FS2004 ATPL CHECKRIDE WALKTHROUGH

FS2004 ATP CHECKRIDE WALKTHROUGH

Author: mailto://simonta@btinternet.com.

How to mail me

Put FS9 somewhere in the subject line or there’s a good chance you’ll get “spam binned”.

Please send me feedback on errors, omissions and suggestions. I’d also love to hear what you think! Did this help you pass? Did you learn anything about flying or FS2004? Etc…

Please don’t ask for:

Instruction on how to read/write the FS scripting language. Microsoft produces a development kit for this.

http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulator/fs2004_downloads_sdk.asp#abl

“How do I” type questions. There are plenty of good forums for that on the web. Try starting here:

http://groups.msn.com/OfficialFlightSimulatorSite2

History

Version	Date	Reason
1.0	19 March 2004	First release
1.1	20 March 2004	Added verbatim walk through
1.2	27 March 2004	Corrected takeoff power checks and Vr (thanks Lilo) Amended OLM VOR turn

Introduction

After getting hooked on FS, I started working my way up through the lessons. In real life, I am a qualified helicopter pilot so learning to fly “planks” was fun, challenging and interesting. My first big stumble came with the IFR check ride which, I confess, I could only got through using walkthroughs other people had created. Eventually I got to the pinnacle; the ATP check ride. I failed this many times. I not only failed, I got severely frustrated with:

Being told I could choose to continue to fly by myself if I exceeded more than 2 criteria in a sector – and of course, seeing the lesson end
Being certain I had done something correctly, or at least in accordance with the lessons and the real world experience I had, only to have the “Dragon Lady” tell me I’d failed!
Learning how to do things correctly to pass but knowing they were not real world.

In order to solve these, I decided to start deciphering the script which is used to control the check ride. This contains all of the checks to make sure you don’t exceed the criteria, the logic needed to figure out where you are (still climbing, passing OLM VOR, on the runway etc) and code to tell you whether you’ve been a good person or a naughty person and will you get to print that certificate? The script is called “atp checkride.abl” and is found in <FS ROOT>\Lessons\ATP.

By going through the script line by line, I discovered the following:

Bugs
Checks for tolerances that differ from those in the briefings
A simple way to continue flying if you fail a sector
That there is no simple way to make this close to real world without a substantial rewrite.

This document is intended to address all of these things except the last one. Who knows, if I get good feedback, I might even tackle that one day and rework the script completely?

It contains a detailed walkthrough, a list of the exact criteria used in the script and some easy “hacks” to the script to allow you to practice more and remove some of the annoyances.

Finally, this is not a tutorial. You should already have done the lessons and know how to fly the FS 737, tune the radios, use the autopilot, hand fly climbs, use the VOR and ILS and finally – land! If you can’t do any of these, go back to the lessons and practice.

I hope this helps you and have fun!

Walkthrough

As mentioned in the introduction, I gave up trying to get close to the real world. This is a step by step guide. There are some steps that are strictly not necessary as they are not checked, but I didn’t want to move even further from the real world so I left them in. You can read the detailed tolerance checking to see what is mandatory and reduce the steps even further if you’re in a real hurry. There are also some steps that seem odd. I’ve added notes where appropriate. These are at the end of the walkthrough.

All the way through, I have stuck to a principal of doing things earlier rather than later. This helps to reduce workload during the busy bits, reduces the chances of forgetting something until too late and is also in the spirit of “not letting the aircraft go somewhere your brain hasn’t already been”.

You are also going to hand fly most of the climb to 10000’! This is because it is very difficult to keep to the strict N1 “climb power” checks with autopilot and auto-throttle on. This is the main reason people fail this check. They don’t realise that it is very strict and continues up to 27900’, just before the level out! It is possible to do by using ROC to control N1.

If you follow this walk through exactly, you will pass with no tolerance exceeded.

OK, lets fly! Good luck!

Walkthrough Detail

Abbreviated check list:

Throttle	Idle
Strobe	On
Nav lights	On
Landing lights	On
Beacon	On
Nav/GPS	Nav
Auto-throttle	Off	Note 1
Autopilot	Off	Note 1
Course bug (OBS)	332
Heading bug	003
IAS/Mach bug	300
Altitude bug	28000
Vert Speed bug	3000
Nav hold	Selected	Note 2
Heading hold	Off
Approach hold	Off
IAS hold	Off
Mach hold	Off
Alt hold	Off
Back course	Off
Nav 1 Stby	110.6
ADF	396
Marker audio	On
Flaps	5
Auto-brakes	RTO
Brakes	On

From now until 10000’, you are going to focus mainly on airspeed, pitch and N1.

