ASN's Winds aloft and PMDG

[787WannabePilot 12]

How many of you input the information for descents from the addon tab in FSX?

 

If so, when do you enter it? Right before descent, during or a distance from TOD?

[dave_paige 11]

Not sure what you mean by "from the addon tab in FSX" but I always enter forecast winds for the descent on the descent page 'forecast', in the CDU. Sometimes I enter them while still sitting at the departure gate during preflight and sometimes I enter them after I get to cruise.

 

BTW I use ASN for weather and get the forecast winds from Simbrief and I've never had a problem with the matching up.

 

Dave

[787WannabePilot 12]

Thanks for your response.

 

 

If you hit the alt keyboard button, and see all the different tabs above, the last tab is "addon", allowing you to access the current weather where your plane is, the departure airport, the destination airport etc.

 

One of the options is winds aloft. Giving you various winds at different flight levels.

 

If you enter the winds at the departure, wouldn't they change by the time you get to the TOD?

[skelsey 765]

If you enter the winds at the departure, wouldn't they change by the time you get to the TOD?

Perhaps, but remember in real life there is no convenient dialogue box that you can call up to give you the exact winds at any given place or moment.

 

All you really have is a forecast. Usually it's fairly accurate, but sometimes it might be wildly wrong. That's just the nature of weather.

 

Generally there will be forecast descent winds provided in the computer flight plan that crews print off prior to departure and take with them on the aircraft. Sone airlines may have the facility for crews to request updated climb/cruise/descent winds via ACARS, and if this facility is available then I think most crews would probably update the winds after TOC and again some time prior to TOD (assuming a sector of reasonable length) but even then you're still just inputting a forecast -- just a slightly more up to date one.

 

Unless there's been a really significant weather system pass through between the time you got your descent wind forecast prior to departure and the time you actually reach TOD, the difference is unlikely to have a significant impact on the descent profile calculation. An accurate estimation of ANTI-ICE ON altitude, if applicable, is usually more significant in my experience!

[QMiSchu 2]

From my understanding the descent forecast is set especially for correctly calculating the time of arrival, fuel use and TOD.

Because of this I normally take the data from ASN and enter them at least 100nm in front of the planned TOD. Several times I have realized that afterwards it had changed position significantly.