OnCourse Software

Good morning campers...here's an issue I couldn't see a close connection to when searching through the forums...maybe you have history with it...maybe you don't.

I just starting flying using A Pilot's Life Chapter 2 and I've been using the built in SimBrief connection for the flight planning. In each of the flights that I've done using SimBrief flight plans the flight is normal until getting to the final destination. I noticed that SimBrief often uses a waypoint of some type on or VERY near the airfield...so when I'll be cruising into that last waypoint at my cruising altitude (C208b...so that may is normally under 10,000 MSL) and then have to do a rapid decent to the pattern. But at least half the time I never get pushed to approach for that decent. I've tried to mitigate the issue by manually deleting the last waypoint using either PF3 or MSFS (and then using that updated flight plan in PF3) to try to push out the final waypoint away from the airfield - those attempts have met with mixed results.

Asking that you take a look at the attached files - logs and also the simbrief flight plan and updated MSFS flight plan to see what's happening. My easier button is just not to use Simbrief and just rely on MSFS flight planning...that works and I'm ok if that's the best answer. But if there is something I can do (a setting or way of doing it) in Simbrief, MSFS or PF3 that would 'fix' the issue - i'm all ears.

Also - not sure if you've updated code but I've heard a LOT more traffic calls.

Cheers and fly safe!
mike

First of all you are right to remove waypoints that are too close to the destination airport. Flight plans you import or get online often have the destination airport's VOR as the last waypoint, e.g. BZN for destination KBZN. You should remove these close waypoints using the removal feature on PF3's flight plan page. Real-world flights very rarely actually cross the VOR and will be vectored long before they reach it. For best results your last WP should be at least 20 miles out if possible.

Now to the strange part about your flight log. Your log shows you never reached your first waypoint and it completely messed up the rest of your flight. Your first two waypoints are user waypoints D0 and DLast which are very close to the departure airport and in the wrong direction (west). I'm not sure where those waypoints came from but I would drop them and repeat the flight with KARPS as the first waypoint and see if there is any difference.

Got it. Those user way points came from the assumed SID added during the Simbrief build. I think I'll skip using Simbrief as it just doesn't work as nicely (too much cleanup)... I agree with the proper way to file vs how PF3 utilizes the flight plan...oh well, limitations of software.