Unusual step climb behavior (Auto step climb related)

[paradoxbox 13]

Hi all

 

I've put in a lot of time in the PMDG777 as I do mostly pacific crossings from Tokyo to wherever.

 

At the moment I'm wrapping up a flight from Toronto to Tokyo with auto time compression set to 8x.

 

Something strange has been happening on this flight though.

 

When the aircraft reached its first step climb point from 30,000 to 32,000 feet, the aircraft commanded a height of 40,000 feet by itself and attempted to climb there despite being unable to even achieve that altitude due to being over weight.

 

I thought that maybe I had mistakenly entered that figure on the legs page so I didn't think much of it, but it happened again at the next step climb from 320 to 340 - the plane commanded 40,000 by itself again.

 

I reset the flight cruise altitude in both the VNAV page and confirmed on the legs page that the current waypoints were set to 340 and the step climb would be to 360. When the plane reached the step climb point, it AGAIN started going up to 40,000.

 

 

Can anyone give me some advice on what's going on with this?

 

It's the first time I have seen this kind of behavior but to be honest the auto-step climb feature has been a little bit flaky for me - it works sometimes but not always as I expected it to or as I programmed in the flight plan.

 

FYI I am using PFPX imported flight plans.

 

 

James Burke

[Tabs 2,790]

Some major fixes were just made to step climb logic for SP1 - try again when it comes out.