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Polar Tracks and Routing

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Hi Captains, I recall a few weeks back someone wanted to do a polar routing and someone gave him the tracks for the flight? Where can one get access to polar routings up on the internet? Thanks, captains!Mike

Watch out. There's an invisible force field around the North Pole. I tried diving at it at mach 1.2. Just couldn't punch thru. (AKA, MSFS's world is a tube.)

Try this site http://flightaware.com/analysis/route.rvt just plug in the Depart and arrival airports and they'll give you R/W routes. Good luck. BTW, I just checked CYYZ / VHH and it took me over the Artic.Dave

>Watch out. There's an invisible force field around the North>Pole. I tried diving at it at mach 1.2. Just couldn't punch>thru. (AKA, MSFS's world is a tube.)Hi, what do you mean? You tried to ram the surface of the north pole? Is it still possible to use polar routes?

It's possible depending on how far North the route takes you. The FS world comes to an abrupt end at about 85N. Here's a real world route: KORD PETTY GRB 5500N 08700W 6000N 08800W 6500N 09000W 7000N 09400W 7500N 10000W 8000N 11200W 8400N 14100W RAMEL G491 BABED G491 CZ G491 SULOK G218 TMR B458 WXI A461 LIG R473 WYN W18 NLG W23 ZUH R473 SIERA VHHHI've experienced LNAV difficulties above 84N.Another way to go is to use the PACOTS to avoid going so far North. But watch your fuel!Jim Harnes

>I've experienced LNAV difficulties above 84N.I once tried to fly EPWA -> PHNL and got as far north as around 87 degrees. I didn't have any problems with LNAV, however ATC (default, haven't tried with RC) got confused and claimed I had to turn around 180 degrees to fly the correct heading. A little later I simply lost contact to the ATC (no frequencies to tune to), but I was quite alone up there and since ATC couldn't figure out where I was going anyway, it didn't really matter.Also the magnetic heading of course were useless at that latitude, but the plane automatically switched to true headings./ JesperP.s. Actually quite nice flying up there. You look at the map and see you are east of Greenland - half an hour later you look again and you are halfway past Canada (maybe slightly exaggerated). With these rectangualar maps it looks like you are moving with the speed of light :-)

Yep. Had Santa and the Elves going every which way! But, like they say, MSFS doesn't actually model in the poles. For my pole run, I selected PANC as my departure point, then some ILS equipped airport in Norway that would take me directly over the pole. But FSBuild just wouldn't give me a straight run over the pole. FSBuild probably knew MSFS wouldn't let me do it, but I just thought it was being obstinate. So I loaded the FSBuild flight plan into my FMC and modified it by connecting a couple of waypoints to get a flight route directly over the actual pole. Off I went. This was to be a test flight. I wanted to see how the AFS handled nav functions as I over flew the pole. First, I inhibited GPS so the system would fail over to

It would be nice to see MS fix this problem in a future version. Does anyone know if other sims, X-plane, Fly!2 do the same thing? Why do you think they modeled it this way? Is it some kind of mathmatical problem?Andrew

Has to do with simulating a round world in a flat enviroment. One of the sim magazines had an article on it a while back.Sorry but can't go into details: all my geometry expired some time ago :)Jim Harnes

Hi guys, Thanks for the advice: AVOID 85N. I still don't understand how you can not get problems going to 87N, but I'll investigate that sometime.Jim, I was curious about the routing:KORD PETTY GRB 5500N 08700W 6000N 08800W 6500N 09000W 7000N 09400W 7500N 10000W 8000N 11200W 8400N 14100W RAMEL G491 BABED G491 CZ G491 SULOK G218 TMR B458 WXI A461 LIG R473 WYN W18 NLG W23 ZUH R473 SIERA VHHHI'm very familiar with PACOTS and NAT's, but I can't say I'm familiar with the waypoint format. What are the coordinates for say, 5500N or 08700W?By the way, I also noticed on my transpacific flights on PMDG that when I input say N44W180, I usually get something lke N44W179 or N43W179 - Is this a PMDG bug? And if so, is it a pure indication bug or does it really fly to W179?thanks guys,mikeRPLL

Btw, What Lat do we switch to TRUE? On my manuals, it pretty much depends on the A/C in the fleet (I use real PAL manuals). but what about PMDG? Is it N73/S73?mike :)

Here are the polar nav sequences that were described for the 744 and the MD11 by real world AOMs and how they compared to a PMDG flight. 744 : For North Pole nav, system automatically switches to true heading at 82 deg . . . or at 70 deg if approaching over earth

Mike,Any of the PMDG FMC formats will do, such as using 5587N for the first flt pln lat/lon of 5500N 08700WJim Harnes

  • 2 weeks later...

oh, thanks everyone! I really appreciate the clarification. cheers,MikeRPLL

Not related to simming a round world in a flat environment, they did it to save space, and use it for other things. Earlier versions had both poles included, Ive made two round the world flights over both poles, believe as recently as 2000 had them, maybe 2002 but not sure. Remembering the first flight I made over the North Pole, was just using a compass. After flying for some time, suddenly realized that I'd been flying in circles, trying to keep flying North.... as the compass kept turning to face North....

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