Fairly new to IF, I was wondering if I can get some advice, I have my flight plan all set up and generated in simbrief and imported into IF, also have the Approach set up for the correct runway, I was just wondering how I add a departure to the flight plan or do I just take off and engage autopilot to direct me to my nav?
I was also looking for some advice on auto pilot. I activate this for gps but it doesn’t seem to automatically change altitudes when I hit way points. Do I need to manually change them each way point or do I need to setup autopilot up differently to follow my flight plan?
The Auto Pilot doesn’t climb if you set an altitude on the waypoint. Best thing to do is set the altitude bug on the AP panel to the altitude you want to intercept the waypoint at, and either ballpark the vertical speed based on the distance or find the departure plate chart and use the vertical speed they suggest (if it’s on there).
For descending, it will descend but you have to activate the VNAV button.
For climbing, it depends on which plane are you flying and the weight you are carrying. Different planes have different climbing rate (fpm). Or you can find information of different aircrafts from website.
For decent, you can arm vnav, but keep in mind to adjust speed manually during desent, as vnav didn’t increase or decrease the speed, so their are chances of getting overspeeding lvl1 violation below FL100.
You’re off to a great start using SimBrief—nice! Here’s the deal:
Adding a Departure: After importing your SimBrief plan, you gotta manually add a SID (Standard Instrument Departure). Just go to the map, tap your departure airport, hit “Procedures,” and pick a SID. If you skip this, you’re basically just taking off and hoping for the best.
Autopilot & Altitude Changes: IF’s autopilot won’t climb automatically—you gotta set the altitude yourself and adjust vertical speed (VS).
Best way:
Before takeoff, set your cruise alt in the AP panel.
Adjust VS manually based on the plane and weight.
VNAV only works for descent, but keep an eye on speed, or you might get a violation below FL100.
Hope that helps! Let me know friend, if you got more Qs…
Firstly you can easily google the desired cruise speeds, but also on simbrief you see the ‘saved airframes’ list from the menu. If you select ‘new airframe’ it’ll list all of them and clicking on an aircraft & looking at its details it’ll show you a climb profile (250,280,78) for example. Meaning 0.78 is its ideal cruise speed.
For v/s usually do like 2500/3000 until 10000ft then 2000-1500-1000 for example as you climb higher & your plane needs more power to climb in the thinner air.
For LNAV, it’ll show how many miles till decent on the LNAV button even if you don’t select it once reached cruise. Also, you can set ‘Tod’ (top of decent) as one of the parameters at the bottom of the screen which shows how much time until descent.
Ultimately you can switch it on as soon as you hit cruise, just don’t forget it’s on & descend when you are away from your device. Otherwise you will descend thru 10000ft over 250kts & get an over speed violation
Thankyou so much this helped a lot, I managed to get my first ILS landing with no speed violation, it wasn’t to pretty of a landing but for the first one after following the plan and route I was so happy.
Have you got any recommendations for landing speeds or can that be found on the aircraft website? I know my flap configuration is in son brief when I use the landing calculator I just don’t know whether that shows landing speed too?
I found the cruise speed in the IACO section of the brief but it seemed to be a bit fast, but it’s what’s also recommended by the manufacturer of the aircraft, I only believe it was to fast because my ETA to destination was showing FUEL next to it in red which I am assuming that it’s saying I’m going into land with to much fuel / weight?
Take a look at these for an idea of things like flaps & landing speeds. I used these as a good guide when I was new. Hope it helps
Just a note to say you really should never be close to over 250kts to get a violation on approach. Usually flaps starting getting deployed(200kts-150kts as the plane needs more help as it slows)
Even big planes you can be like 145-155kts landing speed with full flaps.
If you want the autopilot to make your aircraft automatically climb, IF itself can’t do that. You have to use a third party app for that. I’m personally using In-Flight Assistant (available on App Store and Google Play Store) but you can use IF Auto Step Climb on Android.
