Major Fuel Problem!

[Ibanezmatt13 0]

Hi,On Saturday 31st March, I will hopefully be taking part in Vatsim's Cross the Pond Westbound event. I will be flying my PMDG 747-400 from EPKK (Krakow, PL) to CYYZ (Toronto, CA). However, I face a serious issue which will certainly prevent me from participating in the event.My problem is sourced when trying to load fuel into the aircraft. For this flight I need around 240,000lbs. Despite me entering this figure in the flight simulator's fuel planner, when I load up the aircraft the aircraft is only holding 26,000lbs. So, I then try the PMDG addon fuel planning utility. This won't even let me load more than 300,000lbs anyway so I'm a little confused.It's either a technical difficulty or something stupid that I must be doing wrong. Please get back to me in time for the event.CheersMatthew

[PHXMD-11 86]

Do not use FSX's fuel planner. It won't work with the 747. Use the PMDG 747 load manager.You need 240,000 pounds of fuel right? Then use the load manager to select 240,000 pounds of fuel, the passengers, and cargo. After that, click either SEND TO FSX or SAVE.

[Ibanezmatt13 0]

Thank you for your reply Bank_Angle :)I'll try it properly now :)CheersMatthew

[Ibanezmatt13 0]

Do not use FSX's fuel planner. It won't work with the 747. Use the PMDG 747 load manager.You need 240,000 pounds of fuel right? Then use the load manager to select 240,000 pounds of fuel, the passengers, and cargo. After that, click either SEND TO FSX or SAVE.

Hi,I tried the fuel planning utility and it looks like it has worked. Thank you so much! However, one snag. Why does it come up with insufficent fuel when I am entering the route. Even when I just entered direct to CYYZ it said insufficent fuel?Any suggestions?CheersMatthew

[PHXMD-11 86]

Hi,I tried the fuel planning utility and it looks like it has worked. Thank you so much! However, one snag. Why does it come up with insufficent fuel when I am entering the route. Even when I just entered direct to CYYZ it said insufficent fuel?Any suggestions?CheersMatthew

What this means is that you will either land with fuel that is less than the reserve amount (I personally use 5% for international flights and 3% domestically) or you will run out of fuel before you get to Toronto.Enter the route, winds, and fill out the INIT REF page to ensure accurate fuel predictions.There are a few payware programs, such as FSBuild, that can accurately predict the fuel you need to for the trip. There are also a few free sources for fuel planning that you can use such as the documents that came with the 747 and a couple of fuel planners available on AVSIM or the web somewhere.

[yos233 1]

So check out what you have entered into the reserves field. I usually go with 10 (stands for 10,000). If it's much higher than that you may want to lower it. If that doesn't help simply add more fuel.

[ccb777 3]

Not knowing your route...240,000 lbs of fuel will get you from EPKK to CYYZ, but not with a heavy payload.A quick calculation I did for 4,000 nm taking 8.5 hours and a payload of 100,000 lbs would require ~270,000 lbs of fuel. This includes 44,000 lbs Planed Landing Fuel and 2,000 lbs for Taxi.What is your payload?

[scandinavian13 5,192]

If you're going to be doing the Cross the Pond event, there's a lot of planning that has to go into it. There's an entire chapter in the manuals that came with the 744 that explain all that goes into it. It's not complicated, but it's a must read, especially if you're going to be in an online event. Your planning affects you, the pilots around you, and the controllers of the event.

[mareng69 0]

Another good utility for passengers, weights, and fuel loads is Topcat. The freeware version gives you this for the 744 only. If you want to use the takeoff and landing pages it requires purchasing a license, but it's extremely worth it. See you tomorrow in Krakow ^_^Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk