Good FSX Teachings?

Okay so I just saw what you wrote up about ILS again. So basically, I get my basic course.. input it into my HDI how?? And then once I get in range of the localizer (Apparently from what I gathered, it is the ILS feathers on GPS) I get the glideslope all set and good to go and then just land that sucker according to normal landing procedure?

EDIT: After a quick flight from KLAX to KNTD at Point Mugu again in a Beachcraft Baron using IFR rules I think I get it. So heres what I understand.

1) Once I get close enough, they turn me on a heading away from the airport (To start my turn to line up with the runway) and tell me to expect vector for ILS Runway 21
2) I go into my GPS and set up the vector landing for IL)S on Runway L21 so it shows on my GPS (Just as a secondary reference)
3) I then use the GPS to look up the ILS freq in this case it was 109.30 I believe.
4) I set NAV 1 to that freq, at this point I noticed my little heading thing with the yellow arrow (Theres soo many of them.. btw what does the one with the green arrow to) moved to the side
5) Realizing that was telling me I Was right of the Localizer I adjusted the heading of it (In enough time) and lined up perfectly.
6) Now this is what I didnt understand.. How do I tell when I hit my glideslope and where it is so I can intercept it from underneath??
.. at this point I pulled it off APP mode and just flew in manually but using the ILS. I had to correct a bit because my runway heading was a BIIIT off but it worked.

But basically that is it right?? Except it pays to be ready early ? lol

[Skybird]

You have an ILS approach, and you have four pieces of informations: elevation, heading of runway (three digit accuracy, not just two!!!), glid slope angle, and frequency.

The elevation just decides at what barometric altitude the radar altimeter will come to live. Radar altimeters usually spring to life 2500 ft above ground. When they do, you fly by them, not by barometric altimeter.

The info on glide slope is almost always -3.0°. That emans that at landing speed the plane wil descend at a rate of around 700-750 ft/min. Only rarely airports have published other glide slope angles due to geographical necessites, -2.5° for example. Mostly you can ignore this.

ILS-frequencies are indicated from other navigation frequencies by being set to frequencies from 109 to 111 MHz, often the number right of the decimal typically is .30 or .70. These signals have a short range only, so even when many airports use the same frequency for their ILS, usually thy do not interfere. ILS range in the sim is below 30 nm, whereas high altitude VORs can reach as far as in excess of 100 nm.

If not using an FMC (Flight Management Computer), the landing cours emust be made known to thre autopilot. That is being done by the CRS knob for the HSI for example. It could also be a m ore simple traditional VOR radio indicator.

Note: the HSI has to knobs. One moves a yellow needle, the other moves a single mark on the compass circle. The left button moves the single mark, it is for using the HDG mode of the autopilot. You set5 a course, and the plane then flies that course. Simple. For ILS and VOR approaches, you need the needle, and thus the right button. You tune the needle to the course of the runway, not the plane! The runway, meaning you tune the needle to the final heading the plane must have in order to be in line with the runway.

The HSI needs to know which VOR or ILS transmitter it should intercept. Thus you tune in the ILS frequenciy into your NAV radio, into the right "ready" window, then you hiot the switch button to switch it to the left "active" window. To be safe (some airliners need the frequency dialed in in both NAV radios), you do the same with the second Nav radio.

Now this is where the FSX Boeing are unrealistic, because they follow the procedures for smaller, sporting planes: You activate the AP. Then you use the left button on the HSI to dial in a heading that will lead you to intercept the localiser signal of the ILS, and best is to intercept it early, quite a distance away from the runway. Say 25 miles. IOnce you dialed in that course, you activate the HDG mode on the AP panel. When coming in reach of the ILS signal, usually below 30 miles, you activate NAV on the AP. The plane will continue to follow HDG, ntil it crosses the vector set by the HSI yellow needle - it then will switch from HDG to NAV mode and intercept. At this phase of flight you should be at a relatively low altitude already, say 3-5 thousand above ground when at a range to airport of around 20 miles or so. This is so that you approach the verztical glid slope from below. Never from above! That would mean that the plane has to dive to intercept the glideslope, gaining speed when doing so and pointing the nose to the ground. Risky! Always intercept from below, never from above!

I do not recall how exactly it works in default FSX, I think you can then activate the APP mode (approach), do it at the latest when the vertical markers on the HSI for the glideslope spring to life. The plane will fly at its current altitude (no matter whether manually flown or via HLD ALT) until it crosses the glideslope - then approach mode, armed until here, becomes active, the plane starts to descend , follows the glideslope, does a 3° descend at around 700 ft, and all you have to care for is speed, flaps, gear, spoilers.

