OnCourse Software

Hi - not sure what's been happening over the past few flights but it's happened enough that I figured I'd better gather the logs and let the smarter people dive in. I do daily passenger flights and use PF3 every day...but over the past week I've been getting diminishing results out of the ATC.

I'll start by describing the other applications I have running...I doubt there are interference issues because they all worked well together for a long time...but you never know.

- MSFS with all the latest updates (steam version)
- PMDG 738 (updated)
- Navigraph data center for the latest flight data
- Navigraph SimLink
- A Pilot's Life Ch 2 (virtual airline)
- PAC-X (passenger & crew simulation)
- FSLTL (AI traffic)
- AIGround (ground AI management)
- AIFlow (airborne AI management)
- PF3
- ISLC (Intelligent Standby List Cleaner - if you don't know about it...look it up...great for memory management)

About a week ago I updated the PF3 database following all the directions...it seemed to do everything correctly.

Now for what I'm seeing.
I get my route from APL2 and it sends the data to Simbrief. I take that flight plan and load it into PF3 and manually edit the SID/STAR as needed. I spent time with the STAR to ensure I get a decent that lines up with the actual STAR procedure ... and if the STAR branches to allow different approaches I'll delete the branches (after the final common waypoint) so PF3 will just give me a clearance and I can follow the flow to the appropriate approach and runway. This has worked absolutely fine until recently and then the past 3 days I've started to get issues. AI traffic always asking ATC to "Say again"...and I mean doing it so much it is comical. I don't think it did it on the flight this AM but it the AI traffic was very light at 5am. For my part I get clearance, pushback and start, taxi-out - that's all been fine. I also haven't had SIDs on my past two flights and the ATC gave me runway heading and a step climb - no biggie...but today's step climb was in 2000' increments up to 30,000! I used to get a step climb and then a BiG jump in altitude...not tiny incremental steps...makes it painful in a 737. Now today once I got to altitude (maybe even a bit before that actually) ATC stopped doing anything...I couldn't get it to give me arrival ATIS (via ACARS) ... it didn't acknowledge when I hit "0" to "check in" during flight. No AI interaction. I did a Ctrl-Shift-W hot key and it did nothing for a few minutes and then out of the blue it asked if i wanted to warp to the next waypoint and I worked through those (not warping of course...just letting the dialog time out in the end). Then I got one ACARS ATIS for arrival that must have been cued up in memory. What I never got was a decent as I'd told it in preflight to do...so I started the decent late and it yelled at me to remain at FL300. I ignored ATC and once I hit the last STAR waypoint it switched me to approach and everything worked as expected for a clearance to land. Never heard from tower after landing...never got ground. Anyway - you can see it in the logs. Not sure if PF3 was stuck in some internal loop or what. I will say that I have not rebooted my computer in the past week...so that's my next step (I probably should have done that by now) - but if you see anything. Let me know.

And BTW - I LOVE the frequencies coming from the actual MSFS files now...it works great!

Wow! Very strange indeed. I wish I had a good answer for you but I don't

The strange climb instructions at 2k intervals is something we've seen before, but have never got to the bottom of it. And that also ties in with AI traffic continually asking 'say again'. It all to do with the random number generator and for some unknown reason this appears to get 'stuck' (for want of a better technical description). It will always clear itself, probably after a reboot.

No as for Hotkeys not being detected, all I can say is that after requesting takeoff clearance the next hotkey detected was not until you reached FL 300. So, if you're telling me you were using hotkeys before that they most certainly were not detected. Again, I have no answer.

I'll have to check back through the forum and see if there's anything similar for those other reports of similar issues with the random number generator... maybe it only happens with one sim... I don't know, but I will investigate.

In the meantime please do report back and let us know if (a) all is well or (b) the problem persists

Thanks Dave - did a system reboot and I'll report back after a flight tomorrow AM.

Not sure if this helps, but I had similar weird issues a few months ago. After an update of Win10 everything started working correctly. might be worth a look.


http://www.ocs-support.co.uk/forums/vie ... php?t=4023

Tony J

Fighter Guy wrote: *

Mon Dec 12, 2022 6:15 pm

Not sure if this helps, but I had similar weird issues a few months ago. After an update of Win10 everything started working correctly. might be worth a look.


http://www.ocs-support.co.uk/forums/vie ... php?t=4023

Tony J

Thanks Tony

Reboot solved the immediate problems...everything worked fine flying into Reno this morning...even got an F-18 escort on final...thanks whoever that was. LOL.

Seems that Windows likes to leave junk around that likely messes with the libraries (C/C++/C#) over time and a mental reboot is needed to keep Jezebel (yes, that's my computer's name thanks to my wife) happy.

Also concur that "pending' Windows updates can cause similar issues - once again I think that's related to linked library updates.

Cheers all.

Thanks for the update