FS2020: How to use a Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI.) (Alpha Hotel FS training Quick Look #1.)

hello flight simmers and welcome to alpha hotel quick looks this will be a series of short videos covering a number of different topics in flight simulator that can be covered with shorter videos in this video we'll take a quick look at how to use a horizontal situation indicator or hsi so what is an hsi an hsi or horizontal situation indicator is a flight instrument that combines the functions of a traditional heading indicator and vor or nav radio display the thought behind its design was to create an instrument that put the navigation information essentially in a pilot's instrument scan rather than in the periphery as is common with a traditional vor display the instrument also gives the pilot a more complete picture of the aircraft's position than to traditional instruments and nav displays as you move into more advanced aircraft with more advanced avionics hsi's become the standard heading and nav instrument installed traditional mechanical hsis are often found in high performance piston engine aircraft though in flight simulator you can only find them in add-on aircraft such as the piper seminole and aztec and the mooney ovation by caranato almost all electric flight instrument systems or ephis systems feature an hsi you'll see these in any of the aircraft that have garmin efis systems such as the g1000 and will also see them in jet aircraft from corporate jets all the way up to the airliners since the hsi is presented electronically on these systems there are often options to change how it is displayed such as displaying it in an arc instead of a traditional compass rose format as well as added features such as bearing pointers for vors and ndbs before we dive too deep into this video i do want to mention that this video assumes that you have a basic understanding of how to navigate using vors if you're not familiar with vor navigation i recommend you check out the video on vor navigation on this channel prior to watching this video i'll leave a link to that video in this video's description so let's take a look at the components of an hsi and then we'll take a look at a few in-flight examples of how to use it the compass rose ring on the instrument works like a normal heading indicator with the top indicating the aircraft's magnetic heading the big difference on an hsi is that the heading indicator is slaved to the aircraft's magnetic compass or the equivalent if you're using an electronic instrument so it automatically displays magnetic heading and doesn't drift off the correct indication and need to be reset to the magnetic compass like the old-fashioned heading indicator does most hsi's have what's called a lubber line at the top of the instrument to make it easier to see what your current heading is though on ephes instruments it usually looks more like an arrow than a line most hsis also have stationary markings at 45 degrees left and right of the nose and tail and sometimes on the wings and tail to help with things like pattern headings instrument procedure turns and reciprocals the arrow in the center of the instrument is used to display the nav course of choice in all aircraft it can display vor or ils data and in most aircraft and flight simulator it can be switched to display gps course information mechanical instruments will usually display whatever you have on nav one or the gps while you can usually select from several nav sources on an efis system in the center of the arrow is a portion that moves this is your chorus deviation indicator or cdi and moves left or right to show your position relative to the selected course the two from indicator is located near the cdi scale on mechanical instruments on efis instruments it's typically on the shaft of the needle in rows mode and at the bottom in arc mode it is a two indication when pointed towards the needle's head and a from indication when pointed away on mechanical instruments the needle can be rotated with the omni bearing selector located on the bottom left hand side of the instrument to select a desired vor radial or course the core select for efi systems can be located in different locations depending on the system you're using on the g1000 it's the small triangular knob located on the right side of the primary flight display note that on many efi syst instruments the course will be automatically selected for you when using a gps course or when you have an ils or localizer frequency dialed into the nav radio just like a traditional vor you want to dial on the chorus of the radial if flying away from the station and the reciprocal course if flying inbound to the station as a general rule of thumb you want the course arrow at the top of the instrument unless you're flying a localizer back horse which we'll talk about in a little bit but one of the nice features of an hsi is that unlike a traditional vor you won't get reverse sensing if you accidentally set it up backwards the dots are the cdi scale and show how far left or right of course you are various different instruments have different displays but if you have five dots on each side of the course each dot is two degrees off course with full scale deflection being 10 degrees just like on a vor you'll also notice that the cdi scale rotates as you rotate the obs knob on both the mechanical and electronic instruments on mechanical instruments there is a glide slope indicator and scale on