OnCourse Software

Orinks wrote: *

Sun Mar 26, 2017 12:44 am

Hello again,

It appears as though setting my FAF Altitude to 2000 and my FAF distance to 22 miles out makes PF3 tell me to start descending at what I feel is a better time. I do have one issue with that, though.

Someone told me that the best way to calculate the proper altitude for a glideslope capture is to take the airport elevation level, add 2000 to it, and then round it down. In some cases, PF3 tells me to go to 2500 and that's great. Other times, though, it'll tell me to descend to 2000 or even 1000, and more often than not I crash into something, whether it be a building or some other object.

Can I add more things to a flight profile? For example, I have various aircraft settings that I've set and made them presets. Often times this doesn't effect approach, though.

I'm trying to make PF3 do what the internal ATC does in this regard, where I actually don't have to calculate anything and it'll vector me and make me descend perfectly to intersect and capture the glideslope.

But, I still love PF3 and mode 2 for basically autocoms. I have no idea why, but mode 3 conflicts with my Its your Plane software and doesn't insert heading changes or anything. I wonder if that's because Its your Plane turns heading and altitude hold on, at least right now it is.

I'll put my logs folder here to see if maybe I can tweak my flight profile to better fit my needs if anyone has any suggestions on this. I know you don't provide support for Its your Plane, but I'm trying to make it so that PF3 can guide me to help me make the best approaches and landings possible with it. Well, approach really, since that's about as far as PF3 goes.

Thanks all.

faf1.jpg (19.6 KiB) Viewed 2082 times

vololiberista wrote: *

Sun Mar 26, 2017 8:06 am

Orinks wrote: *

Sun Mar 26, 2017 12:44 am

Hello again,

It appears as though setting my FAF Altitude to 2000 and my FAF distance to 22 miles out makes PF3 tell me to start descending at what I feel is a better time. I do have one issue with that, though.

Someone told me that the best way to calculate the proper altitude for a glideslope capture is to take the airport elevation level, add 2000 to it, and then round it down. In some cases, PF3 tells me to go to 2500 and that's great. Other times, though, it'll tell me to descend to 2000 or even 1000, and more often than not I crash into something, whether it be a building or some other object.

Can I add more things to a flight profile? For example, I have various aircraft settings that I've set and made them presets. Often times this doesn't effect approach, though.

I'm trying to make PF3 do what the internal ATC does in this regard, where I actually don't have to calculate anything and it'll vector me and make me descend perfectly to intersect and capture the glideslope.

But, I still love PF3 and mode 2 for basically autocoms. I have no idea why, but mode 3 conflicts with my Its your Plane software and doesn't insert heading changes or anything. I wonder if that's because Its your Plane turns heading and altitude hold on, at least right now it is.

I'll put my logs folder here to see if maybe I can tweak my flight profile to better fit my needs if anyone has any suggestions on this. I know you don't provide support for Its your Plane, but I'm trying to make it so that PF3 can guide me to help me make the best approaches and landings possible with it. Well, approach really, since that's about as far as PF3 goes.

Thanks all.

Your FAF altitude is not part of your a/c profile. It is individually set on the SIDs STAR page of the selected airport. Your FAF distance is set in the options 2 tweaks. The FAF altitude in the tweaks setting is a default and is overriden by the changes you make in the SIDs STAR page. Bear in mind that the altitude setting is QNH. Basically 7 nm works fairly well with any 3deg glideslope.
I did a spreadsheet of which this is sample.faf1.jpg Find the FAF QNH on the chart, deduct the airport elevation, then divide by 3 and 100 e.g.(B11/3)/100. And finally deduct 3. Which will equal where the FAF should actually be. As said the default FAF distance works pretty much all of the time. But to get the best result you need to change the FAF altitude in the SID STAR page and leave the default to 3,000.

Orinks wrote: *

Sun Mar 26, 2017 7:37 pm

vololiberista wrote: *

Sun Mar 26, 2017 8:06 am

Orinks wrote: *

Sun Mar 26, 2017 12:44 am

Hello again,

It appears as though setting my FAF Altitude to 2000 and my FAF distance to 22 miles out makes PF3 tell me to start descending at what I feel is a better time. I do have one issue with that, though.

Someone told me that the best way to calculate the proper altitude for a glideslope capture is to take the airport elevation level, add 2000 to it, and then round it down. In some cases, PF3 tells me to go to 2500 and that's great. Other times, though, it'll tell me to descend to 2000 or even 1000, and more often than not I crash into something, whether it be a building or some other object.

Can I add more things to a flight profile? For example, I have various aircraft settings that I've set and made them presets. Often times this doesn't effect approach, though.

I'm trying to make PF3 do what the internal ATC does in this regard, where I actually don't have to calculate anything and it'll vector me and make me descend perfectly to intersect and capture the glideslope.

But, I still love PF3 and mode 2 for basically autocoms. I have no idea why, but mode 3 conflicts with my Its your Plane software and doesn't insert heading changes or anything. I wonder if that's because Its your Plane turns heading and altitude hold on, at least right now it is.

I'll put my logs folder here to see if maybe I can tweak my flight profile to better fit my needs if anyone has any suggestions on this. I know you don't provide support for Its your Plane, but I'm trying to make it so that PF3 can guide me to help me make the best approaches and landings possible with it. Well, approach really, since that's about as far as PF3 goes.

Thanks all.

Your FAF altitude is not part of your a/c profile. It is individually set on the SIDs STAR page of the selected airport. Your FAF distance is set in the options 2 tweaks. The FAF altitude in the tweaks setting is a default and is overriden by the changes you make in the SIDs STAR page. Bear in mind that the altitude setting is QNH. Basically 7 nm works fairly well with any 3deg glideslope.
I did a spreadsheet of which this is sample.faf1.jpg Find the FAF QNH on the chart, deduct the airport elevation, then divide by 3 and 100 e.g.(B11/3)/100. And finally deduct 3. Which will equal where the FAF should actually be. As said the default FAF distance works pretty much all of the time. But to get the best result you need to change the FAF altitude in the SID STAR page and leave the default to 3,000.

Thanks for this, I hope that the Sid/Star page is accessible for me.

Is the altitude distance in QNH even for US airports?

Dan77 wrote: *

Mon Mar 27, 2017 11:34 am

Also, you may be getting strange altitude instructions if you have PF3 waypoints that are very close to the airport. You will probably get the best results if your last PF3 waypoint is about 25-40 nm out, and if your last waypoint is closer than 15 nm from the destination airport you are probably getting a warning when you load your flight plan (unless you have disabled the warnings). In most cases you should not have the departure or destination airport's VOR in your PF3 flight plan because you will not cross it but will be getting vectors at that distance. Eliminating too-close waypoints may give you better results without necessarily having to adjust your FAF altitudes. And as Vololiberista said, FAF distance of 7-9 nm probably works well in most instances. See below for more info.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2149#p12319

lips.jpg (11.45 KiB) Viewed 2006 times

monti.jpg (56.07 KiB) Viewed 2006 times