KNS 81
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Hi all, I've been having some trouble with the KNS 81 on the Turbine Duke and just wondering if I'm doing something wrong or if there's a reason these things are called "Non-Precision Approaches". Happened at a couple of airports but below is the latest.
I was doing a short flight last night from KTEB to KABE. nice, easy 35 minute or so flight. Below is my workflow and tools when setting up the KNS81.
Tools: Skyvector for charts and initial planning. Little nav map for ingame precision and measurements from VORs.
Flight plan: KTEB TEB4 BWZ HADAD JISTO RWY06 KABE.
Used FJC VORTAC for hadad, jisto and the runway end. Used the RNAV 06 chart for headings to each point. I used little navmap's option to measure a distance from the vortac to each intersection and the runway waypoint was put at the very beginning of the runway. Little navmap gives you what I think is the radial, (but maybe it is just a magnetic heading,) vor frequency and distance for a line measurement. That is what I used.
Took off. Used VOR Nav to go direct BWZ. On the outbound radial from BWZ toward HADAD I switched to rnav and it seemed to do a good job getting me to hadad. Just before hadad, set 333° in hsi and clicked use on waypoint 2, Jisto. Just before jisto, clicked use on waypoint 3 and set 063°. That heading is on both the rnav and ils charts and the runway heading is 63.3°. All magnetic headings.
It was only on the approach to the runway did I notice that I was aimed at the runway but I appeared to be several degrees out of alignment with it. I was left of the runway. It wasn't so bad, and I had a few moments so I tried playing with the hsi and to go right, I had to turn the course left a bit.
I didn't have much time to play and the runway was in sight so I just took manual control and flew it in (like you're supposed to anyway, but maybe slightly early)
So my question is: what happened? My theories are
- FJC is not calibrated, the ils chart uses ETX for reference.
- Using little navmap's measurement tool from the vor distance and radial to the runway end isn't as accurate as one would assume. Maybe it's not a radial, maybe a straight heading from the VOR, but it looked close enough to me.
- The freeware 3rd party kabe airport I got off flightsim.to isn't aligned, but I don't recall problems before with ils there.
I mean, it is a non-precision approach, but I would think it should be able to line me up on a runway that 3 different charts confirms is the heading. Unless I'm doing something wrong or it's one of those things about the kns. Maybe the wind pushed me over? Dunno. Anyone else use the kns a lot and get weird stuff like that?
I'm going to try doing the rnav with the gps, and redo with the kns tonight and do the ils, too, if I have time, to see what happens. On the ingame vfr map, I did seem to be parallel to the gps-like path the vfr map makes for the approach. Which seems odd to me.
What do you guys think?
BTW, I love this thing either way. The Turbine Duke and all the systems, especially the kns, are brilliant. I love all my Just Flight planes, Turbine Duke, BAE and Fokker. You guys are right up there with the likes of pmdg, aerosoft and Fenix for best addons. I sincerely hope to see all of your stuff in FS2024 and beyond.
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After doing the flight a couple of times, I think it's the wind throwing me off. GPS compensates for the wind and it set my heading for 66 degrees. If I set for 63 degrees, I get pushed to one side in a cross wind. looks like the KNS can't compensate for the cross wind either, I guess.