OnCourse Software

martinlest wrote:

Actually, you are right of course for flights out of JFK. So let's use Heathrow departures as an example then, where I do need to level off at 28000' for a time...
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After departing EGLL you climb to FL280 and maintain it using altitude hold and MACH hold (auto throttle mode) at M0.94. Once you reach waypoint UPGAS N54 21.0 W003 50.0 you can begin transonic acceleration/climb.

UPGAS is waypoint 3 in the FS9 flightplan I gave you. It is in the Bristol Channel and means you can go supersonic without laying a boom over land.

OK, so this time Dave I just waited for ATC. I got no request to descend until EVX ("Descend from FL550 to 2500'"), only 50 miles from the airport: a bit optimistic - and of course I am still, forcibly, at M2..

Something is amiss

Peter, I don't really have too much trouble (usually) with flying Concorde itself - it's trying to get it to work with PF3 that's the problem.

What might be good, if this isn't going to work, is a hotkey that simply toggles all ATC/pilot voices on and off (i.e. between silent and voiced) when outside of Oceanic Airspace (it would be a real shame to silence OA interaction, which is very well done and greatly adds to the realism of oceanic flights), so that one can take advantage of PF3 until, say, FL280 is reached and then turn off all audible instructions (apart from OA), turning them back on again during approach to get a landing runway, or even after touchdown to get a gate assigned.. I think PF3 usually catches up with itself if instructions are ignored en route.

(BTW, can the speed 'nag' be turned off in some way?).

Martin,

I think I can see why you never received descent instructions... you were never handed off from Shanwick. You should have been of course and you would have been but you made contact with Brest Control before being handed off. Obviously that shouldn't be allowed to happen but it did and you never changed your COM frequency, so PF3 wrongly assumed you were still in contact with Shanwick, hence no descent instructions.

All in all this has highlighted a few issues I need to address but in the meantime the best workaround would be to just wait until you are handed off from Shanwick to Brest in the normal way. See how that goes and please report back when you can.

Quote:

...you made contact with Brest Control before being handed off

Thanks for looking into this... Could you say though exactly how I made contact with Brest Control? Surely PF3 did the tuning?? I made no manual frequency changes that I recall: I was in Mode 2 so I always wait to be handed off by ATC. If I did change radio frequencies myself (I don't recall), it would only have been because I had had no hand off and I was getting far too close to the airport to make a proper descent. Once I set Mode 2 from Mode 1, which I do during taxi out usually, I don't then tune the radio manually unless things are going wrong.. On this flight, as it was a test after your last post, I thought I just left things to happen by themselves?

So what is it I need to do differently in practice? Obviously 'troubleshooting' this takes some time - having to cross the Atlantic each time - so I want to do it 'right'! Thanks again.

(If things do 'go wrong' by the way, en route, and PF3 is showing that I am not tuned to any working frequency, to what frequency should I be re-tuning, in order to get PF3/ATC back on track?).

Quote:

Could you say though exactly how I made contact with Brest Control?

You hit Hotkey #0

So it was simply contacting Brest Control (to which frequency I was already tuned) to say "I am here" that prevented me being handed off to the next centre?

No you weren't tuned to Brest Control (frequency 128.60) you were tuned to Shanwick (127.90)

Sorry Dave, we are probably at crossed purposes here.

I probably hit '0' key to check I was still connected to PF3/ATC, and they OKed my current position. Is that a problem for PF3 then? I can't see that I did anything manually that would have resulted in my getting no descent instruction. If I did, please spell it out for me

Quote:

...you were never handed off from Shanwick. You should have been of course and you would have been but you made contact with Brest Control before being handed off. Obviously that shouldn't be allowed to happen but it did..

How come I made contact with Brest if I was never handed off from Shanwick, as you say?

Quote:

... you never changed your COM frequency

I am in Mode 2, PF3 should change my frequencies, no? I made no manual frequency changes, except maybe right near the end when things had already gone awry, at least as far as I recall...

Thanks, as ever...

PF3 will only change frequencies if/when ATC tell you to do so

You didn't actually do anything wrong... well you did a couple of things but PF3 should either (a) not allowed you to and/or (b) corrected the situation. Because everything seemingly went quiet you hit hotkey #0. Had you just waited you would (I'm sure) have been handed off from Shanwick to Brest and everything would have worked okay.

Needless to say, there are a few issues here that I need to address for the next release.... all I'm say, going forward, until the next release, just be more patient and I think you'll find you WILL get a handoff and the you WILL get descent instructions. It would appear that with the curent version if you get impatient you will mess things up.