Hopefully, the attached picture is clear enough to see. I set up an ellipitcal orbit to swing past Jupiter. Using the Synch Orbit MFD, I had the times until "Intersect 1" very close. I thought this would bring the ship and Jupiter together in a few million seconds. If I'm reading the MFD correctly, both should be together in about 22 million seconds, but the graphic clearly shows Jupiter has already gone past this point.What am I reading wrong?

I`m no expert and I`ve only gone to the moon but speed up the time and see if they intersect. I know sometimes it looks like the moon won`t be there but it does.Qdog

So I'm guessing there's no answer and that the MFD is never to be trusted. As you move the intersect line to a place behind Jupiter, the time decreases. It should go up, way up.

Hi Damascus,I've finally gotten to the point where I'm now comfortable with the Sync Orbit and Transfer MFDs. So, I think I can answer your question now.You are correct that the screenshot indicates that you'll be at Intersect 1 in about 22 million seconds (orbit 0). However, if you compare Sh-ToR (the time your ship arrives at the reference point) to Tg-ToR (the time the target arrives at the reference point), you'll notice that there's a discrepancy of 0.14M seconds. Now, if you look at DTmin in the left column of the MFD, you'll see that the difference is actually 142.6k seconds.So, although your and Jupiter's orbits intersect at Intersection 1, your ship will be 142,600 seconds early. To intercept Jupiter, you want DTmin to be as small as you can make it. It may take many orbits to achieve this especially if your orbit is significantly smaller than the target's.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)[table border=2 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=1][tr][td][table border=0 cellpadding=8 cellspacing=0][tr][td bgcolor=#6f0000]http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/logo75t.gif[/td][td align="center" bgcolor=#FFFFF6]Bush Flying Unlimited"At home in the wild"Looking for adventure? Come join us! * [link:bfu.avsim.net|Web Site] * [link:www.cafepress.com/bfu,bfu2,bfu3,bfu4|BFU Store] * [link:bfu.avsim.net/join.htm]Join!][/td][/tr][/table][/td][/tr][/table

But I'm still confused as to why Jupiter has already gone past the intersection point, yet the MFD shows it still has 22 million seconds left until it gets there. 14 thousand seconds is less than 4 hours. I didn't want to land on Jupiter or its moons, just see it. I'm starting small.

Well, it depends which way everyone is traveling. Since Jupiter's year is about 12 Earth years and Jupiter's current distance from Intersect 1 is 22M seconds (or about 255 days), I assume that it's going clockwise in your screenshot. So, it seems that Jupiter hasn't passed Intersect 1 yet. You'll have to wait 255 days until it gets there.The problem is that your ship will miss it by 142.6k seconds (or about 40 hours, not 4). You'll arrive early. I don't know if Jupiter will be too far away to see well or not. Nevertheless, try increasing the size of your orbit (so it takes your ship longer to go around) and see if you can reduce DTmin to something like a few minutes.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)

Everything was moving counterclockwise on the MFD. I thought that maybe the MFD measured time from the intersect point in either direction, but that's not it. We're all moving in the same direction, the MFD showed we should reach at the same time and it was way off. The numbers and pictures seem to be telling a different story. When the orbits were set, the dT was about 100 minutes, that grew a bit over the hours. I appreciate the help and am trying to figure out of I'm not explaining this properly or I'm not getting it. Both are certainly possible.