Takeoff:

Set power to 40% N1

Brakes off

Increase power smoothly to 95% N1

Rotate at 154 kts

When +ve climb, gear up

Aim for about 17 degrees nose up

Flaps to 1. When airspeed is above 200, flaps to 0

Use pitch to keep the airspeed above 170kts and below 250kts. Aim for 240kts.

Between 1500’ and 2000’ reduce N1 to 90%

Autopilot on. You will now start to track the 332 radial to OLM VOR.

Continue to use pitch to control the speed and trim to reduce workload

Auto-brakes off, landing lights off

Above 10000’:

It’s OK to exceed 250kts now so at last you can select Alt hold on the autopilot. It will now fly you up to FL280 before 25 DME.

Do not switch auto-throttle on.

Control speed with ROC. At about 18000’, you will need to reduce from 3000 FPM as your speed starts to decay.

As you climb, there is a tendency for the N1 to droop so continue to monitor and make very small adjustments to the throttle to keep them at 90%

Above 27900’ as you begin to level out:

Auto-throttle on

IAS hold on

24 DME:

Descend to 22000’ using 3000 FPM ROD

5.5 DME:

Select Hdg hold to start the turn to PAE VOR

3.5 DME:

When the To/From flag flips to “From” you are in the “blind spot” of the VOR and the dragon lady starts to speak. Note 3.

Turn checklist (complete within 60 seconds):

Nav 1 – 110.6

Nav 1 standby, 109.3

When the turn is complete, select Nav hold on

IAS/Mach – 235kts

Altitude - 3000

Vertical speed – 3000 FPM ROD

Turn the heading bug to 339

At 13000’:

Reduce vertical speed – 2000. This will slow you down nicely to below 250kts by 10000’ without having to use speed brakes, flap etc.

2.5 DME from PAE:

Select Hdg hold on

IAS/Mach 190kts

Landing lights on

Nav2 – 110.6. This will give you DME to the field for the approach.

7.6 DME, after you hear the RITTS outer marker:

Heading bug to 294

On rolling out on 294 heading:

Note time

Arm spoilers

Flaps 15 – do this in stages to avoid large pitch changes and an “altitude bust”

Auto-brakes – 3

Nav 1 – 109.3

Course bug - 159

After 70 seconds:

Heading bug to 114

During the turn, select App mode. Leave Hdg and Alt hold on.

When the localiser is captured, the Hdg hold will disengage:

Speed 165

Flaps to 30 in stages

When the glideslope is captured, the Alt hold will disengage:

Gear down

Speed 150

Set altimeter to 992mb – the KPAE QFE – gives us an AGL reference to the runway – I like to know how high I really am J. Note 4.

When the speed is stable at just above 150 and the N1 is stable at approx 57%, switch off the auto-throttle. I do this at about 500’ QFE. Do not touch the keyboard or joystick throttle controls. N1 will stay where it is. This gets you set up to cut the throttle to idle over the threshold.

At 100’, disengage the autopilot and hand fly. Be ready to catch any pitch change.

Cut the throttle over the threshold and flare to land

Once the wheels are on, press and hold F2 to engage thrust reversers.

Press F1 to disengage reverse thrust at 20kts.

Print certificate J

Verbatim Walkthrough

Thanks to Lilo for suggesting that some people like a verbose walk through.

You might want to memorise a couple of check lists to make things a little more realistic. These are simplified but do apply to all aircraft in all flight conditions.

At regular intervals, carry out a FREDA check and on turns, carry out a HATFIR check. These don’t really apply in this FS check ride because you don’t get systems failures and you won’t get low on fuel but it’s still good practice to use these.

F – Fuel - sufficient

R – Radios – tuned properly – any radio calls made

E – Engines (Ts&Ps – check all instruments and switches)

D – Direction – going the right way?

A – altitude – vertical navigation

H – Heading – cross check with something – called a gross error check

A – altitude – vertical navigation – right height? Start a climb or descent?

T – Time – note the time for navigation and position reporting

F – Fuel – sufficient

I – Instruments – Ts&Ps in the green and switches set correctly?

R – Radios - – tuned properly – any radio calls made

Take-off

During the briefing, configure the aircraft for take-off in accordance with the check list. I like to do this I a methodical way, working left to right and top to bottom on the panels. That way, I don’t miss anything.

Strobe on, nav lights on, landing lights on, anti-collision beacon on.

