OnCourse Software

At UHPP (Kamchatka, Russia) RWY 34L-16R is closed (according to Navigraph) and RWY34R is the only RWY to land on. So I coded the 34L and 16R as 'X', the 16L as 'T' and the 34R was left as 'B'.
When I dialed in the ATIS the 'No suitable runways' message was displayed. Further in the flight, probably on the moment of descent, the same message came across. PF3 kept silent for the rest of the flight and landing.

In an earlier flight to the same airport I had the 16L still on 'B'. Then PF3 worked fine.

Ypa,

Dirk

TheDuke wrote:

At UHPP (Kamchatka, Russia) RWY 34L-16R is closed (according to Navigraph) and RWY34R is the only RWY to land on. So I coded the 34L and 16R as 'X', the 16L as 'T' and the 34R was left as 'B'.
When I dialed in the ATIS the 'No suitable runways' message was displayed. Further in the flight, probably on the moment of descent, the same message came across. PF3 kept silent for the rest of the flight and landing.

In an earlier flight to the same airport I had the 16L still on 'B'. Then PF3 worked fine.

Ypa,


Dirk

It might be that your afcad also had closed runways and that plus PF3 equals none.

If that is true, how on earth could I have landed a few days ago on 34R?
By the way... there was no AI active and the wind was 160 at 6.

TheDuke wrote:

If that is true, how on earth could I have landed a few days ago on 34R?
By the way... there was no AI active and the wind was 160 at 6.

Best attach your logs so that we cn see what's going on.

I'll get to the bottom of this in a few testflights as soon as I have time to do it.

If it's not the 'one RWY to land on with a 6 kts tailwind' that caused this to happen, it's worth the time for sure.

But first I'll give the reason why I made the flight PASY to UHPP for the second time. After all, it's 600 Nm over sea that sometimes takes almost 3 hours with The Duke:

Case 1:
My EFB creates the route using Routefinder. That came up with a zig-zag of over 850 Nm, while great circle is 560 Nm. So I had to delete some waypoints to make it more direct. The last WPT the came out of Routefinder was overhead and the STAR starts 55 Nm east of that. So I deleted te last WPT; told PF3 there was a STAR; did not include the STAR in the route loaded in PF3; and RWY 16L was still code 'B'.
The last WPT was over 320 Nm from UHPP. At 285 Nm from UHPP on FL220, PF3 ordered me to descend to 2,500 ft (standard FAF) with NO pilot discretion. So with 50-100 ft/m I could have made it to UHPP FAF being levelled long before. Then PF3 started to vector me way down to the south for the ILS of RWY 34R (wind 160 at 6). It went so far south, that I smuggled a bit to the north to save time. Not being nagged by the way. On final 34R PF3 kicked in and guided me to the GA parking.

Case 2:
I was on a flight from EHTE to LFPO (Orly, Paris). The last WPT, where all STARs start, is far north of Paris city. PF3 started again to step me down to 3,000 ft (FAF) and reduced speed to 140 kts (FAF spd=120) way too early. It is nice to fly over Paris at 3,000 ft., but I cannot find a reason why.

So I started to think: what method uses PF3 to calculate the TOD? Does the length of the leg from the last WPT to the destination have anything to do with it? Isn't it more logical to use altitude, descent rate, and groundspeed, to calculate time plus margin is TOD? That is what I think that ASN and my EFB are doing.

I decided to do the flight PASY-UHPP one more time. This times I set 16L to 'T'; included the STAR and the Approach for 34R in the flight plan that was loaded in PF3; updated all altirude constraints (there are 3: FL130, 7,200 and 4,400, TA=8,000). Just before entering the STAR I tuned the radio for the ATIS with the outcome mentioned before.

I will be away for some time, my own testing will have to wait. I'll get back to this post later with more details.

Dirk

TheDuke wrote:

I'll get to the bottom of this in a few testflights as soon as I have time to do it.

If it's not the 'one RWY to land on with a 6 kts tailwind' that caused this to happen, it's worth the time for sure.

But first I'll give the reason why I made the flight PASY to UHPP for the second time. After all, it's 600 Nm over sea that sometimes takes almost 3 hours with The Duke:

Case 1:
My EFB creates the route using Routefinder. That came up with a zig-zag of over 850 Nm, while great circle is 560 Nm. So I had to delete some waypoints to make it more direct. The last WPT the came out of Routefinder was overhead and the STAR starts 55 Nm east of that. So I deleted te last WPT; told PF3 there was a STAR; did not include the STAR in the route loaded in PF3; and RWY 16L was still code 'B'.
The last WPT was over 320 Nm from UHPP. At 285 Nm from UHPP on FL220, PF3 ordered me to descend to 2,500 ft (standard FAF) with NO pilot discretion. So with 50-100 ft/m I could have made it to UHPP FAF being levelled long before. Then PF3 started to vector me way down to the south for the ILS of RWY 34R (wind 160 at 6). It went so far south, that I smuggled a bit to the north to save time. Not being nagged by the way. On final 34R PF3 kicked in and guided me to the GA parking.

Case 2:
I was on a flight from EHTE to LFPO (Orly, Paris). The last WPT, where all STARs start, is far north of Paris city. PF3 started again to step me down to 3,000 ft (FAF) and reduced speed to 140 kts (FAF spd=120) way too early. It is nice to fly over Paris at 3,000 ft., but I cannot find a reason why.

So I started to think: what method uses PF3 to calculate the TOD? Does the length of the leg from the last WPT to the destination have anything to do with it? Isn't it more logical to use altitude, descent rate, and groundspeed, to calculate time plus margin is TOD? That is what I think that ASN and my EFB are doing.

I decided to do the flight PASY-UHPP one more time. This times I set 16L to 'T'; included the STAR and the Approach for 34R in the flight plan that was loaded in PF3; updated all altirude constraints (there are 3: FL130, 7,200 and 4,400, TA=8,000). Just before entering the STAR I tuned the radio for the ATIS with the outcome mentioned before.

I will be away for some time, my own testing will have to wait. I'll get back to this post later with more details.

Dirk

I went to "onlineflightplanner" which uses routefinder and it gave me this fpl
PASY-->DCT-->ONEIL-->G469-->NYMPH-->LUMES-->RAPAK-->TUSOM-->OSTUL-->G73-->PIRUT-->STAR-->UHPP
It didn't seem too zigzagy though. Is it the same as the one generated for you?
Generating it in PF3 gives a cruise of FL330 a control boundary between NYMPH and LUMES, FL220 by TUSOM, FL180 by OSTUL and FL160 by PIRUT. I might have time to fly it later. PF3 gave a total distance of 617nm.
I presume you have an up to date afcad. My default has no ILS or anything it's very basic so I'll have to see if there is an update before I fly it.

@vololiberista
The route you mentioned is exactly what came out the first time. Not really a problem when you fly big iron, but a bit overdone if you fly something like The Duke.
Indeed, I have updated using this:http://www.aero.sors.fr/index.html. I've got everything updated until Navograph's 1601. That means that if the ILS was originally not there, it now is as a result of the update.

@Support
Given the PF3 error I reported today by email, my guess is, that it might be better for me to leave SIDs and STARs out of the flight plan loaded in PF3 untill the problem is solved. By the way.... PF3 ignored the altitude constraint of 4,400 ft and gave me FL120 with a smile departing from UHPP during clearance.
That leaves us with the 'way too early step down and speed reduction when the start of the STAR is at a large distance from the airport.

Dirk