All,
thank you for your comments and insight. It somehow motivates me to continue getting things right.
In the next days/weeks I will try to figure out what goes wrong with the descent so you might get some radio silence from my part.
Before I do I would however make some general remarks;
- It is still my(!) perception that the whole TOD and descent changed for the worst in the last few Beta releases. I have the honest feeling that, while I still had issues before, they got worse. Again, that's my perception, other users might have an other feeling about this.
-I understand that PF3 is not a flight planner or a FMC emulator, nor do I expect it to be. However it should somehow respect the FL which are indicated in the Flight plan. My flight plans are made by Simbrief and based on my aircraft profile (fbw a32nx) So it will give me the route and the FL inclusive taking into account the FL constraints on that route. These FL are indicated in the FP I submit to PF3. So why and which corrections should I make into the FP3 flight plan if all the waypoints have their FL as calculated by Simbrief? It doesn't make sense to me.
- When loading the Flight Plan into PF3 I get remarks. Now, that I get waypoint too close to departure or arrival airport I can understand.
But yesterday in a flight I got remarks "waypoints too close"? Yes, they were like 5 NM apart, but, in the middle of my cruise with a few waypoints before and after with the same FL. So who cares that they're close? Of course I can just ignore that remark but then you have to go into the FP and go and figure out what's the issue when there's none.
- When loading a flight plan it's based on the departure and arrival runway. Of course, as in real live, those can change, understandable.
As far as the departure is concerned there's not really an issue. However, for the arrival runway that's another story. Yes I can adjust the route in my MCDU and fly that, but I can't make any changes in the FP I loaded into FP3. So when I get an opposite runway I will fly a totally different route with waypoints not included in the preloaded FP into PF3, so how does FP3 then make sure that I'm descending at the right FL?
- After doing some thinking about the last flights where I had issues I came to realize that it's not so much the TOD which gives problems but the descent path cleared by FP3. Again, the flight of yesterday, I got clearance (TOD) to descent from FL290 to FL260. But then I'm "hanging" there for some forty odd NM before I get the next FL. Why, I don't know. Doesn't seem useful to me to let me fly 3000' lower for such a long distance. So I feel that PF3 gives me clearance to get to the next FL way too late. And that happens in 90% of the flights I made. Maybe PF3 should give clearance for the FL which are two or three waypoints ahead? I can take care of the descent path to the next cleared FL as long if it's not exceeding my max descent rate for the AC I'm flying.
Also, I have to concur with @Sabretooth78, since a few Beta releases back, I never get the instruction "......when ready" which I actually always got before.
@Dave, in my head it's all simple and straightforward but please, rest assured, I know it's far from simple and I admire your programming skills.
I'm not a programmer and I don't know anything about the PF3 code so all my comments are based on my guesswork, reality might (will) be way different.
Cheers,
Luc