Now configure the autopilot. Slave the autopilot to the nav radios by selecting Nav/GPS to Nav, check that the auto-throttle is off and the autopilot is not armed. Set the course bug to 332 ready to fly the radial to the OLM VOR. Set the heading bug to 003, nice and early ready for the turn from OLM to PAE. Set the IAS bug to 300, altitude to 28000 and vertical speed (from here called ROD – rate of descent – or ROC – rate of climb).

Select Nav hold. This will slave the autopilot to the Nav1 radio which is tuned to the OLM VOR. This controls the aircraft heading only. In theory, you could also arm the autopilot on the ground but I’m pretty sure there’s a bug in FS9 that sometimes means you don’t have pitch control - even though the altitude hold is selected off. If you find yourself in this situation, selecting altitude hold on then off again seems to fix it. I don’t want to be in that situation at Vr (rotate speed) with a short runway so I arm the autopilot once the climb is stable.

Check that approach hold, IAS hold, Mach hold, altitude hold and back-course are all selected off. Set the yaw damper as required. If you have auto-rudder set in the options, this last step is irrelevant.

Now for the radios. You don’t need to bother with the comms radios for this check ride. Check Nav1 active is set to 113.40. Set Nav1 standby to 110.6 (PAE VOR) ready for the first turn. Set Nav2 active to 110.60. This is really useful during the procedure turn and approach as it gives you a DME reading to KPAE. Select the marker audio on so that you can hear the ILS marker turns during the approach.

Finally, configure the aircraft itself. Set flaps to 5,auto-brakes on and check that the brakes are set. Now you’re ready to go.

Set power to 40% with the brakes on. Check that the N1 and N2 are responding and that all temperatures and pressures (Ts&Ps) are in the green. Release the brakes and smoothly increase power to 95%. The script checks for N1 between 90 and 98% as soon as the wheels leave the ground.

Climb

Cross check both airspeed indicators to make sure they are “alive”. Rotate at 154kts. Raise the nose to about 17 degrees at a rate of 3 degrees per second. In other words, it should take you about 6 seconds to rotate. As soon as the vertical speed indicator shows a positive ROC (the wheels will stop rumbling as well), retract the landing gear and set flaps to 1 by pressing F6 twice. Above 200 kts, retract the flaps fully. Do not exceed 220 kts with flaps extended. Allow the aircraft to accelerate At 1500’, reduce the power to 90% and arm the autopilot. You will now start to track onto the 332 radial to OLM VOR.

Continue to control speed all the way up the climb by controlling pitch. Aim for 240kts up until 10000’. Do not let the speed fall below 170kts. Remember to trim to reduce your workload. As soon as your relaxed a little after the busy takeoff, switch the landing lights and auto-brakes off. Check the Ts&Ps. Check you are tracking the 332 radial.

Above 10000’ feet, select Altitude hold on. At last, you can let the autopilot do most of the work. Use the ROC to control speed. At about 18000’, you will start the slow down. Reduce the ROC to keep the speed constant at about 270 kts. Watch your N1 as well because they tend to droop a little as the atmosphere thins out – this is a good bit of detail in the FS flight model.

Top of Climb

As you reach 27900’, just before the level off, you can select auto-throttle and IAS hold (or mach hold – your preference). Do this quite quickly as it’s easy to over-speed as you level off with 90% still set.

Descent to OLM

Just past 25 DME to OLM, start your descent to 22000 feet using a ROD of 3000 FPM (feet per minute).

Turn to PAE

You’re now travelling at well over 350 MPH over the ground. That’s about 6 miles per minute! If you leave the turn to PAE VOR until you are over or very close to the OM VOR, you will overshoot by a long way and won’t be able to track the 003 radial to PAE without going way off course. You will also find that the autopilot starts making big heading corrections as you get close to the VOR as the sensitivity increases. There is also a “cone of silence” or “cone of confusion” above the VOR. As its name suggests, you cannot use the VOR inside this cone. At 22000’, it’s about 7 miles across so you start to lose the signal at about 3.5 DME. You can see this with the CDI (course deviation indicator) swinging out to full scale and To/From flag flipping.

For these reasons, we will start the turn to PAE at 5.5 DME. This will get you nicely onto the 003 radial within tolerances and you will also pass the “initiating turn” check. You’ve already set the heading bug to 003 so just select heading hold and the aircraft will start to turn to that heading.

Click the stby switch on the nav1 radio to set the PAE VOR frequency to active, set the nav1 standby frequency to 110.9 (ready to pick up the KPAE ILS) and set the course bug to 003. During the turn, the examiner will start to speak – hopefully to congratulate you on a job well done! As soon as the CDI becomes active, select Nav hold to start tracking the 003 radial. Finally, set the heading bug to 339 ready for the next turn over PAE.