For the GPS use, you have to fly a flightplan I think, and then make it known to Control by declaring it IFR. You then will not be rejected at airports even if they are closed for visual approaches due to low visibility. Instead of feeding the HSI with NAV radio signals, you instead tell it to use the GPS. There must be a switch on your panels somewhere, GPS/NAV or something like that.

Whether the GPS can be used to manually select any airport outside a flightplan, and then make it control the landing, I canot say for sure, since I do not use these things, but different and more sophisticated kits. But the learnign centre'S lesson on Navigation:GPS explains that you can indeed set direct courses to any Navigation point including airports, using the "-D->" button and then getting the ICAO code or name entered via the two knobs.

If you use the autopilot in FSX for autolanding, keep min mind that it is totally unrealistic and has othign to do with how these big planes like Boeings and Airbusses are handled in real life. The default autopilot even has false functions for sports planes already, I think. If you use this for airliners, you simply learn it the wrong way, or better: you learn the wrong stuff.

The three ILS videos should make that difference clear. Handling the real FMC in a Boeing (or Airbus) and the FSX autopilot have nothing, really nothing in common.

If you are serious about getting into airliner navigation, there is no way you can avoid investing into a separate module and leave the FSX planes behind. I have not flown them in many many years, not one of them. You will notice that the handling of even small addon planes, sport planes, is easier, since they are not equipped with such hysteric flight models as the ones you are nerved by in FSX.

Get your installation or rig fixed. And then get an addon. The 747 by PMDG is simplier than their 737NGX and also is more friendly for users not using TrackIR (judging by my experience with it in FS9). The iFly 737 also is simplier than the PMDG 737, but very well done nevertheless. For small planes, I like my recent buys, the Turbine Duke (twin engine), since you have to watch out for the engines, while having a solid flight characteristic. The Jetstream 41 by PMDG I would not recommend to a novice, it is quite difficult and comes with a third, completely different flight management computer design - I have not fully understood it until today. Also, TrackIR for it is imperative, else handling becomes extremely difficult. Of course, if you want a realistic study sim, there is no alternative to the 737NGX. It's the best there is.

Oh, and one thing is important. You need to know what the transition altitude is. That is the barometric altitude above which the altimeter is set to a standardised air pressure and altitudes are not given in ft, but in flight levels. When climbing above it, you need to switch your altimeter from barometric to standard. When descending below it, you need to switch from standard to barometric. If you forget that, you can end up wondering why Control asks you to speed up your climb or descend for altitude XYZ, while your altimeter shows you you are right on that altitude - for Control you may be several hundred feet above or below! Worse,l this then blocks any further messages by the AI, until you have met their altitude requirement. You also have to tune the barometric pressure frequently according to the weather around you when you are below transition altitude (only then!!!) - or hit the B button occaisonally. Before landing, you get the local QNH by Control or tower, or you can listen to the weather report via ATIS. - Different countries have different transition altitudes. In the US, it is 18 thousand. But in Germany it is much lower, 5 thousand. That makes it easier for Control to coordinate the altitudes of all flights around, and it eases the need for the pilots to constantly re-tune their altimeters during flight.

[Skybird]

And this: I do n ot know how FSX handles this in detail, but in reality, airliners mostly get lined up via autopilot with the runway, but the very last part of approach to touchdown is being flown by hand. That means, the autopilot gets disenagged - but the authothrottle stays active. Can'T tell you whether FSX default knows the distinction between the two.

As said, Wheel Brakes also need to be armed to engage automatically, and spoilers also need to be armed to deploy automatically after touch down.

Okay so I did as you said (This time I flew from KLAX to KSAN (San Diego Intl))

Got my approach on runway 09 So I set my Course (Yellow arrow to 90) and followed the course changes they gave me. once they sent me on an intercept I turned on Nav Mode while HDG was engaged and it started its intercept. Only problem was, it kept overshooting the localizer... going too far left, then too far right. I had to go manual and drop from 2k ft to land.

What did I possibly do wrong?? Also it never intercepted a glideslope either as well as I noticed it was about the width of the runway left of the runway itself. Hmmm.

Also when the HSI springs to life and shows glideslope.. what doest that indicator look like? Both in the manual and glass cockpit planes?

