Quick Start Guide

Airbus A320-200
with full Fly-By-Wire and Airbus EFIS
For X-Plane 9.xx

Program Version: 0.9.5.1

Document Version: 1.0.2

Author: Torsten Liesk

Date: 13.11.2009
 Introduction
This is the first release of the Airbus A320 with full Fly-by-wire and realistic Airbus
EFIS. This version also features the first aircraft systems simulated according to the
A320 system architecture, namely pneumatics (ATA36), and Air Conditioning
(ATA21).

I started developing this Aircraft in 2005 for X-Plane 8 with the key focus on a realistic
panel (that’s after all what you’re seeing during most of the flight, no?), genuine Fly-
by-Wire and a realistic Auto-Pilot. However, this aim only got feasible with the
introduction of X-Plane 9 and the creation of generic instruments. Thanks to the X-
Plane developers for this great feature!

The plugin development started beginning 2008, and now – over 15000 lines of C-
source-code later – the first official release is completed! My thanks here go to the
entire crew from xsquawkbox for there great examples, most notably thanks to Sandy
Barbour, Ben Supnik and Marginal. The cross-platform compiles have been created
with the valuable help of Phillip Münzel and Jörg Hermann from the vasFMC team. A
big thank you to those guys.

Mid 2009, the engineering service supplier QualityPark AviationCenter GmbH

expressed its interest in this X-Plane add-on. QPAC will use the add-on for
visualisation of aircraft systems-simulations that have already been done and others
that will still be done as part of the on-going R&D at QPAC. (They want to do a bit of
marketing too, I assume.) Hence, QPAC has become a sponsor of this project, but
don’t worry, we will always keep a freeware-version, at least with simplified system
simulation.
 Installation
Installation is easy, just unzip the content into an aircraft folder of your choice (E.g.
“Heavy Metal”).

Getting started
Quite a few things are different from the X-Plane standard. In the following, I’ll quickly
explain the most important bits. If you prefer “trial and error”, I think, you should be
able to figure most of it out anyway. ;-)

Engine start-up
FBW-Airbus aircraft have an automatic start-up feature. That means you, as the pilot,
don’t need to worry about things like switching on ignition and fuel in a certain order
etc. To start up the engines, you just need to turn the engine-mode-switch into the
“Ignition/Start” position while the associated Engine Master Switch is off. Then move
the Engine Master Switch for the engine you want to start into the “on” position:

Engine Master Switch 2

from “Off” to “On” to start
Number 2.

Engine-mode switch in
position „Ignition/Start”

The computer then takes care of opening the start valve, switching on the ignition
and putting fuel into the combustion chamber, once N2 has come up to enough
speed. (In the current version, the EGT during start reaches over 700 degrees. this is
a bug that I still need to solve by overriding X-planes native fuel flow.)
As bleed air simulation is now part of the add-on, your engine won’t start, if the
respective side of the aircraft does not receive bleed air. If you have your APU
running, just switch APU Bleed on, using the switch on the Overhead Panel. If one
engine is already running, you can also choose to open the Cross-Bleed Valve to
start the second engine using Bleed air from the first. (Switch the Cross-Bleed Valve
back to AUTO afterwards!)

APU-Bleed Pushbutton Cross-Bleed-Valve Switch

 After having started both engines, turn the Engine mode switch back to Norm,
unless you fly in icing conditions or other conditions, where it is recommendable to
have the ignition on.
And guess how to shut down the engines after landing? Exactly, just switch off the
master switch.

