OnCourse Software

A wet afternoon, so another 'training' flight from Gatwick to Edinburgh, using the latest version of PF3 (3.10.50).
I stayed in VCP1 mode for the entire flight (I believe) and noticed what seem to be some anomalies in the ATC interactions:

1) I acknowledged the 'hold short' instruction when I checked-in with the tower at the runway holding point, but got no response.
2) I acknowledged the 'line up and wait' instruction, but again got no response.
I'm assuming that I need to acknowledge these instructions, but am happy to be told otherwise.

3) When I acknowledged the 'resume own navigation' instruction shortly after take-off PF3 showed (and spoke) the following: (Exactly the same thing happened on the previous flight)

4) A little later the VCP responded automatically (twice) with the message 'Roger 126.85 Midland 737' when I was handed off to a new control centre.

5) A while later ATC issued the instruction 'Midland 737 Contact Manchester Control on 124.2' twice in quick succession.
I have a screen shot of this in the ATC log.

6) I was never handed over from Scottish Control to Edinburgh Approach.
When I acknowledged the '.. expect vectors for the ILS ..' message the response sent was 'Roger Line up and wait Midland 737', shown here: I'm attaching the log which I believe should show all of the above - hopefully there is a simple explanation, probably finger trouble

Thanks,
Martin

Wow, quite bizarre to say the least! I can see why one or two of the issues occurred, due to a timer overlap. Plus I need to clear the buffer so as not to get the nonsensical 'roger' like 'line up and wait, resume own navigation'. But the problem with not being handed off to Approach is a mystery at the moment. Best thing will be for me to give this flight a try myself with full debug logging in place. Unfortunately I won't be able to do so for a few days so please bear with me. Give me a nudge at the weekend if you've not heard back from me.

No rush, am sorry to have thrown so many things at you at once
Thinking about it I may have to hold my hand up for item 4 - it's quite possible that I acknowledged the handover myself forgetting that I was in VCP mode 1.

I've attached the contents of the FPP directory in case that helps - although the files are dated today the flight plan hasn't changed for a week.

Cheers,
Martin

Quote:

Thinking about it I may have to hold my hand up for item 4 - it's quite possible that I acknowledged the handover myself forgetting that I was in VCP mode 1.

If you're in VCP Mode 1 you have to acknowledge ALL ATC instructions, your VCP will only change the frequency when instructed... maybe that's part of the issue here... I will take another look at your log

Okay, I got around to this sooner than I thought and I've had another look at your log and have found a problem that you hadn't reported

When you were told to 'contact Ground for push and start' your VCP acknowledged the instruction and then changed the frequency. In VCP Mode 1 this should not happen. When you manually 'roger' the instruction your VCP should only then acknowledge the instruction and then change the frequency in readiness to make contact with Ground.

The same for when you were handed off to Tower, your VCP responded automatically but should not have done so

Hotkeys are disabled following the Line up and Wait... AI interaction continues though but PF3 is monitoring and waiting for you to 'line up' on the runway. This is where your 'line up and wait' got pushed into the buffer and was then followed by your 'resume own navigation' acknowledgement. I have addressed this ready for the next release. I'd omitted clearing any hotkeys that were used during this wait loop.

The duplicate acknowledgements were the VCP giving a roger (incorrectly) followed by you doing so (correctly) manually. The former has now been corrected. I can see this catching a lot of people out with the next release!

With regard not being handed off to Approach, this one is really baffling and I'm now clutching at straws. Did you by any chance complete a flight immediate prior to this one without exiting and restarting PF3. If so, that's the problem and again I've now rectified it. If not then I'm out of ideas at the moment.

Wow, thanks Dave, you've been busy!

What you're describing, and what I failed to mention, is exactly what happened - I made a mental note to review the operation of 'push and start' as it wasn't entirely clear to me.
I'm glad that you've found a bug or two - I was starting to doubt my current limited understanding of PF3 operation.

And I think you've hit the nail on the head regarding the missing handoff to Approach; this was my second run and, although I had disconnected PF3 from FSX and reloaded the flight plan, I didn't exit and restart PF3 in between the two flights (the first one wasn't completed).
I'll try to remember to do that in future; perhaps it could be made clearer in the user guide if this is necessary between flights?

I also have a couple of things I noticed for the next time the user guide is updated:
1) The use of hotkey 5 to request a lower altitude appears to be missing for 'Center'
2) The 4th General FAQ (p161, 'PF3 crashed and left windows open') is repeated on the following page.

Thank you again, it's a wonderful piece of software and I'm enjoying using it very much.

Cheers,
Martin

Thanks for getting back too me and I'm happy to know you started a second flight without exciting PF3, because that certainly explains the failed handoff to approach.

As I say, I have fixed that now for the next release. However, I would always recommend exiting PF3 before starting another flight.... I always do... You shouldn't have to if the programmer's done he's job properly, but if there's just one thing lurking in the background that he's missed it could spoil your flight (as you discovered) so it's not worth it for the sake of a few seconds to do a restart.

Thanks for the user guide errors, I'll check them out.

dmarch wrote: *

Wed May 19, 2021 7:05 pm

The duplicate acknowledgements were the VCP giving a roger (incorrectly) followed by you doing so (correctly) manually. The former has now been corrected. I can see this catching a lot of people out with the next release!

Indeed, I interpreted the following description in the User Guide as meaning that the VCP completely dealt with handoffs, not just the actual frequency change:

CP Mode 1 - With this mode selected your VCP will handle any frequency changes received from ATC. He will actually dial in the required frequency for your COM radio.

I clearly misunderstood what this meant and have been quite happy in 'bad' VCP Mode 1 for quite a while!

Cheers,
Martin