And again when I went on a intercept (I activated approach vector in my GPS) my nav window (737) changed, I believe dashed purple was my heading set Purple solid was my waypoints and then a white line appeared which I think was my intercept to the LOC.

I know you are all for the PMDG which I plan on getting one day, but for now Im going to play around with the FSX aircraft until I can be confident and comfortable doing all operations with them and then move on up.

[Skybird]

From reading what you wrote, you forgot to activate APP mode (approach).



The glideslope is indicated by one or two dots right and sometimes additionally left in your display with the HSI representation. If there is no point visible, you either have tuned in the wrong frequency , or you are still not in range.

On your GPS, as I know it from my stuff Boeing stuff, solid purple is the flightplan'S course with the waypoints. Dash purple indeed moves according to your turning of the HDG course knob - it marks the course the plane would go to and follow if now you would ac tvate HDG in AP. Use this according to an anticipated flight situastion ij the near future, or have it always lined up ith the current course you are flying (=in congruence with the flightplan's line). In an airliner, the non-flying pilot would constantly dial that instrument accordingly whenever a course change has occured after a waypoint. And the white line, if it gets projected by the airport'S location, then it is the extension of the runway - you may want to intercept this line some miles away from the airport - I personally plan for having a minimum distance to airport of 10 nm.

The odd flight behaviour you reported, the swinging left and right of the to-be-intercepted vector. Two liekly explanations. First, you intercepted the localiser at too steep an angle, maybe even rectangular: the vector says 130°, and you slam into into with a heading of 40° - not good. Try to ease that angle, try to hit the localiser'S vector with an own heading of for exmaple 90° or 150°. If your angle is too steep, you overshoot, the plane excessively reacts by sharp turning, overshooting again, returning, overtshooting again. Second explanation: you suffer from some nasty characteristics of the inferior flight dynamics of the default planes. They are bitches.

Originally Posted by Skybird

From reading what you wrote, you forgot to activate APP mode (approach).



The glideslope is indicated by one or two dots right and sometimes additionally left in your display with the HSI representation. If there is no point visible, you either have tuned in the wrong frequency , or you are still not in range.

On your GPS, as I know it from my stuff Boeing stuff, solid purple is the flightplan'S course with the waypoints. Dash purple indeed moves according to your turning of the HDG course knob - it marks the course the plane would go to and follow if now you would ac tvate HDG in AP. Use this according to an anticipated flight situastion ij the near future, or have it always lined up ith the current course you are flying (=in congruence with the flightplan's line). In an airliner, the non-flying pilot would constantly dial that instrument accordingly whenever a course change has occured after a waypoint. And the white line, if it gets projected by the airport'S location, then it is the extension of the runway - you may want to intercept this line some miles away from the airport - I personally plan for having a minimum distance to airport of 10 nm.

The odd flight behaviour you reported, the swinging left and right of the to-be-intercepted vector. Two liekly explanations. First, you intercepted the localiser at too steep an angle, maybe even rectangular: the vector says 130°, and you slam into into with a heading of 40° - not good. Try to ease that angle, try to hit the localiser'S vector with an own heading of for exmaple 90° or 150°. If your angle is too steep, you overshoot, the plane excessively reacts by sharp turning, overshooting again, returning, overtshooting again. Second explanation: you suffer from some nasty characteristics of the inferior flight dynamics of the default planes. They are bitches.

Okay but how should I change the heading I hit the localizer at when the ATC is giving me a heading to stay on that will slam me right into the localizer? Im going to chaulk this one up for now to the fact that I just am somehow doing something wrong and thats why I kept overshooting.

Another question, when I open up the GPS and select to choose my approach (In this case ILS on Runway 09) and I activate it. Do I have to enter where the white line/arrow shows and fly that pattern for a bit before I land? Or do I just go with what the ATC is telling me? which is to pretty much fly straight in and land?

Another thing I must ask is on the GPS the 'area' of the ILS feathers, is that where I should start seeing a glideslope show up??

This is a bunch to absorb and process at once But Ill get there

[Skybird]

I don't win a graphics award for this, but okay:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

In black, there is the runway and localiser, and in black, dash the extension of the runway plus range marks at 10, 20 and 30 nm. In black dash at range 30, there is also a 30nm circle lineIn red spolid there is the flightpath of your plane, and red dashed line separate the whole into three sectors or phases, I, II, and III.

