R, 13L, 31R, 31L. The names of the runways are written in large letters at the beginning of the runways and are easily been seen from the air (see e.g. the picture at Starting positions)

First of all let us see from which runway to start. Of course that depends primarily on the wind - so it could be either one of those 4: 31L/R and/or 13L/R. But remember: We saw in the Sectional that there is no Pattern for 31L and 13R.  Thus:
To summarize: We prefer the 31R (and would take the 13R when the wind forces us to start eastbound)!

The Course

The next big question coming up is: What will be the exact heading towards KLVK?

Looking onto the maps we can draw a nearly perfect vertical line between KRHV and KLVK, that would indicate a heading of 360°/0° (remember: On a compass 0° as well as 360° are both exactly north!). We talked already about he difference between the cartographic heading (on normal maps) and the magnetic heading, which we need for our compasses! Now have another look onto the Airport-Diagram, there you see in a corner a triangle of 2 arrows: The one arrow shows into the cartographic North (0°/360°) and the other to the magnetic North - and in between is an angle of 14.2°. You see the same on the Sectional at any VOR: See e.g. the compass rose of the VOR "San Jose" left of KRHV: Also there you see an "Arrow 0°" going to the map heading 14.2°. Thus
» If you fly by your compass a heading of 0° - you actually fly on a  14.2° heading over the earth (maps)
» so, to actually fly North according to the map (as we want to) we need to fly 360°-14.2° = 345.8° !!

So once we took off we’ll head at about 346° towards Livermore (KLVK). We’ll fly at about 3,500 ft about sea-level. This puts us at least 500 ft above any terrain or obstructions like radio masts on the way. You may verify that on the Sectional, selection "Terrain": There are several mountains with about 3000 ft around the "Calaveras Reservoir".

We’ll fly over the Calaveras Reservoir and then the San Antonio Reservoir. These are both large bodies of water and we can use them as navigation aids to ensure we are on the right track.

Once we get about 10 miles out of Livermore (above the San Antonia Reservoir), we’ll contact the Livermore Air Traffic Control (ATC) to find out where we should land. We’ll then join the circuit and land.


The Start-position

If you fly by yourself you could just pop up on the Starting point of the runway. But if you fly with the Multiplayer-Functions activated you should never do that, because you do not know if there is somebody on short final to it or getting ready to start or ... or ...! In all those cases you are suddenly "inside" the other players - which is not really appreciated by anyone! You may hear (or read) some pretty nasty words! So let us learn how to avoid that and do what is done in reality. Remember in Section "Solo Flight" we did do that already by defining a "Parking position" to start at. For KRHV there are no such "--parkpos" pre-defined (yet) - but we can define easily our own, private, VIP parking position (without having to pay any rent for it!) - let us do that! There are 2 easy ways for it:
  • Open MPmap and zoom into KRHV, about like shown on the left. Get your mouse-pointer to any place you want to use as startup-position - e.g. as shown at the aircraft-symbol "jomo". The GPS data will be shown on the top right corner on the screen. In addition we need a heading: In the shown case we are lined up with the runway 31R, which would be roughly 310°+14° (magnetic/cartographic!) = 324°.
  • Or you can just fly to and land on that airport and taxi to a parking-lot you like. Then open the Menu → File → Browse Internal Properties → position and read the "latitude-deg" and "longitude-deg". The heading you can read directly from your compass!


If you start with FGrun you enter these values in "Advanced → Initial Position"

Otherwise add these data to your Options-file:
--lat=37.334047 --lon=-121.816320 --heading=324.


If you then show up at KSFO - you know you mistyped something, because FlightGear did not accept your definition and thus placed you onto the default airport KSFO!

Let me warn you about the correctness of all maps: When taxiing on KRHV you will notice, that not everything looks like it should according to the map. Sorry about that: But our "Scenery-Architects" are working unpaid, are overloaded - and will correct those things ASAP (As Soon As Possible)! In KLVK that effects especially the taxiways and markings for them - we will point out those in the following, when we hit an error!

Start Up Engines

You know already how to start FlightGear in all possible ways, so I will not bother you with that. Just let us make sure we all start from runway 31R at KRHV and land on 25R at KLVK, at least for our first try. So please add the options:
» "--wind=270@5"  to your Option-File if starting without FGRUN
» or define the wind in  FGRUN Advanced Weather:  Set "Heading=270"  and "Speed=5"
then start as usual.

So now we are sitting in our beloved Cessna and prepare for Startup. I hope you have already a little "every day checklist" from our trainings before - so we will point out here only some unique settings:
Light-Switches
See the switches in the position we do want now: Taxi, Navi, and Beacon on - all other off
(You may choose to switch "PitotHeat" on on very cold days!)

