OnCourse Software

The situation that happened to me on the flight today is one that happens more often than I would like with PF3. I am flying into an airport, and get closer and closer, and am still on center frequency. The distance continues to decrease, and soon I am overflying the airport, with no attempt by Center to contact me with further instructions. This is despite my continually reporting my position to center, as I am getting closer and closer to the airport. No descent instructions, runway assignments, nothing. What I usually do in desperation is finally just switch to approach control on my own, and the second that I switch to approach, I get a heading change, altitude change and speed change. It's as if Approach just found out I was there. If I didn't switch to approach on my own, I suspect that I would fly miles and miles past the airport, maybe forever, without hearing anything from ATC.

Now on this particular approach that I did today, on the other side of the airport there are mountains that are over 3,000 feet, and approach tells me to descend to 3,000 feet and to continue flying away from the airport towards the mountains. I finally just made my own approach using GPS and landed on a runway that I overflew many miles ago. Now I realize that the terrain clearance is something that ATC can't deal with in mountainous areas and that is fine, but what I find a real problem is ATC not handing me over from Center to approach at a reasonable distance from my destination, even after I go past the destination airport, until I take it upon myself to change frequencies to approach.

The first thing I would suggest is that your fpl only contains 2 waypoints HOM SHUYA.
Try KASSI AFWAF HOM KOMNA SHUYA CINEK ODK

The other problem could be the airport itself. It has an intersecting runway 11-29. If the afcad is not well designed then the info picked up from makerwys can deceive PF3.
Do you have a default airport or modified? My default has a lot of frequencies
135.5 ATIS
122.8 UNICOM
119.8 ATF
121.9 GROUND
119.8 TOWER
125.1 CENTER ANCHORAGE
119.8 FSS KENAI
122.2 FSS KENAI

I notice from these that three frequencies are the same which could also be your problem. The Sector map shows that you are flying start to stop under one Centre.

There does seem to be a problem here that requires a fix, so until such time if you ensure the altitude for your last waypoint is below your configured 'centre' altitude you should be okay.

dmarch wrote:

There does seem to be a problem here that requires a fix, so until such time if you ensure the altitude for your last waypoint is below your configured 'centre' altitude you should be okay.

Thanks.

Same exact problem today at another airport. No contact past center, no descent instruction, no nothing, until I decided to switch to approach on my own. Then immediately, I received approach runway and heading instructions, I then had to do a circling descent to get down to a reasonable approach altitude and speed in order to land. I think what I am going to do from now on is just switch to approach on my own when I am about 40 miles out from the arrival airport. I forgot to change last waypoint to a lower altitude, which may have been the issue on this flight.

dmarch wrote:

There does seem to be a problem here that requires a fix, so until such time if you ensure the altitude for your last waypoint is below your configured 'centre' altitude you should be okay.

I tried your suggestion on a couple of flights and had the same problem. Then I realized that when I set the waypoint altitude for the last waypoint at a lower value, I forgot to check the box that says "Allow manual adjustments" , Once I did that, everything worked perfectly, I was switched over to approach at the proper time.

Thanks for letting us know, it makes the fix that bit easier.

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