Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
roygbiv

Start down now please I need you.. You've missed your crossing.

Recommended Posts

So far I've done around 60 flights with RC4 and at first I was rather pleased but the same things keep cropping up and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas.

 

  • First one is when you're approaching an airfield you'll get RC4 telling you to start decent.  First It'll say descend at your own discretion and then ask to to descend to another altitude within say 30nm.  Immediately after asking that it'll say I missed my crossing.  I've barely gone 5nm never mind 30.
  • If what RC4 is repeating is particularly long and you don't acknowledge right away, it'll repeat and then repeat again but right away and you get stuck in a loop where you can't press anything to answer because RC4 will just continue repeating.
  • Not sure if this is RC4 or FSX but on occasion I've had to take evasive action because RC4 wants to fly me into the side of a mountain on approach.

Any tips greatly appreciated!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

These issues have been present for years now.

Ditch it and move on to ProATC. I'm going to.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@@roygbiv Hello!

 

1) Haven't had this problem so unfortunately I can't help you on this one.

 

2) I have gotten into a loop like that, but have managed to get out of it by acknowledging all contacts.

 

3) This is quite common. RC4 isn't aware of the terrain. The was some sort of "safe altitude" field in the properties. You could check that this value is correct before you fly.

 

Other than that, you have to be aware of the terrain and "ignore" RC4 if you do not feel safe.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So far I've done around 60 flights with RC4 and at first I was rather pleased but the same things keep cropping up and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas.

 

  • First one is when you're approaching an airfield you'll get RC4 telling you to start decent.  First It'll say descend at your own discretion and then ask to to descend to another altitude within say 30nm.  Immediately after asking that it'll say I missed my crossing.  I've barely gone 5nm never mind 30.
  • If what RC4 is repeating is particularly long and you don't acknowledge right away, it'll repeat and then repeat again but right away and you get stuck in a loop where you can't press anything to answer because RC4 will just continue repeating.
  • Not sure if this is RC4 or FSX but on occasion I've had to take evasive action because RC4 wants to fly me into the side of a mountain on approach.

Any tips greatly appreciated!

 

Rob,

 

On your first point it helps enormously if you use a FMC and can use the FIX button to draw a circle on your nav display 40 miles from the arrival airport. That will help you get down to the required altitude in time. If you don't have a FMC descend around 1800fpm at 250-280kts and you should make the restriction.

 

On your second point you can give yourself more response time by not acking he instruction immediately. But once you do RC expects you to act fairly quickly.

 

No ATC program (not even the rival one mentioned) can know precisely where all high ground is relative to the arrival airport. In such cases you should always select NOTAMS and RC will request you descend if able. You need to use your own discretion.


Ray (Cheshire, England).
System: P3D v5.3HF2, Intel i9-13900K, MSI 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24G, Crucial T700 4Tb M.2 SSD, Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000Mhz RAM, Win 11 Pro 64-bit, BenQ PD3200U 32” UHD monitor, Fulcrum One yoke.
Cheadle Hulme Weather

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

1) put a vor in your flight plan at or near your destination airport

 

2) don't run at 2x, or 4x. also, if the copilot has the comms, the acknowledgement is going to be right away, be ready to execute the instructions. if you have the comms, acknowledge as soon as you are ready to execute. with this many flights, you should know the instructions coming your way, before their given. be ready. atc is supposed to be predictable and mundane. who wants excitement on every flight. not the pilots, I can assure you.

 

3) when you do your flight plans, it is up to you to know where the terrain is. if there is terrain around the destination airport, then click the arrival notams, or if there is terrain around the departure airport, click the departure notams.

 

and for my friend feebee - sorry if you had these issues for years. unfortunate you didn't seek assistance or ask me about them earlier. I could have saved you from having to switch software....

 

 

 

jd

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

and for my friend feebee - sorry if you had these issues for years. unfortunate you didn't seek assistance or ask me about them earlier. I could have saved you from having to switch software....

 

Sorry John. I didn't mean for my reply to as terse as it was nor did I realise this was in the RC forum. I assumed it was the FSX forum as I clicked on the link from the main page.

 

I had fun with RC 4 and am looking to RC 5 if you decide to proceed with it. In the meantime I am using other ATC software. (Can't edit my original post)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

These issues have been present for years now.

Ditch it and move on to ProATC. I'm going to.

 

Graham, I hope you don't think that moving to ProATCX will eradicate the kind of issues feebee has been having with RC? While ProATCXit has many benefits, there are also a lot of issues and so if you buy it, you must be prepared to accept these shortfalls, at least until they have been corrected. :wink:


Howard
MSI Mag B650 Tomahawk MB, Ryzen7-7800X3D CPU@5ghz, Arctic AIO II 360 cooler, Nvidia RTX3090 GPU, 32gb DDR5@6000Mhz, SSD/2Tb+SSD/500Gb+OS, Corsair 1000W PSU, Philips BDM4350UC 43" 4K IPS, MFG Crosswinds, TQ6 Throttle, Fulcrum One Yoke
My FlightSim YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@skyhigh776

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

3) when you do your flight plans, it is up to you to know where the terrain is. if there is terrain around the destination airport, then click the arrival notams, or if there is terrain around the departure airport, click the departure notams.

Hmmm...didn't know that about RC.