In phase I you have established con tact with tower, and probably still need to loose altitude. If you are an airliner, here you slow down from those 250 knots to 200-220 knots. Likely that you already get the localiser signal somehwere in this phase, but do not activate NAV too early, while still being too far away< from the runway'S extended centreline.

In phase two, you closed in to the centreline, you have reached an altitude of around 4000 or so, you are not moving too fast anymore, and yoiu have turned the HDG to some smooth angle intercepting the localiser. You activate NAV. The plane will automatically intercept it and enter into phase III when it has.

In III, you slow down more, and at 5 miles to the runway you should have achieved landing configuration: desired touch down speed, flaps, and now lowering gear also. You set the HDG marker on the HSI to the runway heading - but do not go back to HDG on the AP! - (in case of go around the plane then will accelerate at that direction without trying steep banks close to the ground). Somewhere during III, the GS should become active, and be above you. You then activate APP, and where necessary in an airliner, engage the second autopilot also. From then on, you only monitor the speed, which is Vref + 5 kn. With the default airplanes, you probably do not get an idea what your Vref is, which is depending on weight. Try something around 130-145 for an airliner, and
use the speedmter in the cockpits of small airplanes, there are coloured bands, with green indicating the safe speed range for flying operations, yellow maximum speed for calm air, and white safe speed rage for flaps operation. The end of that white speed range roughly gives an idea of what you minimum landing speed should be, it doies not hurt to stay away from that minimum by 5-10 knots.

Airliner: after touch down, switch of AP but leave autothrust active. Once you manually engage wheel brakes, disengage autothrust also.

Try to have your throttle setting in congruence with what the AP has set thrust to, so that when you switch off autothrust the speed does not drop or rocket upwards due to your throttle having a different setting. The past dozens of feet in altitude you do in idle, called FLARE! Usually, airliner switch off autopilot here at the latest, landing manually.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

Okay but how should I change the heading I hit the localizer at when the ATC is giving me a heading to stay on that will slam me right into the localizer? Im going to chaulk this one up for now to the fact that I just am somehow doing something wrong and thats why I kept overshooting.

The AI control will sometimes call you for vectors that indeed have you intercepting localisers and glideslope quite close to the runway. That is not a problem when you are fam iliar with handling your plane and can blindly use the cointrols and auto-featzures it offers, and when your speed and other factors already are set good. When you are close to the airport, and still are high and fast, go around.

For a beginning, I would recommend you just ignore the radio, choose one airport, find it in the map and klick it, then have the data there (runway heading and ILS freqeuncies and such) noted on a paper. Then take off, do a race track pattern, and position yourself at 10.000 feet and in 20-25 miles distance to the runway - and then do the approach without control just using the instruments and my recommendations, so that you get a feeling for how it all goes ideally, and that you get used to it. Do touch-and-goes, when the wheels hit the runway, launch again: throttle full forward, gear up, spoilers up, flaps up, in this order.

Another question, when I open up the GPS and select to choose my approach (In this case ILS on Runway 09) and I activate it. Do I have to enter where the white line/arrow shows and fly that pattern for a bit before I land? Or do I just go with what the ATC is telling me? which is to pretty much fly straight in and land?

It seems you make me needing to have a default flight before I get an idea of what you mean. I use Boeing FMCs and small planes always fly manually with AP only keeping altitude. Autolands via default GPS I never do. Must check first.

Or is this doing the trick for you?
http://easy-fsx.blogspot.de/2010/05/...-approach.html

In this glass cockpit display, the glideslope indicator is: on the right side of the screen,the dot on the vertical scale left of the altitude band

This is a bunch to absorb and process at once But Ill get there

You surely will, with time and practice comes routine. Does the sim work stable now, or do you still get crashes?

Actually that makes plenty of sense. So its okay for me to deviate from the course theyre giving me to make my intercept a bit smoother of an angle. What would you say is a good deviation from the Runway heading to be an intercept? +/- 15* to 30*??

Originally Posted by Skybird

The AI control will sometimes call you for vectors that indeed have you intercepting localisers and glideslope quite close to the runway. That is not a problem when you are fam iliar with handling your plane and can blindly use the cointrols and auto-featzures it offers, and when your speed and other factors already are set good. When you are close to the airport, and still are high and fast, go around.

