OnCourse Software

One new thing in the FS world (with the introduction of convective weather in Activesky 2016) is the need to deviate from the route to keep from getting destroyed by thunderstorms being modelled along with their destructive effects.

At present, it seems that setting the airway deviation distance to 0 in the Options #1 screen on PF3 stops ATC from squawking if you do deviate, and a request for direct-to a waypoint well past the weather solves the problem of PF3 not recognizing a waypoint passage while you're deviating well off-track.

But...as a suggestion for some future version, it'd be nice to have an enroute option to "request deviation for weather" that dynamically (but only temporarily) turns off route deviation monitoring after giving permission, i.e. "deviate as required, report back on course", and then offer a "report back on course" option while in a "deviation allowed" state to return to normal enroute track monitoring. I think the basic mechanisms for doing this are probably already built into the program.

Regards

Bob Scott

airforce2 wrote:

One new thing in the FS world (with the introduction of convective weather in Activesky 2016) is the need to deviate from the route to keep from getting destroyed by thunderstorms being modelled along with their destructive effects.

At present, it seems that setting the airway deviation distance to 0 in the Options #1 screen on PF3 stops ATC from squawking if you do deviate, and a request for direct-to a waypoint well past the weather solves the problem of PF3 not recognizing a waypoint passage while you're deviating well off-track.

But...as a suggestion for some future version, it'd be nice to have an enroute option to "request deviation for weather" that dynamically (but only temporarily) turns off route deviation monitoring after giving permission, i.e. "deviate as required, report back on course", and then offer a "report back on course" option while in a "deviation allowed" state to return to normal enroute track monitoring. I think the basic mechanisms for doing this are probably already built into the program.

Regards

Bob Scott

The phraseology does exist for something like "Request turn to the North (etc) due to clouds/turbulence." But something like "Report on track/on course" for the response doesn't seem to work. Though "Report reaching Tango Oscar Papa" i.e. the next waypoint might suffice. But that said you would more like say request direct to... etc" after a weather diversion.

This was mentioned by myself sometime ago as below, with Daves reply.

Rustydog wrote:

I often hear R/W aircraft approaching Dublin asking for permission to alter course by 10 or 20 degrees to avoid weather. They are normally instructed to do so and to contact ATC when they are clear to resume course. This would be a nice feature as I often see gaps in the weather slightly off my course which would be nice to take advantage of.

Especially now as AS16 allegedly rocks the boat in storm clouds!

dmarch wrote:

I've put it on my don't-forget list