 

I've sat and thought about the terrain thing for a long time since I know it's a common problem with ATC software. (FSX has tried to vector me into terrain as well.) Not sure what resources are available to help an ATC program sort that out. But thought I'd throw this out there in regards to what I (mostly) remember from my TERPs days many years ago:

 

In the real world, approach controllers have MVA (minimum vectoring altitude) charts that tell them how low an airplane can go in an area and I don't think much of that is published. On the other hand, for non-radar (which they all have to be prepared for because radar does go out) I'd expect them to, at a minimum, navigate them via MEA (minimum enroute altitudes) or STARs to IAFs. The MVAs give the controllers the ability to take the airplane below the MEA to vector it to an approach (no closer than two mles outside the FAF). The trick, I guess, is to take someone down to the lowest safe altitude that software can figure out which would be the lowest MEA, MSA, MOCA in a straight line from where they are to the FAF. Again, not so easy to figure out without some trigonometry. The initial legs of the approaches might help some since they can go below the MEA and, like airways, are four miles wide (plus two miles of buffer with reduced vertical separation). Intermediate legs are less useful. They shrink to join to the final legs linearly but the width of the final legs are dependent on the type of approach (ILS's are narrow, VOR approaches are wide...VOR are narrowest at the VOR and go wider as the distance from the VOR increases. No approach is wider than 4 miles nor narrower than 1 mile). Intermediate legs would be four miles wide at the IF and no less than two miles wide at the FAF (again with a buffer outside that). For simplicity's sake, this would all be done with rectangles instead of the TERPs polygons so the math isn't so bad but you still have to be able to figure out when the airplane is inside of the rectangle which can be a challenge.

 

All this stuff can make someone's head hurt but if you boil it down and only seek to vector someone to the IF then the problem becomes much smaller. In general, if the airplane is inside the IAF and outside of the IF you can descend them down if they are within six miles of the centerline of the approach and moving toward the centerline...four miles is even safer. For an arced approach, you'd have to ignore the IAF and just use 6 miles/4 miles straight line distance from where the airplane is to the IF. So, approaching from the east for the ILS to KSNA, you 'vector' them to the *corner* of the protected airpace, 4 miles east of tie IAF (SAGER) and, once there, give them a turn directly to the IF (or thirty degrees off of final) and descent. The MSA over there is 6800 so an airliner would have about 2 minutes to lose 3500 feet. Not pretty but doable.

 

If this post does nothing else, it explains the complexity involved with keeping airplanes away from terrain. There are more complexities than this but it is sufficient for a sim.


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Many airports in difficult terrain have minimal radar due to blocked radar signals. They rely on SIDs and STARs.

 

An aircraft with competent navigation gear such as a GPS or better an FMC coupled to an auto-pilot can assist at least with LNAV. Besides the flexible NOTAMs RC feature for departures and arrivals RC can let you proceed with your own navigation guided by these devices within 30 nm of the departure airport and 40 nm of the destination airport.

 

Charts for the FAA territories and Eurozone members are free and readily available. I use a flightplanner that supports AIRAC updates as well as various instruments (think FMC) so the data is synchronized. The charts also provide environment awareness where manual flight is required. This applies to LNAV only navigation equipment.

 

Waypoints outside of 30 nm and prior to 40 nm need to be in the flightplan sent to RC. You can also use the two types of departure procedures that let you navigate on your own within 30 nm and use the IAP option to navigate on your own within 35 nm. For procedures specific to runways (SIDs and STARs) just include for RC waypoints common to all runways.

 

My FAA charts I obtain from flightaware.com using the INFO button for the intended airport and then selecting the IFR plates tab. I usually download the complete bundle and selectively print what I want. Eurozone charts are available from Eurocontrol after free registration here:

 

http://ead-website.ead-it.com/publicuser/public/pu/login.jsp

 

There are other sources. In RC it is best to use com autotune because the com RC database may be different from the charts or in your installed scenery.

 

LOC/ILS frequencies are available as pulled from the scenery in rcv4 or rcv4x\data by viewing r4.csv with a text editor only, not a spreadsheet. Back it up first. In your FS folder the is a text file called MakeRwys ReadMe.txt that has the formats of r5.csv which is copied to rcv4\data as r4.csv and gives the field definitions.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So far I've done around 60 flights with RC4 and at first I was rather pleased but the same things keep cropping up and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas.

 

  • First one is when you're approaching an airfield you'll get RC4 telling you to start decent.  First It'll say descend at your own discretion and then ask to to descend to another altitude within say 30nm.  Immediately after asking that it'll say I missed my crossing.  I've barely gone 5nm never mind 30.
  • If what RC4 is repeating is particularly long and you don't acknowledge right away, it'll repeat and then repeat again but right away and you get stuck in a loop where you can't press anything to answer because RC4 will just continue repeating.
  • Not sure if this is RC4 or FSX but on occasion I've had to take evasive action because RC4 wants to fly me into the side of a mountain on approach.

Any tips greatly appreciated!

 

I'm still fairly new with RC so factor that in to my recommendation...

 

With RC I usually start my descent as soon as practical after they give me pilot's discretion.  It's, sometimes, a fine line between waiting to descend at your TD (if you're flying iron) and missing a restriction.  I try to err on the side of not making the 'controller' mad while not going down too early.  If you're flying GA...what the heck...the scenery's nicer down there.  Sometimes the restriction lines up with a real restriction on a STAR...not sure if that's luck or if RC knows about it.  Sometimes I guess it's RCs own internal restriction.

 

In terms of loops, I just click ACK (7) while they're talking.  The key is buffered and they get it.


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also don't forget to do 3 things before you start RC4: 1) Activate 'NOTAMs' by checking the box (as was already stated in an above post), 2) don't forget to set your minimum safe altitute at your destination airport. You can get this value from any approach chart (look for the MSA circle), and lastle 3) during approach, instead of following vectors, choose to fly the full approach by selecting 'IAP' in the RC4 menu, then the approach you want to fly. ATC will clear you for the full approach, then not interfere until you are on final and are asked to contact tower. Do those 3 things and approaches in hilly terrain are easy peasy.

 

And lastly again, the old cliche, 'read the manual', because all of these guidelines are there.

 

Todd

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...