Landing-light and Strobes will be switched on after "cleared to Take Off"

(For more Infos see  The description of the Instruments)



Ready to Taxi

We are already "Professionals" in taxiing to a runway and taking off (if not: Revisit "Solo Flight" and "Know How") - so let us just explain the unique things here:

Taxiways at KRHVFirst of all: At the beginning we did set a special "fair weather" which probably enables us to start from runway 31R. But I do hope, that in some further training flights you will use "live data" or even some more difficult choices instead of this (boring!) "fair weather"! And maybe some time you have an ATC controlling you or you depend on the UNICOM. So we will try to describe also these different possibilities.
 
The runways at KRHV are 3000 ft in length, so that we always could start "intermediate" from the center of the runway - as shown in the Sketch. Especially because I do not want to taxi more than needed, we will use that "intermediate procedure" as describe in the following. That is also good for doing some "Short Field Takeoff" training!

According to the pictures we first need to taxi a little left ahead to enter the center taxiway, that crosses all runways at their center (ref. the Sketch). Also see the yellow signs for the taxiways and the red signs for the runways!

In the following we will also exercise the normal communication parallel to what we are doing. (Do you remember your (car) driver lessons? It is not so important what you do - but let the others know about it!) We will do all the communication by using the numbered codes  of the "Chat Menu" - that way we save a lot of typing.  (In case you use FGCOM I suggest you send the messages first and then read them from your screen loud into your microphone  - so you get used to the wordings, and thus all pilots in the area read/hear your announcements even if they do not use FGCOM or are on another frequency!) If there is no "human ATC" in the tower you can decide by yourself if you want to use the UNICOM - or the ATC-Procedures, the differences are:
» with ATC we request a clearance for what we want to do and then wait for the tower to "clear" us. Those codes begin with "-3.." (or " '3.." on egl. keyboards)
» 
with UNICOM we announce what we are going to do -- and watch out that others are not endangered by our doing! Those codes begin with "-2.." (or " '2.." on egl. keyboards)
(In the following I will write all codes in the international way with "-" at the beginning, because that is easier to spot than the engl. "'"!)

Make sure the tower frequency 119.8 is set into COM1 !! (hit "F12" to check)
Attention: You are never never never ... allowed to cross any runway without stopping before it first!

Thus we do have to go different from here, see the following procedures:

TakeOff from 31R:  (Wind from NW)
TakeOff from 13R:  (Wind from SE)
  • "-347" with ATC:
    • "KRHV YourName holding short runway 31R"
    • ATC will advise you to enter the runway and get ready (or TakeOff )
    • switch on "Landing Light" + "Strobes"
  • "-225" with UNICOM:
    • "KRHV YourName departing runway 31R, departing the Pattern to the North"
    • switch on "Landing Light" + "Strobes"
    • and after you convinced yourself that nobody is on final etc, you enter the runway and depart.
  • "-347" with ATC:
    • "KRHV YourName holding short runway 31R"
    • if there is a "Human ATC" at work he will clear you to cross 31R - if not that may not yet be implemented (try it)
  • "-221" with UNICOM:
    • "KRHV YourName taxiing to runway 13R
    • and after you convinced yourself that nobody is on final etc, you cross runway 31R and next hold short at runway 13R.
  • and there we stop again and ...

  • "-347" with ATC:
    • "KRHV YourName holding short runway 13R"
    • ATC will advise you to enter the runway and get ready (or TakeOff )
    • switch on "Landing Light" + "Strobes"
  • "-225" with UNICOM:
    • "KRHV YourName departing runway 13R, departing the Pattern to the North"
    • switch on "Landing Light" + "Strobes"
    • and after you convinced yourselves that nobody is on final etc, you enter the runway and depart.
Climb straight at runway-heading (310°):
• at altitude 1000 ft turn right to our course (346°)
• and continue to climb to 3500 ft

We enter the pattern and continue to climb in the pattern:
• climb straight at runway-heading (130°)
• at altitude 500 ft turn right to Crosswind (220°)
• at altitude 1000 ft another 90° to the right (310°)
• at the end of Downwind we turn right to our course (346°)
• and continue to climb to 3500 ft


Climbing:

After we are on course (346°) we should see in some distance a dominant valley, that we can use as a visual target to fly towards. Coming close we will spot the first large lake, the "Calaveras Reservoir"! As we said before: This is a very welcomed and easy to spot landmark for verifying that we are on the right track! Over the lake we should have reached our cruising altitude of 3500 ft!

You might remember, that in analyzing the route, we had a straight line over 2 lakes - this is the first of them. But when you started as described, you are probable not exactly over the center of the lake - but a little to the left of it. That is because we did not directly go on course 346° at KRHV, but first headed some time for 310° or we even first flew a pattern -- all that puts us further northwest than the direct line KRHV/KLVK is showing. But now we have the chance to correct for that: We should fly over the center of the lake - so change your heading to get over the center of the lake and from there head again on 346°!

