What am I doing wrong? No CDI for ILS approach

[ggerhardt]

I don't have my instrument rating yet, but when an airport has an ILS approach, I've begun to fly them in just to get the feel of flying the glide slope. Skyview makes it easy to select the frequency on my SL30 and as soon as I'm within range, the four-dot vertical guidance comes on line. But, I haven't been able to figure out how to get the CDI to come on. The CDI works fine when I tune in a VOR, just not when I have it tuned to an ILS. The SL30 has a little CDI on it - I've used that to get things lined up.

I'm sure I'm just doing something wrong - can someone go through the process to get on an ILS for me?

Thanks.

Geoff

 

[rfazio1951]

Geoff, Can it be that you are not turning the CDI to the proper bearing? If I'm flying into 06 at my airport and using the ILS, I need to set the course to 59 degrees. This gets the CDI to center if I am centered on the path.

 

[Dynon]

It should "just work". What do you see on the HSI portion? Is the needle there but just spun in the wrong direction? Or not there at all?

One SL30 setting that people sometimes get wrong is accidentally setting the "indicator head type" to "serial". It should be set to "none".

 

[ggerhardt]

I see nothing in the HSI when tuned to an ILS. Just the vertical nav beside it. I tried turning the CRS knob, but it has no effect. I do see HSI guidance when tuned to a VOR, tho. I'll have a look at the SL30 settings to see if I have them set to "serial" and not "none."

Thanks.

Geoff

 

[dynonsupport]

Geoff, it should be set to "none", not "serial". Just to make sure. However, this should mess up the VOR as well as far as we know.

Do you know what firmware is in the SL-30?

 

[ggerhardt]

Ok, well it is working fine for VOR, so that may not be the issue. I'll check the fw version when I fly on Thursday. I suspect it's pretty old, tho. Seems to me the date that shows up when it starts is over 10yrs ago. I've really only been using it as a COM radio but thinking about getting my instrument rating so started to practice using it for NAV.

Geoff

 

[ggerhardt]

Well, it looks like that was the problem.  I changed the "Indicator Head Type" on the SL-30 to None (it was set to Resolver) and the CDI popped on.

Thanks for your help!

Geoff