one or both sides of the instrument for flying an ils glide slope on efis systems this is usually located near the attitude indicator rather than the hsi and it typically only displays when you're receiving an ils on the mechanical systems there's usually a nav flag to let you know when you're not receiving a good signal for your selected course when this flag displays the cdi needle will center efi systems vary in what is displayed when you're not receiving a nav signal depending on the system you're using but usually the cdi portion of the arrow will be removed most aircraft equipped with hsis are also equipped with autopilots so most of those hsis also have a heading bug for autopilot heading control there's usually a knob to move this heading bug on the bottom right of most mechanical instruments and the control for the heading bug is located with the autopilot controls on most efis systems mechanical hsis also feature a heading or off flag to let you know when they're inoperative or not powered efus hsis usually have some sort of warning symbol like a red x when the instrument is an operative or getting a bad data but you can't make them fail like that in flight sim simulator in fact the only failure you can give an efus hsi in flight simulator is to completely depower all the avionics so now we've taken a look at the components of an hsi let's take a look at how to use one in flight all right so just like a normal vor the most basic function within hsi is to go directly to a vr go directly to the station so we're about eight miles south of the pine bluff vor here uh traveling northbound and so i have pine bluff tuned up into the number one nav and that's what's displaying on the hsi and all i need to do here is turn my course so that the needle centers i got a two indication already so i'll go ahead and turn that until the needle centers up and it looks like about a zero three or a 359 course will take me directly to the vor and the nice thing about an hsi is all i have to do is uh keep my heading and my course arrow pretty much lined up plus or minus any wind correction and that will take me to the station so what we'll do here is we'll track up to the pine bluff vor and we'll take a look at what station passage looks like on an hsi and then we're going to turn to the northeast and we're going to join up with the 068 degree radio out from outbound from pine bluff which is victor 16 heading over towards helena arkansas and we'll take a look at what intercepting an airway looks like on an hsi just like with a normal vor display the cdi will become more sensitive as you approach the station and just like with a normal vor display you don't want to make large changes and chase the needle when it gets like this the two from flag will disappear when you pass over the station and on an efis system the cdi will also disappear once you're on the other side of the station the cdi will come back and the flag will flip to the tail indicating a from indication so there's the uh whoops yeah there's this the uh flags disappeared so there's the cone of confusion now it's gone to the tail so i'm going to go ahead and turn to my heading for my outbound radial so 0 6 8 there then i'll go ahead and turn the course over to that zero six eight heading as well and we'll see what it looks like for intercepting that course so there's the zero six eight degree radial uh dialed in there so i'll put about probably about a 10 degree or a 5 to 10 degree intercept in there at first and then you can see it gives us a much better uh sight picture of what our position is we can tell that we're north of it that we need to turn down to the south southeast to intercept the radial and we'll just put in that correction and just like on a normal vor just be patient with it and eventually it will come back in there we can see the needle is coming off the side of the uh cdi there and so once it centers up then we'll turn back to our zero six eight uh heading or you could of course if you've got an autopilot we'll do now tracking just put it in nav tracking mode and it'll track that vor for you and we can see our course arrow is dialed into the zero six eight we have the from flag uh showing this that we're tracking outbound on the radial and then we can see that the radial is starting to center up here so this is what it should look like when you're tracking outbound on a radial and once that needle is pretty well centered up we can go ahead and turn back to our course that will track it so about a zero six eight and again we've got a nav tracking feature on the g1000 so we can just engage uh the nav tracking and it shows us it's actually now tracking the vor for us so it will keep the needle in the center but this is what it should look like when you're tracking outbound on a radial uh so we've got the zero six eight radial dialed in our course arrow is pointing on the course that we're flying the front arrows behind us telling the vr this is behind us and we've got the cdi centered up on the airplane symbol that tells us that we're on course okay so we've reached the halfway point on the airway now so we want to switch over to tracking inbound on the marvel 252 degree radial so i will go ahead and dial in 109.6 and i will put that in there in the active frequency and to track inbound on a radial again we want to track the reciprocal course so the reciprocal of 252 is going to be zero seven two so i will spin the obs over to zero seven two and you see we're pretty