Auto-Pilot-Interface:
The Auto-Pilot on the A320 is a bit different from what you were used to so far. The
whole thing is described in Airbus’ Flight Crew Operating Manual on over sixty pages.
I’ll try to keep the whole thing short, if you’re interested in more detail, go to
www.smartcockpit.com and download for the A320 family the System description
“AutoFlight”. In there it is pages 154 to 353 . But don’t worry, it’s not 200 pages, they
just have every page 3 times in there for applicability reasons.
The key philosophy in the A320 Auto-Pilot usage is the distinguishing between
selected and managed modes. In selected mode, the Pilot directly chooses Heading,
Speed, Altitude or Vertical Speed on the Autopilot interface, which is called FCU
(Flight Control Unit) on the Airbus. In Managed mode, the autopilot automatically
selects these values according to the flight plan in the FMGS (the Airbus version of
the FMC) or Aircraft performance data.
Another difference is that you cannot switch on the AP for only the vertical or only
the lateral motion. On the Airbus, you either switch the Autopilot on, and it controls
the aircraft around all three axes, or you fly the aircraft yourself. (In FBW normal law.)
If you move your joystick more than half way around any axis while the AP is
engaged, the AP disengages. (In real life, the sidestick gets locked in the central
position, if the AP is on. If the pilot exerts more than a certain force on it, the AP gets
disengaged and the side stick is free to move again.)
The Auto-Pilot can be engaged from 5 seconds after lift-off. To engage, just press
the button “AP1” or “AP2” on the FCU. AP1 works with the data on the Captain’s
PFD, AP2 works with the data on the Co-Pilot’s PFD. Keep this in mind, in case you
have different Baro-Settings on the left and on the right side. Only one AP can be
engaged at a time, except for during the approach phase, during which both APs can
be engaged simultaneously. (Has currently no effect except that it looks cool with all
the green lights. In a later version, this will give you CAT 3 DUAL landing capability
instead of CAT3 SINGLE.)
To disengage the AP, in real life, you would normally use the “instinctive disconnect
button” on the side stick. To get this feature, program any button of your joystick to
either of the X-Plane commands “autopilot/fdir_servos_down_one” or
“autopilot/servos_and_flight_dir_off”. Otherwise you can also just click again on the
button on the FCU. To get rid of the subsequent Warning (Master Warning lit and “AP
OFF” message on ECAM), either push again the “instinctive disconnect” button or
click on the Master Warning light. If the AP disengages due to a failure or because
you push the joystick too hard, the warning sound is not going to stop, until you take
some action!

Now to the interface. The FCU looks like this:

 Turn to select AP VS

The white dot visible indicates Click to:

“Managed mode” for SPD (left) Set VS to zero (if in mode VS)
HDG (center) and VS (right) Engage VS mode (if in any other mode)

Turn to select AP Speed Turn to select AP HDG AP and A/THR Turn to select AP Arm or disengage
on/off ALT APPR mode
Click to toggle managed Click for: Click to:
and selected speed In mode HDG: - Engage OP CLB or
Arm NAV mode Arm or disengage OP DES mode
In any other mode: LOC mode - Confirm new ALT
Revert to HDG mode

Most noticeably, the windows for SPD, HDG, and VS show dashes. What does this
mean? As you can see, for each entry, the associated white dot is lit up, that means,
SPD, HDG, and VS are in managed mode – the computer sets the targets. Here, the
aircraft is in final approach, and the computer selects the heading and vertical speed
targets such that the aircraft follows the ILS. The speed in controlled according to the
flap setting, so that the pilot can slowly extend the flaps until position “FULL”.
If the pilot turns any of the selection knobs for SPD, HDG, or VS, the dashes in the
associated window will disappear, and the current value will appear, which the pilot
can then modify. However, as long as you don’t push the associated selection
knob, the AP mode will not change. If you don’t push the button at all, your
selection will disappear after 10 seconds for the SPD, and after 45 seconds for HDG
or VS. The Auto-Pilot will continue doing what it did before.
After choosing a new target altitude, you need to confirm the new target within 5
seconds, by pulling (=clicking on) the altitude selection knob, otherwise the old target
will remain active.
The FCU only gives you very limited information, so how do you know, what the
Auto-Pilot is doing? For this, you should look at the top of your PFD (Primary Flight
Display.) It displays the “Flight Mode Annunciator” (FMA):
 Indicates Vertical AP mode: Indicates Lateral AP mode: RWY (Yaw orders to maintain RWY
SRS (Speed reference system) centerline). NAV mode is armed and will engage at 30ft RALT.

Indicates Flight
Indicates Manual Directors on PFD 1 and
Thrust selection. 2 engaged.
Thrust levers in the
FLX TO detent.
Indicates A/THR armed
A/THR will engage,
when the Thrust levers
are retarded into the
CLB detent.

1st column: A/THR 2nd column: Vertical AP mode 3rd column: Lateral AP mode
mode and status 1st line: Active mode (green) 1st line: Active mode (green)
2nd line: Armed mode (blue) 2nd line: Armed mode (blue)

Typical FMA Display during the TO Run for a flight with flight plan and FLX TO Thrust.

