Flight Plan question

  • Hi folks:

    Is it possible to edit the last fix before the landing runway when creating a flight plan in AFS2?. It seems that the fixes are automatically created by AFS2 and sometimes they are not located conveniently, due to the presence of natural obstacles, like mountains, for instance. Could it be possible to delete or relocate them at your will?.

    Cheers, Ed

  • Hi Ed,

    we had this exact question here in the forums at least 4x now I think. Answer is: not possible at the moment, better algorithm to fix this won't be added, real world arrivals will probably fix this anyway.

    Hi Jan, thanks, sorry for asking again, but didn't know. You're right, with real world arrivals added this will not need to be fixed.

    Cheers, Ed

  • Answer is: not possible at the moment, better algorithm to fix this won't be added, real world arrivals will probably fix this anyway.

    It is probably too early to ask but will real world arrivals also fix this for GA...? When you say 'real world arrivals' I am thinking SIDs and STARs, VOR and NDB approaches, etc. but with GA you never fly those. Also, with GA you often fly in and out of airports that don't even have arrivals but for which you still might want to have a flightplan that will not lead you into mountains near your destination. ;)

    Whenever a GA wants to land on an airport that has an actual arrival I do suppose IPACS will let the GA use the FAF of any official arrival without forcing the GA to fly the entire arrival (which often are longer than my regular GA flights ;) ) so in that regard real world arrivals may indeed fix the problem there, but I do hope IPACS comes up with a nice solution too for airports that don't have arrivals! I hope we won't be stuck with automated FAFs within mountains for those airports! ;)

  • Whenever a GA wants to land on an airport that has an actual arrival I do suppose IPACS will let the GA use the FAF of any official arrival without forcing the GA to fly the entire arrival (which often are longer than my regular GA flights ;) )

    That's exactly the point. All we need is the ability to make route point directly from and to the airport, just like in real life.

    The only workaround I found so far in AFS2 is to set different departure and arrival AD's, and set flagged waypoints near my real departure and arrival AD's. Unfortunately, AD's cannot be set as waypoints, so that you need to manually place your waypoint near the AD.

    For instance, if you want to fly from B to C, you have to set a flight from A to D and define waypoints near B and C (with all the desired waypoints en route). Then place your aircraft on the tarmac at B and start your flight.

    Cheers

    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.

  • GA aircraft are differnt, those routes will probably end a traffic pattern, arrive overtop and enter the pattern or direct or 45 deg entry to downwind section... Much harder to fly into mountains that way. One could also use the last leg of an approach for the GA visual approach...

    Airliners that need more space are the bigger problem here.

    Plus your real world Cessna GPS will probably direct you into a mountain as well if you just go from A to B direct

  • Plus your Cessna GPS will probably direct you into a mountain as well if you just go from A to B direct

    Hi Jeff,

    Nope, because you set your waypoints accordingly when preparing your route.

    When approaching an AD where you intend to land, you take out your visual approach chart (VAC) if any and fly accordingly, i.e. integrate and fly the published patterns if defined, or integrate and fly a standard 1000' pattern if nothing is defined.

    If there's ATC they'll tell you how to integrate and which pattern to fly until touchdown. If uncontrolled, it's up to the captain to decide, usually (but not systematically) you fly overhead, 500 ft above the circuit, and use the windsock, ground markings, local traffic and any other useful information available to choose the runway and decide where and how to integrate which pattern.

    The problem with the flight planner is, it automatically define routes to send you 20nm away of your desired course and you cannot edit/remove/ignore those waypoints.

    If AD could be simply added as waypoints (which is frequently the case IRL) it would ease up flight planning a lot.

    Cheers

    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.

  • I'm assuming that you are referring this to Jan?

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • That's exactly the point. All we need is the ability to make route point directly from and to the airport, just like in real life.

    The only workaround I found so far in AFS2 is to set different departure and arrival AD's, and set flagged waypoints near my real departure and arrival AD's. Unfortunately, AD's cannot be set as waypoints, so that you need to manually place your waypoint near the AD.

    For instance, if you want to fly from B to C, you have to set a flight from A to D and define waypoints near B and C (with all the desired waypoints en route). Then place your aircraft on the tarmac at B and start your flight.

    Cheers

    Antoine

    What do you call as "AD", please?.

    Cheers, Ed

  • I'm assuming that you are referring this to Jan?

    Oooops, my bad...

    What do you call as "AD", please?.

    Cheers, Ed

    AD stands for aerodrome, thus generic term for any landing place, from the small patch of grass to the biggest airport...

    Cheers

    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.

  • That's exactly the point. All we need is the ability to make route point directly from and to the airport, just like in real life.

    The only workaround I found so far in AFS2 is to set different departure and arrival AD's, and set flagged waypoints near my real departure and arrival AD's. Unfortunately, AD's cannot be set as waypoints, so that you need to manually place your waypoint near the AD.

    For instance, if you want to fly from B to C, you have to set a flight from A to D and define waypoints near B and C (with all the desired waypoints en route). Then place your aircraft on the tarmac at B and start your flight.

    Cheers

    Antoine

    My "workaround" has been so far ignoring in the flightplan the fixes automatically added by AFS2 to the landing runways, manually setting up different ones according to real charts, thus following only those ones. That's far from perfect but so far it's working for me.

    Cheers, Ed

  • I don't quite get what you want to tell me. Yes the current route isn't optimal and takes you way out for an airliner approach which is not ideal. But the future flight planner might just not do that and that will come with time, so just be patient. The problem is quite clear to us, it is not going to stay like this. If we can we will try to use published databases for the visual approaches and local traffic patterns, so that the correct approach is automatically selected even for VFR flights (probably)...

    Right now, just don't follow the flight plan into the terrain. Use pilot judgement as in the real world, where the automatic routes and direct to-s aren't always possible.

  • I don't quite get what you want to tell me. Yes the current route isn't optimal and takes you way out for an airliner approach which is not ideal. But the future flight planner might just not do that and that will come with time, so just be patient.

    That's exactly the question that was asked by J van E.

    What I meant is, it would be a faster and easier fix for GA to simply enable selecting AD as waypoints rather than trying to integrate real world visual approaches.

    Quote

    Right now, just don't follow the flight plan into the terrain. Use pilot judgement as in the real world, where the automatic routes and direct to-s aren't always possible.

    Well, the flight planner is especially useful when unfamiliar with a region and I have no maps at hand => define a very basic flight plan to keep the global desired course in mind and fly according to the ground, clouds, etc.

    Cheers

    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.