well on that there we've got a two from or a two flag there uh pointing towards the arrow so that shows us that we're heading to the station and the needle is centered up and so that's what it's going to look like when you're tracking inbound on a radial uh to a vor and at the time we can go ahead and hook up nav if you want to to track the vr and it will track it all the way to the station one more thing we'll show on an electronic hsi is that we can put in a different fix you know or a different uh nav source you notice we have vor one up there now we can dial in vor2 it's got a different uh look to it it's got a hollow needle instead of a solid one and then here's what the gps needle looks like there in there so i have a direct course to marvel vor on there and you notice it's put in the course of 073 automatically i did not put that in there and if i spin the obs nothing happens so it's going to put that course in there automatically and i can send it direct to somewhere else say if i want to go back to pine bluff so there's pine bluff i hit enter activate and you see the needle flips back around behind me since pine bluff is behind me so it will do that automatically for you on an electric or an electronic hsi alright so let's take a look at how to set up for an ils approach using an hsi we are tracking inbound on the localizer to runway nine right in melbourne florida kmlb or mlb and uh we are in carronado's mooney ovation or muni so that's how we have this mechanical uh hsi and i'm going to show you this using this mechanical one rather than the electrical one because the electric one will automatically set the course for you whenever you dial up the ils frequency whereas with mechanical one we can actually change the course uh so let's take a look at how to set that up all you want to do is set the head of the needle or the obs course to the course of the localizer the front course so in the case of the localizer here in melbourne that's a 0 9 4 degree heading or degree course and you want to do that more for your picture than for anything else you can turn the needle left and right on a localizer and it's not going to change what the needle depicts and with the autopilot flying it it's not even going to change what it flies but if you set it up like this you can put your lever line right on the top of the head of the needle to keep this the cdi centered in a no win condition and then just make small corrections left or right left or right of that and it makes flying an ils very easy so this is how that should look for setting up a course and again you can turn it you you can turn it off and it's not going to affect how the needle depicts things but it's going to make your picture look a little funny a little make it look a little different more difficult to fly if it's set off to the side like this then you know you're going to have time a tough time getting keeping it in the center when it's off to the side like that the one thing that you don't want to do is turn the needle to the tail turn the head of the arrow to the tail because if you do that you are going to get reverse sensing so if i turn right off of this localizer now uh then the needle will show the course going off to the right even even though it's actually going off to the left and the airplane is going off to the right so that is you only want to use this for a localizer back horse approach we can see the glide slope coming down now so if we have the approach armed it will go ahead and fly that localize or fly that glide slope as well and that's how you fly a ils using an hsi so let's take a look at a localizer back course approach [Music] so to set up for a localizer back of course approach you actually want to dial the needle or the obs uh to the uh front course heading which would be the reciprocal of the course that you're going to fly on the back horse so we are tracking inbound on the localizer back course to runway 27 left so the inbound course is 274 the front course or the inbound course on the regular localizer broach is 0.94 so that's what we dial in here so in this case we actually do want the needle on the tail and if we do it that way we will get correct sensing even though we're on a back course approach which is another one of the advantages of an hsi so if we set it up like this we get correct sensing rather than having to fly the needle we can just fly to the needle like we do on every other approach and so that works out well for the back course approach so that's how to set up for a back horse approach in the ssi and this is about the only time that you want the head of the needle pointed towards the tail of the aircraft is when you're flying a back horse approach the only exception to that is if you're flying outbound on a localizer as part of like a departure procedure or something like that in that case you also want the front course dialed in there uh so you should get correct sensing when you're doing that as well [Music] so that's a quick look at the basics of using an hsi i think you'll agree it makes navigation quite a bit easier than traditional vor displays as always if you enjoy the content please like the video and subscribe to the channel thanks for watching and we'll see you next time you

Channel: Alpha Hotel Flight Simulator Training

Views: 14,541

Keywords: MSFS2020, Flight Simulator 2020, Microsoft flight simulator, Flight Simulator training

Id: FGpnnPezNFA

Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021