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The approaches I've flown on PE have been in a dual-VOR equipped Cessna 172, for the most part. To get some practice with a larger speed variation, I bought a copy of Jason Chandler's XHawk, which I've flown a couple times on PE VFR. I would like to try it out IFR, too, but I've had no training in using glass panels, though I have figured out the basics by reading online and experimenting.

The XHawk has a primary flight display as shown in the attachment and two of the stock X-Plane Garmin 430's, so there are two NAV radios, tunable through the 430's. I'm on a Mac, so the 430's are, well, limited. There is no DME or MFD, though I have heard it's possible to get DME info by looking at the 430. (I haven't figured that out for the Mac/X-Plane 430, though.)

My question (which will quickly demonstrate my ignorance ) is this:

Let's say I want to fly an ILS approach, where intersections are identified by cross-radials from a VOR. I can have the PFD display the ILS localizer and glideslope fine, but the second button on the left (where I have Seal Beach VOR tuned in for the example), only shows *bearing* to the VOR. Now in principle, I could use math and calculate the bearing I should see when I am at a given cross-radial....but that seems clearly NOT to be what the PFD software designers expect me to do. Trying to enter intersections into the 430's seems impossible on the Mac with X-Plane, and even if it were possible, that much head-down time seems absurd.

I guess I'm used to being able to tune a few frequencies, twirl a few knobs, and be on my way.

How do I deal with VOR intersections - whether on approaches or en route - with this instrumentation?

- Doug

Edit: I've seen this thread before: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=995 - so I know that the answer to my question might be, "you don't."

Edit #2: I can imagine that adding a MFD or other navigation display would make IFR feasible on this airplane - but since I have no IFR GPS experience (in addition to essentially no IFR glass panel experience... and 0+0=0!), I don't know what all is necessary. Time for more study!

Much progress.

Using the bearing to a VOR for a VOR cross-radial works pretty well in the simulator, after all - I use the tail side of the blue bearing arrow, and that is the bearing FROM the VOR to me, essentially the radial from the VOR.

In other words, I have NAV1 tuned to the ILS, with the CDI and glideslope visible on the PFD, and I have NAV2 tuned to the VOR providing the cross-radials, and I use the tail of the blue "bearing to" arrow to identify the cross-radial fixes.

Is this a practical way to navigate r/w when using a PFD (and when not using GPS waypoints or flight plans)?

I've never used a glass cockpit in the r/w, but in the simulator the technique you've self-discovered is the only way I've figured out to detect radial crossings on the Garmin G1000 in FSX. I primarily use the Flight1 aircraft with G1000 cockpits which is a very good simulation of the real G1000 -- but I've not been able to figure out how to set the OBS heading for NAV2 and have it show up correctly on the PFD display (no matter what I set for the NAV2 'course' the PFD only shows the bearing to the VOR). I'd love to be able to set a course for NAV2 so that my bearing needle would be straight up when I crossed the radial, but it just doesn't seem to work that way. The 'center the needle' approach in a steam-gauge cockpit makes it MUCH easier to see a radial crossing than any technique I've discovered for the Garmin.

If anybody knows of a better way please speak up!

The MFD (on the Garmin G1000) doesn't help unless you've got a named waypoint at the intersection (or, in the real G1000, have set up a user-defined waypoint; the real G1000 allows user-defined waypoints to be the intersection of two VOR radial crossings).

-M.