A/THR operates in
SPEED mode, i.e. the Indicates AP1 engaged
thrust controls the speed

Indicates A/THR engaged

The AP operates vertically in The AP operates laterally in

Glide Slope mode (Maintain Localizer mode (Maintain the
the Glide Slope) Localizer beam)

Typical FMA display during an ILS approach with AP1 and ATHR engaged.

The FMA shows what mode the Auto-Thrust and the Auto-Pilot are in, and what
mode is armed to be engaged automatically (if any.) A description of the different
modes can be found in the appendix, here I just want to give the sequence of modes
for a

Standard flight with flight plan:

Take-off run:
Vertical guidance: The vertical mode SRS engages (guides the aircraft to maintain
lift-off speed +8kts or Lowest selectable speed +10kts, whichever is higher.)
Lateral guidance: If the Localizer/ILS for the used runway is tuned into Nav1, the
mode RWY engages laterally. It provides yaw commands to maintain the Runway
centreline.
If a flight-plan is entered into the FMC which starts at the departure airport, the NAV
mode arms during the Take-off run.
Auto-Thrust: The Auto-Thrust is armed, when the Thrust levers are moved into the
FLX TO or the TOGA detent. The chosen thrust setting is shown in the first column of
the FMA.
At 30ft Radio Altitude:
Vertical guidance: Remains unchanged SRS mode.
Lateral guidance: If the NAV mode is armed, it engages now, otherwise the mode
RWY TRK engages. RWY TRK guides the aircraft to maintain the track it was flying
when passing through 30ft RALT. (You need actively end this mode by engaging the
Heading mode, whenever you wish.)
Auto Thrust: Remains armed with FLX TO or TOGA thrust.

At thrust reduction altitude:

Vertical guidance & lateral guidance: Unchanged.
Auto Thrust: The FMA flashes “LVR CLB” in the 3rd row of the first column, asking
the pilot to retard the thrust levers into the “Climb” detent. (The thrust levers are in the
climb detent, if the red “instinctive disconnect” button is just above the letters “CL” on
the thrust levers. See figure below.) If one lever is in the climb detent, and the other is
not, the warning “LVRASYM” is displayed in amber.

Alpha-Protection
speed range

Thrust Levers in climb position during a flight where AP1 follows the flight plan
(Mode NAV) and maintains 3000ft. (Mode ALT). The A/THR controls the speed.

At acceleration altitude:
Vertical Guidance: Changes to “OPEN CLIMB” to increase speed to allow flap
retraction. After flap retraction, the mode maintains Greendot-Speed+x. (x depends
on the altitude.)
Lateral guidance: No changes.
Auto-Thrust: No changes. (A/THR commands Climb thrust. Speed is controlled by
the vertical guidance.)

At reaching the altitude selected on the FCU:

Vertical guidance: Changes to ALT* to reduce Vertical Speed in order to reach a VS
of zero when reaching the desired altitude.
Lateral guidance: No changes. (Continues to follow flight plan in mode NAV)
Auto-Thrust: Changes to mode SPEED (or MACH at high altitude) to maintain the
desired speed by changing engine thrust.
Now you are basically enroute. You can change your altitude by selecting a new
altitude on the FCU and then clicking on the ALT selection knob. If you want to fly
parts of your route with mode heading just click on the HDG selection knob to active
heading mode. Bring your aircraft close enough to the Flightplan and press the HDG
selection knob again, and the NAV mode will get armed. It will engage automatically,
as soon as you intercept the flightplan.

Descent for landing:

Vertical guidance: Choose your new altitude on the FCU and click on the altitude
selection knob. The mode “OPEN DESCENT” will engage and the aircraft will start
descending with the engines at idle. (If you don’t have Auto-Thrust on, don’t forget to
pull the levers back, otherwise you’re not gonna go down!)
Lateral guidance: If your flight plan brings you to the start of the Localizer – no need
to change anything. Otherwise engage the HDG mode and guide the aircraft to the
start of the ILS approach by choosing appropriate headings.
Auto-Thrust: If it is on, it will reduce thrust to idle automatically.

