OnCourse Software

i attempted a flight using PFE and set the SID and Star options to the default 'Delta papa' and 'sierra tango' however when in flight the atc dosent tell me to descend until i am quite close to the airport by which time i cant descend in time. do i need to edit the waypoint altitudes or something? any help would be greatly appreciated

thanks

Best practice is to edit at least one of the flightplan altitudes, so you will be given a descent profile that you can manage.

How have you set up the STAR option in PFE? There are two methods which work quite differently.

Peter

I just set it to enabled and put it on the default Sierra tango setting as im not that acustomed to using sids and stars yet

capsam500 wrote:

I just set it to enabled and put it on the default Sierra tango setting as im not that acustomed to using sids and stars yet

In that configuration what will happen is:

You will get descent instructions from cruise altitude. When closer to the airport you will probably get heading vectors also. When you have descended to the minimum FAF altitude (you can edit this in the SIDS STARS page) you will be cleared to final at your discretion.

If instead you use the STAR facility in the flightplan page, you can select the start of a STAR as a waypoint. From that point on you will be told to navigate yourself, so you can follow a STAR (which does not need to be in the flight plan itself, but can be) until you reach the last waypoint in the plan at which point you will be vectored to finals.

If you want to follow a STAR all the way to the FAF under your own navigation, the best way is to use method 1 (as you did), but select a "minimum FAF" altitude on the SIDS/STARS page that corresponds to where you want to start the STAR. So if your STAR starts 60nm from the airport at waypoint ABCDE at 15000 feet put 15000 as the FAF and make sure the flightplan has 15000 feet as the altitude for the waypoint ABCDE.

If you want to fly a star but still get vectored from the end of the star to the FAF then dont tick the box on the SIDS/STARS page , but use the STARS option in the flightplan page to select the start of star. In that case you want the altitude for the FAF to be the normal altitude... 2000-3000 feet for example.

Peter

Ok ill try that thanks for your help