Landing on small, no nav aid, airstrips.

[spotsey]

During my travels flying around the world of Airsource I have found great pleasure in flying the scheduled flights in a twin or single prop aircraft to little known airstrips, a large number of which have never been flown before.
It could be that the lack of navigation aids such as Localizer beacons or ILS systems puts pilots off the challenge of the flight.
I have found that there are two essential tasks to master, flying the descent to touchdown and getting on the correct runway heading to land.
I open a new outside spot view of my aircraft, then select the view from the rear. When flying an ILS approach with this view open you will see that the approaching runway is positioned just under the fuselage, between the landing gear, all the way down the glide slope to touchdown. It is very hard to correctly estimate your height above ground on a flat screen picture, this view does away with the need to try.

This can be replicated when flying into little strips without ILS.

When creating the Flight Plan using the Flight Planner tool drag the flight path line from the point on the landing airstrip out on the same angle as the strip, you will need to zoom in to do this. You may need to create a couple of waypoints like this, making a longer approach line
,
Fly the flight using the GPS nav settings.

When you turn onto final approach make sure you are about 2500ft above the strip altitude.

Select approach speed, flaps and gear.

Set the heading bug on the autopilot to match the GPS approach heading, then turn on the heading autopilot setting.

When the strip becomes visible in the spot view you have set up, set the altitude on the autopilot to zero and set the descent rate to -500ft.

As you fly the approach , using the spot view, adjust your rate of descent to keep the runway positioned just under the fuselage, between the landing gear, all the way down the glide slope to touchdown. you will also need to adjust the heading bug to align your aircraft with the runway as you approach.

Nearing touchdown it is better to have a bit of height in hand, you can increase the descent and when nearing touchdown reduce the descent to create a flare for a soft landing.

If by using this procedure you too find the pleasure of landing on bush strips in Alaska it will have been well worth writing about it.

I also have a little program which enables me to add Runway Lights to any airstrip, a necessity when flying in the dead of night, in Alaska, in a snowstorm, looking for a little bush strip to land on.

Have fun.

[spotsey]

There are NavAid programs available from this website

www.aero.sors.fr/navaids.html

[AS 2 Tom Little]

Thank you for this information - it will come in handy!

[spotsey]

Thanks Tom,
I have also found :

https://fsxmap.com/

Great for finding all the airports on FSX, and calculating distances.

When flying around Alaska I have found that some of the small strips do not show on the FSX flight planner when you use the four letter airport code from the Crew Pass.
For example, PFEL doesn't show, but it is at a place called Elim, if you search for that in the place name field you find it showing with the airport code ELI.
PAWN, doesn't show either, but a search for White Mountain reveals the airport code is WMO.
So you still get to fly these little bush strips.