Otto behind the curve

[Mickel 42]

Folks

 

I will confess now, I'm a merely adequate sim airliner driver who gets from Point A to Point B without delving too deeply beyond a skim of the manuals and a couple or runs through the tutorial flight...

 

I was doing my practice run between VRMM and VCBI. My sixth flight in the Triple. It's an hours flight that Emirates use 77Ws on in both directions: right livery on right plane on rw route: check. I was descending into Colombo and the weather radar was reading pretty red. I pressed on, accepting it would get pretty bumpy (got to love ASN). According the FlightAware, there was an Emirates T7 about 20 minutes behind me, so it obviously wasn't unflyable.

 

I flew the DME arc to the top of the 22 ILS with the HDG bug and VNAV, using the MCP speed to slow down. As I slowed, Otto was getting behind the plane. The nose was getting too high and the throttle too low - as was the aircraft. So I ditched both the AP and AT and flew the remainder of the approach by hand after getting things back under control. Am I driving the AP wrong, or can conditions get to the point where Otto mutters 'Your aircraft' and gives up?

 

Mike

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

Am I driving the AP wrong, or can conditions get to the point where Otto mutters 'Your aircraft' and gives up?

 

Conditions can get to the point where the AP cannot handle things appropriately.

 

We actually commented on this a whole bunch within the team prior to the weather radar going out because we knew people would question this, while still chasing after red cells.

 

The AP has some pretty high tolerances.  Flying through a giant thunderstorm is bound to push past a lot of them.  Disconnect it and fly it by hand.

 

Side Note:

Just because FlightAware shows the real flight doing it doesn't mean you can do it in the sim.  ASN does a great job of making sure the weather in the sim is great, but it isn't exactly like the weather outside (especially because your user settings - particularly the turbulence settings - can vary the depiction greatly).  Moreover, 20 minutes is a lot of time when it comes to convective activity (thunderstorms), particularly in the tropics like that.

[Mickel 42]

Thanks Kyle. I probably didn't help Otto either - I should have given him 10 more knots to play with. I've seen a lot of red on the radar around the eastern Indian Ocean lately. I wondered if I've got the gain up too high. I've left it as default as suggested in the intro manual though.

 

Mike