You should always expect such deviations from your course, may it be as described just before, or due to wind, or because we did not pay enough attention to our instruments or whatever! So always make sure you have some landmarks at which you can double-check! That is why this flying technique is called VFR (Visual Flight Rules - NOT compass-rules). Yes - I agree: This little trip could have been done without it - but on a long trip you would not be the first guy getting completely lost - also outside deserts or similar! So you better learn the basics here and now!

Cruising with George

After we have trimmed our Darling Cessna (at 3500ft, hdg. 346°, speed ~120 kn at ~2500 RPM) we can try to relax a little and get our "Servant" to work - also known as "George" or "AP". See the chapter "AutoPilot" for a description of all his/it's abilities and how to handle it. On this flight we will just use him/it for keeping the heading (HDG) and altitude (ALT).

As soon as we tell "George" to take over he will do so very eagerly - and sometimes you might be surprised how well (and blind and stupid)! This servant will follow your orders without any intelligence - he will even follow orders of which you have no idea that you gave them! So make sure what orders you may have given him before telling him to take control! George will immediately take over two controls:
  1. ROL: George will use the ailerons to level the wings and keep them leveled immediately! He does not care at all about heading or course or whatever - he just keeps the wings leveled - and he will fight against you very strongly if you would dare to move the ailerons just a tiny bit -- the ailerons are now "Gorges" responsibility and he will fight for it - until you give him explicitly other orders! And giving "orders" is not just "Hey George I make a little turn", but
If you want to have a little fun: Try to tell George to turn left by moving the red marker counter-clockwise to 090° FAST - then George will immediately start turning to the left - but as soon as the angle between the current heading and the red-marker becomes larger then 180° he suddenly will reverse and turn into the other direction! That is how stupid he is - we are lucky to have an intelligent pilot watching George!
  1. VS (Vertical Speed): George will continue to ascent/descend as is - so watch it if you give that control to George: If you do it while descending, George will continue to descend until you crash - or tell him otherwise!
Caution: The AP uses the trimming functions to control. Thus those may be messed up pretty much and may even crash you when Taking Off again after an AP-Approach - and you forget to set trimming to "neutral" again! But also if you just switch off the AP during flight the trimmings may not be what you would expect when switching the AP back on again!

Clever as you are, by now you probably get a wonderful idea: "I will just get the wheels off the ground, initiate a climb and then switch AP"! Well - hhhmmm - yes - it will work (most of the times!!) - but please: Do not! There are 3 big reasons for not doing it:
  1. Safety: In case anything goes wrong during the TakeOff you will smash onto ground before being able to switch off the AP and take over again!
  2. Reliability: You should remember that you are controlling the ascent and heading with the Yoke (i.e. Elevator, Rudder, etc.) while the AP uses only the trimming-functions. So, if you have not trimmed to your actual attitude yet, the AP will have big problems and needs a lot of time finding the correct trimming! You always should trim first manually (at least roughly) before activating the AP! Or you are never sure what will happen! For sure it will not be a smooth transient, if you just let George take over - he really is dammed stupid (although he is a wonderful piece of clever engineering!)!
  3. Proficiency: After you have trimmed for cruise there is not much to "fly" for you any more. So you will forget what flying is all about - so use these TakeOff's to keep up your feelings, reflexes, etc. etc.
You tell George to stop controlling by pushing AP a second time. And here is one of the problems: George will not stop immediately - he first will start flashing the display to warn you - and will withdraw only after some time! So do not expect immediate actions - if you are on AP you have to trust that "non intelligent" servant for some time! Be sure not to hit a sudden emergency! As soon as you believe it could become critical - you better take over control immediately! (Yes: In reality all Pilots do have an extra switch at there yoke to switch the AP off immediately - but not you!)

If you restart the AP during the same session - it will restart with the values it had before! So be careful if you just mad a Touch&Go or took a rest at some airport in between. Switching on the AP will be OK for ROL and VS -- everything else you should double-check prior to activate it !

So let George be our servant now: We switch him on by a click onto "AP"

After switching on "ROL" and "VS" will be active!
That means the wings will stay horizontally leveled and the actual ascent/descent will be continued!

See the "0400" in the upper right corner: That means we were climbing with 400 ft when switching on. George will continue to get us up until we stall due to the engine stopped (because the Mixture was not adjusted by you) - or till we tell George to do something different!

By now we have clicked onto "HDG" and "ALT" - that means George will follow the red heading bug (wherever that points to) and keep the altitude we are at now.

