OnCourse Software

Great minds think alike, I'm already looking at something similar

Martin

I’m still having difficulty getting a STAR approach to work. It could just be me not fully understanding the limitations.

Anyway, this is my last flight (EDDL to EDDH):

FP:
STARS:
As you can see, at the time, I forgot to check the STARs Active checkbox (but we’ll come to that later).

All went well with Departure, Climb and Cruise. At TOD, I started to request descent as I wanted to keep my descent profile roughly in agreement with the FMC (I fly the PDMG 737-800).

Shortly after SORUN, I was instructed to contact Approach. At this point, I remembered I had not checked the STARs Active checkbox, so I didn’t expect to get an automated Cleared to Finals. No worries, I thought, I’ll manually request Cleared to Finals and fly the STAR Approach given by ATC.

I immediately contacted Approach and requested Cleared to Finals. I got no response from Approach.

I then requested Vectors – no response.

I then requested Cleared to finals again (no response) so proceeded to fly the RIBS1P Approach to get established on the localiser.

When established on the localiser, I waited to hear if my VCP would contact Tower (I use VCP Mode 2) – nothing happened. I contacted Tower manually and was instructed to continue the approach.

It must have been a busy airport as I got two go-arounds before finally being cleared to land.

My understanding from previous posts on this topic is that, even though the STARs Active checkbox was not ticked, I should have been able to manually request a Cleared to Finals. Is this not the case? Also, why did Approach go completely silent and not respond to any of my requests? Have I found a bug?

Thanks for any assistance/explanation.

Cheers
Bill

I forgot the Logs.

A320Flyer wrote: *

Wed Apr 03, 2024 12:19 pm

I immediately contacted Approach and requested Cleared to Finals. I got no response from Approach.

I took a fast look at your log and once again, the problem seems to be for some reason your COM frequency is changing and you were no longer in contact with Approach. You were handed to Approach on 123.97 and were in contact with them, and were instructed to descend. Your COM frequency then changed to 125.1 and you had no further contact. This was approximately the time you hit Hotkey 1. You say you have Pilot Assist disabled for COMs in MSFS, but something is changing your COM frequency and I'm not sure if your pressing the hotkey is related. Maybe there is a key conflict. I think we'll need to wait for Dave to weigh in here.

Thanks Dan.

@bill please check the keys you have assigned in PF3 are not used in MSFS. In earlier versions of FS we could prevent keys being passed to the sim but this is not possible now due to FSUIPC being a standalone program rather than an in-process DLL

Could this be the culprit?

Definitely! Unfortunately, as Dave said, *all* keystrokes are picked up by MSFS as well as being passed through to FSUIPC and then on to PF3.

I had a similar issue recently that I have been trying to raise as a bug with Asobo - 'Y' is assigned as 'Slew' in MSFS, but for me C/S/Y was also activating slew mode. It makes using the C/S/N & C/S/Y selection mechanism interesting - currently the workaround is to remove the mapping for 'Y'.

On another note, please do try this flight again with STAR enabled and a long descent profile (Options#2, Advanced Options, botton left) - I think you will find it works quite well.

Martin

Ok, I disabled the “1” key in MSFS and re-flew the exact same flight (again, not checking the STARs Active checkbox) as I wanted to confirm this as a potential issue.

Again, all went well with Departure, Climb and Cruise. At TOD, I started to request descent as before.

Shortly after SORUN, I was instructed to contact Approach.

I immediately contacted Approach and requested Cleared to Finals. Again, I got no response from Approach.

I fired up PF3WebDisplay to check if the radio had been re-tuned and this confirmed I was still tuned to Approach.

I then requested Cleared to finals again (again, no response) but the following message briefly appeared in the message area of PF3WebDisplay:


I requested Vectors but was told I was on the Airway. So I waited until RIPSO (start of STAR) to see what happened.

At RIPSO, Approach instructed me to continue on heading and expect RW15 Approach. At this point, I manually requested Cleared to Finals and was rewarded with confirmation that I was Cleared via the RIBSxx STAR to RW15. The problem at this point was that it was now extremely difficult to get the AC back onto the STAR without some extreme manoeuvring and Declaring a Missed Approach.

So, it seems manually requesting Cleared to Finals might only work either after the start of STAR or after receiving Vectors. I had expected it to work at any point in the flight if tuned to Control, Radar or Approach. Again, have I found a bug?

@Dan77: I will try the approach as you describe and I’m sure your suggestion will be a good one!

Thanks again for any assistance/explanation.

Forgot the logs again

From your log it seems that you again had STAR disabled, so Approach would have carried on giving you vectors for the ILS, and I can see that PF3 was set to do this. You chose to override this by requesting cleared to finals, so at that point it became your responsibility to line up for the landing.

And, as a result, the log doesn't show that you were cleared for a STAR approach:
Speedbird 353 cleared to final for runway 15 at pilot's discretion contact Tower on 121.27 when established.

I can't comment on your query about the failed 'Request to Final', but it's only available when talking to Center or Approach, not Radar.

Martin