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Hello everyone,
on my last flight, EFOU - KIAD, I had a few hiccups with PF3, all of them having to do with oceanic operations. On this flight, I manually defined the waypoint NORVA as the entry point into oceanic airspace, and PRAWN as the exit.
1. During oceanic ops, reports were made at or mentioning the waypoint "XXX", which isn't a real waypoint, but something PF3 adds, as far as I recall.
2. I'm not sure about this, as I wasn't sitting in front of the computer for the whole flight, but I think some position reports were made twice, or at least with very little time in between.
3. While in oceanic airspace, I couldn't ask for flight level changes, or the weather (ATIS) for KIAD. In my understanding, real pilots are able to do both.
4. At the exit point PRAWN, PF3 fell into a loop. If I remember correctly, my VC, who was handling ATC since receiving taxi instructions, got the instruction to contact Gander Center on 132.2. He confirmed, then - on the right frequency 132.2 - went ahead and contacted Gander Oceanic, who confirmed with SelCal and all, then immediately told us to contact Gander Center again, which is where the loop began. After 5 - 10 times of going back and forth, I took over ATC and tried a few things. What seems to have broken the loop is me issuing a position report on 132.2 (hotkey 9), and then making contact (0). After that, ATC seemed to be normal again, and my FO Travis resumed his ATC duties.
5. The flight was planned by SimBrief for FL320 initially. I changed the altitude of certain STAR waypoints in PF3, as well as the waypoints before and after, to reflect the constraints of the according charts (HYPER7), and to ensure a stable descent.
During the flight, when reaching 320, the FMC recommended 360, so I asked for and received that flight level (that was before the entry point NORVA). After a few hours, I wanted to step climb to 380 or 400, but PF3 didn't let me - see point 3 above. About around leaving oceanic airspace, my VC then started to amend his ATC calls with "out of FL360 for FL320".
Nearing Dulles there were no descent orders from ATC. I also couldn't manually ask for them (Ctrl+Shft+L+8), there was no reaction from ATC. So I started to descend (albeit way too late and high for the constraints), which triggered ATC, who asked me to remain at 360. I received no further instructions like vectors or speeds, and I also couldn't ask for a runway, so we manually reported to Dulles Tower as soon as we were established on 01R, and from there on PF3 was almost back to normal.
I have attached the logs. Again, I would like to request a second, non-encrypted set of logs, so I can verify or debunk the impressions I got during the flight, so as to bother you only with the real issues.
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