Initiating the approach:

Tune the ILS you want to land on into NAV1. As soon as you are within 15NM of this
ILS, you can arm the Approach mode. However, even with the approach mode
armed, make sure to guide the aircraft laterally and vertically to the beginning of the
ILS. Upon reaching the localizer, the mode LOC* engages. After that, the mode G/S*
engages, if the aircraft is close enough to the glide-slope. (The mode G/S* will never
engages before the mode LOC*).

Initial approach:
Vertical guidance: The mode G/S* or G/S guides the aircraft along the glide-slope.
Lateral guidance: The mode LOC* or LOC guides the aircraft along the localizer.
Auto-Thrust: Operates in mode “SPEED”.
During the intial approach, any of the modes can be changed by pushing any of the
selector knobs or the APPR or LOC button.

Final approach:
Vertical guidance: The mode G/S guides the aircraft along the glide-slope.
Lateral guidance: The mode LOC guides the aircraft along the localizer.
Both modes are shown together on the FMA as “LAND”.
Auto-Thrust: Operates in mode “SPEED”.
Now, the mode cannot be changed anymore via the FCU. The only possibility to get
out of this mode is by pushing the thrust levers to the TOGA detent. (Fully forward.)
This engages go around mode.

Flare and Roll-out:

Vertical guidance: At 40ft RALT, the vertical mode changes automatically to FLARE.
The aircraft reduces the descent rate to reach a nice smooth touch-down. After
touch-down the vertical guidance disengages.
Lateral guidance: At about 20ft RALT, the aircraft decrabs, i.e. aligns the aircraft
axis with the runway. It lowers the windward wing a little to minimize drift. At touch-
down the mode ROLL-OUT engages keeping the aircraft on the runway centreline
using yaw-commands. Caution: For whatever reason, the plugin cannot address the
nose-wheel steering. At low speeds, you might have to help with the stick to follow
the yaw command, as the rudder doesn’t work anymore.
Auto-Thrust: At 20ft RALT the Auto-Thrust commands idle and disengages on
touch-down. IMPORTANT: Pull the thrust levers back to idle during the flare.
Otherwise the engines will spool up to Climb thrust after touch-down. Normally,
the “retard” call-out reminds pilots to do this, I haven’t figured out yet how to play
custom sounds from a plugin yet, though.

There are tons of different possibilities to fly with the Auto-Pilot, just play around with
it, and you’ll learn it quickly.

Auto-Thrust:
The most important bits of the Auto-Thrust have already been describe above. I just
want to add an explanation on the use of the thrust levers. With both thrust levers
forward of the CL detent, the A/THR can only be armed. The Thrust is controlled by
the levers. If the thrust is armed in this configuration, and you retard both levers to
the Climb-detent or below, the A/THR will become active. The thrust levers now
determine, the maximum amount of thrust, that the A/THR can command. That’s why
they are normally in the CLB-Detent, as this gives the A/THR maximum authority. If
you pull them back to close to idle, there is not much thrust, the A/THR can give. If
you pull the levers into idle, the A/THR will disconnect.
The other options to disconnect the A/THR are the button on the FCU or the
instinctive disconnect button, that you programmed on your joystick. (See Appendix.)

Fly-By-wire:
Find flying with the AP boring? Then just don’t engage it and just follow the flight
director instead. The model comes with the Airbus “Normal” fly-by-wire law.
(Degenerated laws may be implemented in later versions.)
The normal fly-by-wire law includes the full set of protections (no stall, no bank
beyond 67 degrees, no pitch above 30 degrees and below –10 degrees, low-speed
protection and high-speed protection.)
If you are not close to one of the protections, the roll command of the joystick gives
a desired roll rate and the pitch command a desired load factor. If you don’t touch
your stick, the aircraft automatically maintains the current attitude. (Except for wind
gusts that may throw it into a different attitude, which it then maintains again.) No
need for trimming or pulling in turns to keep the nose up.

