OnCourse Software

Once I am airborne and am headed towards the first waypoint on my IFR flight plan, ATC is instructing me to turn in a completely different direction, usually taking well away from the waypoint. This happens fairly often...

If I ignore the instruction and join the route I have programmed, ATC keeps repeating the instruction. If I comply, I am soon told to 'check my position' as I am however many 'miles off my airway'.

In my latest flight, I went off in the direction I was given, leavingf my flight plan route to do so, was told to check my position and then, when I turn back towards the flight path, was told to turn away from it again... Wish I could ask the controller what he thinks he is playing at!! ( Nice feature that, for any updates, that )

The flight plans are all as they should be as far as I can see - certainly no waypoints there to account for these diversions I am told to make. It does seem likely though that there is a flight plan error somewhere which is causing this. Maybe when I convert and compile with PF2000 & PFE something is not going right. The only thing I can think of (because I have redone these flight plans just before flying today) is that the old flight plans are not being over-written by PFE. Is that possible?

I'll go back and check things again, but if anyone can suggest any other reasons for this behaviour, I'd be very interested to hear!

Martin

OK, I think I have got to the bottom of this....

I have no idea how, but a large batch of the PFE flight plans had 'Read Only' attributes, which I guess meant that, although I thought I had revised them and redone the various processes in PF2K and PFE, the old plans weren't overwritten by the new ones. That's my best guess anyway.

All seems to be OK now I have changed the pln file attributes, however...

ATC has now started telling me over and over again to turn right or left to my current flight plan heading. For example, if the current leg of my flight plan is, say 340degs, but the autopilot is flying the a/c at 335 to keep on track due to crosswinds, ATC tells me at least once a minute to turn right heading 340.

Have I inadvertently changed a setting somewhere? How do I fix this? It gets pretty irritating, given the message (then the pilot's confirmation) comes once every minute throughout the flight. I have to switch COM frequencies to shut them up....

Thanks!

M.

You may keep getting that message because you have never actually complied with the first instruction, although I find PFE ATC to not normally worry about 5 degrees. If you comply you should soon hear another heading change followed by "continue own navigation".

I have my PFE set up so that i dont get nagged unless 30 miles off the airway. I never get nagged.

I am typing this as I fly the route on my FS PC: I definitely did comply with all instructions for headings. I am exactly on the flight plan, but at each waypoint, ATC tells me to turn to the heading of the new leg, and then, as I say, repeats it over and over again. I never used to get any instructions from ATC to turn before today, so long as I was following my flight plan legs OK...

No sorry, this is still no good... Apart from the above: I am currently flying VECC to VQPR. I am on the last leg of the flight, BBD to VQPR and ATC has just told me to turn from 54degs (leg heading) to 305degs. When I do that, I am then told to check my position as I am off my route. I have looked at the flight plan and can see no reason for ATC to turn me in the other direction like this (and then complain when I do!). No STARs (and even if there were, ATC should not object if I follow them).

I am tempted to fly without any ATC (could never go back to FS9 default after PFE): this is getting very depressing, stumbling from one problem to another like this.

Hi Martin,

Do you by any chance have 'Easy ATC' in PFE turned on?

Hi Dave,

Yes, I do - it was recommended at some stage to fix with some other niggle I had, though I forget which now. I have had it active for some time, without any of the problems I have written about above. I infer from your question that you are suggesting I turn it off?

I am just about to start some new flights, so if I have the same issues as yesterday, I'll try switching that option off. How would that help with the problems I have outlined though (which don't seem logical to me).

Martin

(I have never found a description of what that option actually does. I have only found (in the manuals) "ProFlight ATC hand-holding option for those new to flying and ATC.." I suppose, asI have been flying since FS2000 came out, that's not aimed at me: but what are the differences exactly?).

With that option 'on' ATC will give you more instructions, in particular as you reach each waypoint.

Are you syncing the flight plan you're using in (I assume) your FMC with the one being used by PFE. I.E. If you're using the original FP in your FMC it may well not be identical to the one PFE is using, due to certain waypoints being dropped by PF2K

I just flew without the hand-holding option checked and all was OK. As I say though, that option had been checked for weeks with no problems arising such as the ones I had yesterday (one of those 'I'm gonna throw the *&^#!! PC away' days!).

Actually I do fly all too often with the original flight plan in the FMC instead of the PFE version. I know I should use the latter, just to be safe (doesn't usually seem to matter), but old habits die hard and, moreover, I usually fly from saved .flt files (I have thousands of them: they set the flight up quickly as I want it) and the flight plan sections ('ATC_Requested Flightplan.0') are all in the default FS9 plan format).

Thanks for the reminder about this though,

Regards,

Martin

Ooops! The PFE versions of the flight plans won't load into FS9 of course (a fact I knew, but had forgotten as I wrote my previous reply). So yes, I think all the flight plans in the PFE folder must be the same as the ones in the My Documents/Flight Simulator Files folder, apart from the different format: I created all the PFE versions using the convert function in PFE..