For a beginning, I would recommend you just ignore the radio, choose one airport, find it in the map and klick it, then have the data there (runway heading and ILS freqeuncies and such) noted on a paper. Then take off, do a race track pattern, and position yourself at 10.000 feet and in 20-25 miles distance to the runway - and then do the approach without control just using the instruments and my recommendations, so that you get a feeling for how it all goes ideally, and that you get used to it. Do touch-and-goes, when the wheels hit the runway, launch again: throttle full forward, gear up, spoilers up, flaps up, in this order.


It seems you make me needing to have a default flight before I get an idea of what you mean. I use Boeing FMCs and small planes always fly manually with AP only keeping altitude. Autolands via default GPS I never do. Must check first.

Or is this doing the trick for you?
http://easy-fsx.blogspot.de/2010/05/...-approach.html

In this glass cockpit display, the glideslope indicator is: on the right side of the screen,the dot on the vertical scale left of the altitude band


You surely will, with time and practice comes routine. Does the sim work stable now, or do you still get crashes?

Actually quite stable as of yet. Im quite happy about it Im sure it will crash sooner or later, but I need to save some money up for FSX Gold / Acceleration. Then some money for REX or maybe a good dual prop plane or Cessna. I think I want to try the PMDG 737 eventually.. But like I said. Im waiting until I get the basic routines down right, then its a matter of converting them from plane to plane, which now that I think about it, is kind of my hinderance so far. Im just not USED to how each cockpit displays the information to me in the way I need. So heres to more practice and more crashes Btw what weather settings do you use for a nice haze / fog down low so that its a challenging yet still fun landing?


PS: Your picture and the little picture tutorial you just gave me just helped make everything MUCH clearer.

Heres another question, whats up with ATC giving me different bearings during flight when I should be following my waypoints?? (Even when Im quite a distance away from the airport)

PSPS: I also think my problem seems to be that Im trying to do it with autopilot, I think for now, Im going to do all landings manually to get a feel for what I need to be doing / having done. Including ILS landings now that I know HOW they work.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

Actually that makes plenty of sense. So its okay for me to deviate from the course theyre giving me to make my intercept a bit smoother of an angle. What would you say is a good deviation from the Runway heading to be an intercept? +/- 15* to 30*??

Some airliners' inbuild AP systems have inbuild limits and MUST intercept at not more than 30 or 40° deviation. Carrier policies also play a role here. Others are not limited that way, so it depends. 30-60° should be okay in most cases, I think. But I see it from an addon's perspective: how the default planes react, I do not know. Maybe stay with 30-45°. Keep in mind that the smoother you chose the angle for LOC intercept, the closer to the runway you end up when finally intercepting it. That is a potential problem, if your AP runs by the necessity that LOC always must be captured BEFORE the GS. Because if you are too close to the runway, you may be too high for safe GS interception.

As my leaf of paper shows you, try to complete LOC interception not later than 12-15 nm. At least for now.

As I said above, ignore the tower for a while, fly without radio comms and just practice it until you feel you now have inhaled the basics. Control often gives you very stupid orders. I have been handed around between different control centres and told to change frequency up to 8 times in one minute.

Thjat is why many peoploe prefer online flying via VatSim where TraCon is handled by real people not demanding you to do such stupid stuff. - Don'T ask me about it, I don'T do online.

P.S. Sorry for my han dwriting, I know it looks like a terrible mess by an 8 year old. My handwriting always has been a mess. Typing exclusively now for the past 25 years or so has not helped to improve it.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Some airliners' inbuild AP systems have inbuild limits and MUST intercept at not more than 30 or 40° deviation. Carrier policies also play a role here. Others are not limited that way, so it depends. 30-60° should be okay in most cases, I think. But I see it from an addon's perspective: how the default planes react, I do not know. Maybe stay with 30-45°. Keep in mind that the smoother you chose the angle for LOC intercept, the closer to the runway you end up when finally intercepting it. That is a potential problem, if your AP runs by the necessity that LOC always must be captured BEFORE the GS. Because if you are too close to the runway, you may be too high for safe GS interception.

As my leaf of paper shows you, try to complete LOC interception not later than 12-15 nm. At least for now.

As I said above, ignore the tower for a while, fly without radio comms and just practice it until you feel you now have inhaled the basics. Control often gives you very stupid orders. I have been handed around between different control centres and told to change frequency up to 8 times in one minute.

Thjat is why many peoploe prefer online flying via VatSim where TraCon is handled by real people not demanding you to do such stupid stuff. - Don'T ask me about it, I don'T do online.