To change the present altitude we could push "ALT" (i.e. "VS" gets active again) and then we define with the "UP"/"DN" in what direction we ascent/descent and how fast. When crossing the wanted altitude, we push "ALT" again - so we stay there!
This is a typical indication when we descent during approach: We sink with about 500 ft/Min and follow the direction the red heading bug points to.

To level of at a certain altitude (e.g. Pattern = 1400 ft) hit "ALT" when crossing that.
To change the heading just move the red heading bug.

But even if you can trust George in general - keep monitoring him! Especially for:
And do not forget: Enjoy that wonderful landscape below you!

The Approach

Once you reach the second reservoir (the San Antonio Reservoir), we need to start planning our descent and landing at Livermore. Landing is a lot more complicated than taking off, assuming you want to get down in one piece, so you may want to pause the simulator (press ‘p’) while reading this. But do not use the "p" when flying in "multiplayer mode" and/or flying in an group: Because you become invisible after a short while in "pause-mode"! Especially ATC may become mad if you do that - because that may throw all his planning - he even might lose a lot of time trying to find you again or checking for technical problems on his side!

ATC und ATIS

In the Real World, we’d have been in contact with Air Traffic Control (ATC) continually, as the "Bay Area" is quite congested in the air as well as on the ground. ATC would probably provide us with a ‘flight following’ service, and would continually warn us about air-traffic around us, helping to avoid any possible collisions. The FlightGear skies are generally clear of traffic, so we don’t need a flight following service.

If you fly in "multiplayer mode" you also might open the "Pilot List" in menuMultiplayer  to see who else is flying in your area, and where he/she is flying.

Livermore Airport is towered (towered airports are drawn in blue on the sectional!), so we will need to communicate with the tower to receive instructions on how and where to land.

Before that, we should listen to the ATIS, and re-adjust our altimeter, just in case anything has changed. This is quite unlikely on such a short flight, but if flying hundreds of miles it might make a big difference. To save time when tuning radios, you can access the Radio Settings dialog via "F12". The Livermore ATIS frequency is 119.65 MHz.

An ATIS message also has a phonetic letter (Alpha, Bravo, . . . Zulu) to identify the message. This phonetic is changed each time the recorded message is updated. When first contacting a tower, the pilot mentions the identifier, so the tower can double-check the pilot has up to date informations.

Besides the altitude and weather information, the ATIS will also say which runway is in use. This is useful for planning our landing. Normally, due to the prevalent westerly wind, Livermore has runways 25R and 25L in use.

Once you’ve gotten the ATIS, tune the radio to Livermore Tower. The frequency is 118.1 MHz. Depending on the level of AI-traffic, that you have configured on your system, you may see/hear Livermore Tower "talking" to other aircraft that are landing or departing. But his information is not played over the speakers (unless you use a TTS-system), it is only displayed on the screen.

Once the frequency goes quiet, use the "Chat Menu" as we did during departure:
Because we did manipulate the weather, we are pretty sure that it will be the 25R - but when you later fly under different weather conditions that may be different. Anyhow: The 25R (or 07L) has the most difficult approach - so I will describe that one. The others will then be self-explanatory!


Merge into the pattern

We now have to get to "Downwind 25R"! By now we should know what a "Traffic Pattern" is - if not: Have another look into the whole chapter about Approaches.
Anflug-Skizze zum KLVKIn the picture on the left you see the 2 parallel runways (25R/07L and 25L/07R), of which the one to the south is a short one - which we hopefully never have to use!

And we know the procedure: We have to enter the downwind in an angle of 45°. The merging point is somewhat indifferent: The USA say in the middle of the downwind, Europe says at the beginning -- so let us compromise and say somewhere between the beginning and the middle of the downwind!

If we had to go to 07L/R we would take the green route to enter the pattern, but for 25R (or 25L) we have to take the longer blue route, around the Control-Zone!

We will approach the pattern from about 1 mile north of the downwind-leg in order to first orient ourself and look for other traffic before we join the "circus"! If you look onto the sketch you see a highway going past the KLVK runways, just below the downwind-leg for 25R, so we will stay about 1 mi north of that highway and then join into the downwind from there at the required angel of 45°!

Also notice the elevation of 400 ft for the airfield - thus the Pattern altitude is 400+1000=1400. (It could also be 200 ft less - but I prefer a little higher altitude!).

Right now we should be over the second big water, the "San Antonia Reservoir", heading north (346°) at 3500ft with a speed of ~120 kn at ~2500 RPM.

Starting from there:

Landing


Congratulations - you made it !!!

Do what all good cowboys do: Some patting to our brave, well-behaved Cessna!
And also thanks to the originator of this flight-description: Stuart Buchanan and his helpers: Benno Schulenberg, Sid Boyce, Vassilii Khachaturov, James Briggs and Joe Emmerich!

You should do this exercise more often to get some routine in it. Especially also under different weather and times - e.g. night-flights are very nice too!