*this is also posted on the Majestic support site; repeated here to catch all vroute Q400 users

 

Folks - Vroute fuel planning has been updated for the Majestic Q400. This is beta only and is subject to testing and subsequent tweaking as required. To have a new aircraft added to the fuel planning section of vroute, what the developer requires is that a volunteer does a bunch of test flights and collects the required data to calculate in-route/taxi/minimum/etc fuel. I volunteered, and certainly could use assistance/feedback from other Q400/vroute users. I do believe that you need the premium as opposed to the free vroute in order to see the fuel planning section.

 

The data supplied is based on 40639 lbs Dry Operating Weight/Mass, as specified as default in the Q400 Control Panel. In looking at the stats for quite a few Q400's, this value does fluctuate based on the configuration and makeup of the aircraft. There are many fleets that have lighter Dry Operating Weights, but many that are right in this range as well. I believe the developers designed the Q400 with this as a DOM, so it is what has been submitted.

 

If you are a Vroute user, please do try out a few routes and see how accurate the fuel planner is for you. This is only beta and will need feedback from vroute users to confirm whether it is close to being accurate. You can leave your feedback here if you believe the values need to be tweaked, or of course directly on the vroute forum. Should state again that I am just a volunteer tester and Q400/vroute user, and not the developer, but can incorporate any opinions/experience/corrections of your fuel planning into the test results for submission.

 

Jim

 

PS: If you are not a vroute user, but want to check it out... http://www.vroute.net

Just to add to this, I have a reliable 'source' of real world fuel plans for the Q400 and we spent a bit of time comparing the Vroute fuel numbers with the real thing. If you set captain's discretionary fuel to zero then you're not far off. Each flight we looked at was a couple of hundred kilos over the real plog.

The excel sheet that is on here is sadly miles off the real numbers, I'm sorry to say.

I did a flight last night and it worked great. The Route for Tutorial 1 (CYZD-CYUL) has been uploaded to vRoute.

After some more flying, FSCommander seems to make more reliable calculations. At least 400lbs less than VRoute.

What is strange is on the fuel page on the second MFD, the fuel on board wasn't the amount that I had loaded.