P.S. Sorry for my han dwriting, I know it looks like a terrible mess by an 8 year old. My handwriting always has been a mess. Typing exclusively now for the past 25 years or so has not helped to improve it.

Maybe it would be worth it partnering up with someone online who will be ATC for one game session and one person or two people who fly for it and then switch off every once and a while. Could nice and interesting.

PS: You mentioned multiplayer and I know in multi it is possible to have two people in a plane with 1 of them "In control" can the other person work the Comms and NAV and flaps and stuff or can they not do anything? It would be kinda cool if when I get PMDG 737 and learn it well maybe we could do a flight with it while some one does ATC. Have some real flight crew like interaction

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

PS: Your picture and the little picture tutorial you just gave me just helped make everything MUCH clearer.

Good, then it served its intention.

Heres another question, whats up with ATC giving me different bearings during flight when I should be following my waypoints?? (Even when Im quite a distance away from the airport)

That happens either when you are at very high altitudes - then they start bto lead you down to lower flight levels so that you can complete your descent before reaching the airport, or when you are entering the control zone where control starts to sort the incomeing and outgoing planes. A flightplan usually does not include all the details like active runway direction, left or right runway, becasue this pretty much depends on cidntions that could change: wind direction, visibility, time of day (noise abatement active after a certain time on the watch). That's why you get the info on which runway to use for takeoff you onmly get very short before takeoff. Same for approaches in reality: your flioghtplan, if done correctly, only leads you to a handover point close to the airport. From there to the proper courses for intercepting the currently active runway extensions, you get lead by control. Ideally. Sometimes they just hammer you with somewhat random course changes only to make life difficult for you. At least the AI does. In reality, these links between runway apporoaches or takesoffs, and linkupo points to the waypoints of your flioghtplan, are standardises, any many airports have a whole catalogue of these, they are fiuctional resept routes that become actiovated according to situational factors. A fully functional Flight Management Computer has them all stored, and you can chose them by nutton clicking, or you just get lead by Control. These stzandardises linking routes are called STAR (Standardised Terminal Arrival) and SID (Standardized Instrument Departure). FSAX does not know these things for real, and Control does a - sometimes poor - job in trying to compensate for that.

PSPS: I also think my problem seems to be that Im trying to do it with autopilot, I think for now, Im going to do all landings manually to get a feel for what I need to be doing / having done. Including ILS landings now that I know HOW they work.

There must be a reason why they teach it in this order in reality as well. A pilot should never be depending on that the autopilot lands the plane, but must be capable to land by himself, like inline skaters should not depend on a lightmast to embrace for braking, but should be able to brake all by themselves.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

PS: You mentioned multiplayer and I know in multi it is possible to have two people in a plane with 1 of them "In control" can the other person work the Comms and NAV and flaps and stuff or can they not do anything? It would be kinda cool if when I get PMDG 737 and learn it well maybe we could do a flight with it while some one does ATC. Have some real flight crew like interaction

I do not know if splitting the cockpit work and have each person assigned its proper share of the socalled "flows" via online connectvity is possible. What I do know is that via Vatsim you can go online, fly yourself in an environment shared with the global flyer comunity in real time, and all control done by real people who do not fly by enjoy controlling instead. There are also virtual airlines that assign to you virtual obligations to fulfill virtual flightplans at a minimum rate per month. I think they have a rankling system and a career system as well.

Be advised that when you consider a complex airliner addon, as you said, I tell you that that is a very wise choice - but I also tell you that then you need to relearn quite some things for sure, unlearning the stuff that in the default planers you have learned "wrong". the 737NGX is the most complex, difficult but also the most rewarding, no doubt. But it is a mission for you to learn it, it is a study sim - there is a reasons why all the manuals toegtzehr, lists and tutorials, have I think 3500 pages. I will never go back to any other airliner, but just to say that: the iFly 737 is very good, but less complex, so is the PMDG-747 or the new Airbus Extended by Aerosoft. For a smaller Turboprop, I either recommend the Beechcraft Turbine Duke I mentioned in a separate thread, or if you want a challenge, the commuter Jetstream 41 by PMDG, but that one is a challenge, too.

Fix your system/installation, be sure it is stable, and then we talk again. For IFR: Aircraft first, weather and airport enhancement second, scenery enhancement third. TrackIR is heavily recommended. In the default planes with their grease virtual cockpit textures, it means not that much, but in a solid addon plane, it makes a difference like between night and day.