Descent to PAE

Start the descent to PAE. Set the altitude hold to 3000’ the ROD to 3000 FPM and the IAS bug to 235 kts. The aircraft won’t slow much at all with a clean airframe in a descent, even with the throttles at idle. At 13000’, reduce the ROD to 2000 FPM. This will slow you to below 250kts at 10000’ and will level you at 3000’ in good time for crossing PAE.

Turn at PAE

At 2.5 DME from PAE, select heading hold on. This will start the turn to track out from KPAE at 339 degrees. Don’t use the 339 radial. You will turn pretty much over the VOR and almost directly over the airfield so flying outbound on a heading of 339 does the job nicely. During the turn, the examiner will once again compliment your flying skills (and this walk throughJ). Set the IAS hold to 190 kts to avoid exceeding 200kts past the RITTS outer marker. Switch the landing lights on.

Procedure Turn

At approximately 7.5 DME after turning from PAE, you will hear the outer market tone. Turn the heading bug to 294 to start the procedure turn. As you roll out from this turn, note the time. You’re going to fly this heading for just over one minute. Arm the spoilers (shift and forward slash) and lower flaps to 15. Do this a step at a time to allow the autopilot to respond and maintain the height. Set auto-brakes to 3. Click the nav1 standby switch to set the ILS frequency active and set the course bug to 159 ready for the final approach. The script checks the radios at the end of this leg.

Course Reversal

After 70 seconds, turn the heading bug to 114 and select approach mode. Leave the heading and altitude hold on. The autopilot will deselect these as you capture the localiser and glide slope respectively.

ILS Approach

Once the localiser is captured, the heading hold will disengage. Set the speed to 165 kts and the flaps to 30. Again, do this in steps to avoid large pitch changes.

As you pass the outer marker and the glide slope is captured, the altitude hold will disengage. Lower the landing gear, reduce speed to 150 kts (vref is 143 kts) but you don’t want to go lower so leave a bit of margin – the runway is long enough to do this. Set the altimeter to 992mb (29.29 inches for our American friends) which is the KPAE QFE (surface pressure at the nearest measuring station to the field). This will gives us height above ground rather than altitude which the script has checked so far. I consider this a bug also as right up until the glide slope is captured, the height checks are done with reference to the standard pressure of 1013mb. Below the transition level (search Google), you would normally set the altimeter to QNH, or the regional pressure setting.

When the speed is stable at about 152 kts and the N1 stable at 57 or 58%, switch off the auto-throttle. This gets you ready to reduce throttles to idle over the threshold. Do not touch the keyboard or joystick throttle controls. The power setting will not change.

Landing

At 100’, disengage the autopilot (press Z) and hand fly the landing. Be ready to catch any pitch change and use the VASIs to stay on the glide slope. You should have 2 whites and 2 reds. More reds means too low, more whites means too high. As you cross the threshold, cut the throttles. At 20 feet, start a gentle flare to about 5 degrees nose up and let the aircraft settle onto the runway. Once the wheels are on, reduce the pitch to lower the nose wheel. When the auto-brakes activate, “Brakes” will be displayed in the lower left corner. Press and hold F2 to engage reverse thrust. At 30 kts, press F1 to disengage reverse thrust and let the aircraft come to a gentle halt. Do not taxi off the runway or you will fail.

Notes

There seems to be a bug in FS9. In theory, you can arm the autopilot on the ground and it will kick in at 1000’. However, on several occasions I’ve seen weird results from this like not being able to rotate at all and ploughing off the end of the runway at 200kts or not being able to retain pitch control with only the Nav hold selected. Therefore, I pre-select my course and Nav hold but then arm the autopilot once I’m airborne.

If you find you have no pitch control with only Nav hold selected, try turning Alt hold on then off again. I think this is also a bug.

I leave the auto throttle off all the way up the climb because it’s just too easy to let the N1 go out of tolerance. When the auto throttle commands a power change, it can spool the engines up or down too quickly for you to respond. It is possible to do, but hand fly and you’ll have no problems and besides, it’s fun and good practice!

Setting the Nav hold here is simply because it’s one less thing to do during the initial phase of the climb. With everything set up, just engage the autopilot after takeoff and control the pitch all the way up.

As you approach the VOR, it becomes much more sensitive. There is also a “cone of silence” which you will fly into. How far out this cone extends depends on your altitude. At 6000’, it starts at 1 DME, at 12000’ 2DME etc. So at 22000’, the height we cross OLM, this happens at about 3.5 DME. When you enter the cone of silence, the CDI swings full scale and the To/From flag flips to From. It’s the flag flip that the script uses to give you the results so far and to start the leg to PAE.