Protections:
If you get slow (in the amber-black-striped band of the IAS indicator) and reach the
maximum angle of attack, the Alpha Protection function sets in. This function means
that pulling the stick fully aft will bring you close to the angle of attack of CLMax – you
can’t stall while having as much lift as physically possible. To deactivate the Alpha
Protection function, you need to push the side-stick forward for a bit, when the aircraft
has accelerated enough. (faster than the amber-black band.) The ECAM shows that
the Alpha Protection is active!
The Alpha Floor function of the Auto-Thrust ensures, that the aircraft accelerates
by commanding TOGA thrust, if the aircraft got too close to stall-speed. (The red
band on the IAS indicator.) After leaving the Alpha Protection zone, the mode reverts
to “TOGA LK” which you can disengage by disengages the A/THR. (I.e. press the
instinctive disconnect, pull the throttle levers to idle, or push the button on the FCU.)
The rest is pretty intuitive.
 Indicates Alpha Floor active

Lowest selectable speed

Alpha Protection speed
Alpha Floor speed
Stall speed (1g)
Indicates Alpha Prot active

Low-speed protection indications on the EFIS/ECAM

The roll and bank angle protections reduce the pilot stick input when approaching
one of the attitude limits, so that you cannot push the nose down more than –10
degrees or higher than 30 degrees. The roll protection requires a full side stick
deflection to reach and maintain 67 degrees roll either way. If the side stick is brought
back to neutral, the bank angle automatically reduces to 33 degrees, which is the
maximum angle that can be maintained with neutral side stick.
The high speed protections automatically reduces the stick down authority, if the
aircraft exceeds the maximum permissible speed and applies a permanent nose up
input. Also, as part of the spiral dive protection, the roll angle will be limited to 45
degrees and with neutral side stick, the wings will become level. High speed
protection becomes active at Vne+5kts. Its activation is shown on the Engine
Warning Display by the amber text O/SPEED.

Current restrictions: The FBW protections work only, once the speed bands are
visible on the IAS indicator. When you initiate the flight somewhere in mid-air , it will
take 5 seconds for the bands to appear. Before they do, you can stall the aircraft.
Sometimes, the AP does weird stuff after an in-flight initalization, in this case you
need to reset the AP: Turn of both APs and both FDs (Captain and Co-side). Then
turn the FDs back on, and everything should be fine.

ECAM:
The ECAM currently has only some functions. The Engine Warning displays shows
the check-lists during take-off and landing and some very few system failures. The
amount of failures shown will increase for future updates.
The image below shows the landing check-list. Blue action items still need to be
done, items purely in green are checked. Concerning the check-item “Cabin ready” I’ll
do a guessing game, how to get this one green. Think, what you need to do in real
life to get the information from the cabin crew and then perform the one (little) action,
that is actually feasible in a flight simulation.
The System Display has currently the functional pages: ENG, BLEED, APU,
WHEEL, PRESS, COND, FCTL and Cruise. The Status Page can be selected but
shows only engine failure or fire, if it occured. The CLR button allows to erase
warnings from the E/WD. (Will then be displayed on the Status page of the SD in a
future version of the plugin.)
Acknowledgements:
First of all, I want to thank QualityPark AviationCenter for adopting this project and
hence ensuring on-going development (it’s quite time-intensive, you know) as well as
maintaining a freeware version.
A big thank you also goes to Jörg Hermann and Philipp Münzel from vasFMC, who
provided great help with doing the cross-platform compiles. Jörg also helped find
some bugs in it.
As already said above, I want to thank to X-Plane development team for the
introduction of some really cool features with XP9 and XPSDK2.0. As well thanks to
the team from Xsquawkbox and all the forum members for the valuable insight into
programming plugins for X-Plane.
I also want to thank the development team of the GIMP for providing such a cool
tool for free; without the gimp, I could never have achieved the result that you see
now.
Thanks to Reuben Horsley for the nice greater Auckland scenery and to Kevthrev
for his Hamburg scenery that you see both on the screenshot on page 1.

Copyright:
The aircraft itself plus all the instrument textures in the current state are freeware.
However, if you use parts of this project for your own project, please acknowledge
me as the original author. (After all, I spent 1000s of hours creating this)
The plugin is also freeware, however, it is not open source meaning you’re not
allowed to modify it or distribute it with other aircraft. If you want to use the plugin for
other aircraft, contact me, and I’ll be happy to help. (If it can be done with little effort
that is.)
Appendix

The following X-plane joystick commands are mapped in the plugin:

AP instinctive disconnect

ATHR instinctive disconnect

ATHR button on FCU

Push HDG selector
knob on FCU

Push ALT selector

knob on FCU Push VS selector
knob on FCU

Push APPR button

on FCU

The selection up/down commands for SPD, HDG, ALT, VS should continue to work
anyway.

Description of the AP modes:

To be filled later!