How do I tune the radios?

The 747-400 does not have analog radio tuning knobs the way other aircraft like the 737NG or 767 do. All radio tuning including VOR, ILS, and NDB/ADF is accomplished from the FMC's NAV RAD page. Under most circumstances, the FMC will autotune the correct radios for you. We've gone to painstaking lengths to ensure that our simulation follows the exact rules the real thing does for autotuning.

The situations when you will get autotuning include:

  • Placing a VOR or NDB in the FMC route.
  • Selecting an arrival runway equipped with an ILS on the DEP/ARR page

There are instances however, where you might wish to manually tune the radios. The correct formats for doing this are:

FFF.FF
FFF.FF/CCC
NNN
NNN/CCC
IIII

Where FFF.FF = a standard ILS frequency such as 111.70, CCC = a standard three digit course such as 123, NNN = the ICAO identifier for a VOR or NDB station such as TUS, and IIII = the ICAO identifier for an ILS such as ITUS.