In reality, you would set QNH (regional pressure at ground level) below FL180. On approach, you would leave the altimeter on QNH and mentally adjust for the runway elevation or, as I prefer to do, set QFE which is the pressure at the airfield. It’s a shame that the FS 737 doesn’t have a radar altimeter! We leave this until after the glide slope is captured because the script does all of its height checking with reference to the ISO standard pressure of 1013mb. I consider this to be a bug or at best an important deviation from real world. To read more about this, search Google for “transition altitude” and QFE and QNH.

Here’s a nice simple document on flying the 737:

http://www.geocities.com/VirtualAloha/737ops.htm

Exact Checks the Script Makes

Rolling (>50% N1):

Landing light on

Flaps 5

Autobrakes to RTO

Takeoff up to 2500 feet (or 4 minutes after rotate):

N1 between 90% and 98%

Wheels off the ground before 175kts

After 15 seconds, no slower the 170kts and N1 between 88% and 97%

Flaps to 0 before 220kts

No faster than 250kts

2500’ to 10000’:

N1 between 85% and 93%

Flaps to 0 above 220 kts

Speed between 170 and 250

Gear up

10000’ to top of climb:

N1 between 93% and 80%

Nav1 tuned to 113.4

Course set to 322 (!) plus or minus 15 (!) - so that's why 332 works :-)

DME > 25 miles

At 25 miles DME and before 25 minutes, be above 27900 feet.

Descending to Olympia VOR:

Before 5.5 miles DME, nav1 tuned to 113.4 and course set to 322 (!) plus or minus 15 (!)

ROD less than 4000 feet per minute

Speed between 190 and 340

Altitude between 21800 and 23000 when VOR changes To/From

Routing to Paine VOR:

Within 60 seconds, on the 003 radial plus or minus 10 (or you didn't initiate the turn

Within 75 seconds and up to 18 minutes, on the 003 radial plus or minus 10 (or you strayed off course)

Speed between 200 and 340

Speed < 250 below 10000 feet

Cross Paine VOR between 2950 and 3500 feet

Passing Paine VOR until the outer marker or after 5 minutes:

Within 30 seconds, heading 339 plus or minus 10 (or you didn't initiate the turn)

Within 45 seconds, heading 339 plus or minus 10 (or you strayed off course)

Altitude between 2950 and 3500 feet

Speed between 160 and 250

Procedural turn:

Within 90 seconds of passing RITTS, heading 294 plus or minus 10 (or you didn't initiate the turn

Within 100 seconds heading 294 plus or minus 10 (or you strayed off course)

Altitude between 2950 and 3500 feet

Speed between 160 and 250

Nav1 tuned to 109.3 and course set to 159

Start course reversal after 60 seconds

Course Reversal:

Within 60 seconds, heading 114 plus or minus 10

Altitude between 2950 and 3500 feet

Speed between 160 and 250

Localiser captured - Final Approach

Within 30 seconds, heading 159 plus or minus 15

After 40 seconds, on the glideslope

Speed betweeen 160 and 250

After outer marker:

Within 30 seconds, gear down, flaps to 30, autobrakes set

Speed betweeen 145 and 200

ROD less than 4000 feet per minute

Below 300 feet:

Land and stop on the runway within 60 seconds!!!!

Script Modifications

Before modifying the script – MAKE A COPY. The script is called “atp checkride.abl” and is found in <FS ROOT>\Lessons\ATP.

The modifications below are in the file ATPMOD.ABL distributed with this document. To use it, take a copy of your existing script, copy to the lessons\atp directory and rename it to “atp checkride.abl”.

To find the modifications, search for /ADDED or //FIXED. The Subheadings show which section of the script I’ve modified.

bCheat = True

Keeps the flight going if you fail allowing you more practice.

CaseTalk1:

Deleted the fnSQ_Play() commands so I don't have to listen the briefing - again. I've failed this flight enough times to have learned this of the

top of my head :-)

CaseTakeoff:

Add the following line to let me see when the check starts. There is a similar line added for each segment. Just search for //ADDED.

fnNormalMsg("Weight off wheels, check N1 between 90 and 98");//ADDED

Changed the following line to give consistent N1 checking. Search for //FIXED to see all the amended lines.

if (eMotors[1].N1 > 98) or (eMotors[1].N1 < 90) then //FIXED

CaseTakeoff_1: