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markadeane

Trip report / notes re: TCAS ghosting / query re: ALTN page

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Finally, after some initial niggles with panel lighting sorted, I departed Frankfurt bound for Chicago O'Hare. My first 777 long haul!Flying a BIBO3 departure, the aircraft flew through the first turn after takeoff and I had to manually bring it around and rejoin track. It was admittedly a 60-70 degree left turn and after this the aircraft followed the magenta road with precision. Odd, could have been something I did or didn't do correctly.With the high workload of climbout over I left Shannon and the Western Irish coast behind me. At this point I started to toy around with the features of the FMC. The ALTN page in particular was of interest given I was on ETOPS at this point.The interesting thing is that although the ALTN page works a charm when over populated areas with many airports, by the time I was mid-atlantic it was showing only one Alternate airport and it was a good 1 hour further away than KORD!!! I would have thought that Mid Atlantic you'd expect to see Shannon, Reikjyavik (sp?), Sondestrom (sp?) and St. Johns or Gander as potential alternates. Or am I misunderstanding the operation of this feature?I also picked up an imaginary companion on my TCAS. Showing as 35 miles at 3 o'clock position 500 feet above me, it stayed there for the whole flight. An observation I made is that when I changed heading the ghost's position on the ND moved with the compass rose. Thus if I turned left 90 degrees the ghost was then on my 6 o'clock at the same distance.After a largely uneventful flight I decended into KORD on a PMM Star, passing PIVOT I went visual and flew in over Chicago city to join a 15 mile final. The ILS capture is a bit twitchy but functional enough as long as you stabilise the aircraft and capture nice and early (I wouldn't try it within 10 miles put it that way!)All in all this package impresses me, the few wrinkles can be ironed out in due course. For now it's nice to have a functional and workable 777 in the garage!


Mark Adeane - NZWN
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Guest Phoenix_7

tcas ghost is a known issuethe selected ALTN is shown on the ND, the other 3 on the ALTN list are visible with ARPT switch onJohnPSS SUPPORTsupport@phoenix-simulation.co.ukhttp://www.avsim.com/pss/phoenix.jpg

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Hi John,RE: TCAS Ghost, I am aware it is a known issue, I just wasn't sure if the behaviour of the ghosting when changing course was documented anywhere.RE: ALTN page, the issue mid-atlantic was that only one alternate was available on the ALTN page, and it was an hours flying time beyond my destination. Other more suitable and nearby airports weren't showing up on the ALTN page at all, let alone the ND.Once I got overhead St Johns in Canada the page started to work fine again, showing nearby airports within 80 or so miles. But for the portion of the flight where I was well away from land, the ALTN page wouldn't have been of assistance had an engine failure occurred.I am thinking of running a KBOS-EGLL this evening after work, if I see the issue again I will note its behaviour over the course of the flight. And see if I can provide any useful information.Cheers


Mark Adeane - NZWN
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Possibly, not sure what the runway lengths are at Reikyavik or Sondestrom. I thought they were over 1500m but not sure.It still doesn't account for the sole alternate being a random airfield an hour beyond my intended destination.I don't expect an answer at this stage as no-one else seems to have experienced this and I intend to come back to the board tonight with some decent detailed info for you. Perhaps that will allow us to look at the issue.Out of curiosity, HAS anyone actually noticed this besides me?


Mark Adeane - NZWN
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OK So I took Emirates 419 from Auckland through to Sydney last night.Established in the initial climb I had NZWP and NZHN as alternates, shortly after that I had NZKI (the runway there is too short at 1300m so shouldn't have shown up anyway?)20 minutes later the only one left was NZKI and it stayed that way until the TOD point at MARLN, when Richmond Airbase became an option, some 80 miles from YSSY. Mid-tasman there wasn't any data in the ALTN page that would have been of use if I had lost an engine.Obviously there are more important issues that need to be fixed first but I'd like to think that the ALTN functionality could be examined at some point. The planning aspect of an ETOPS flight is made a lot easier if this page offers reliable diversion info.Cheers guys


Mark Adeane - NZWN
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