VFR flight following "can't find destination airport" glitch?

[the_korben 1]

Hi Dave,

first off - thanks for this great product. I purchased it last week and am having a lot of fun to learn all the intricacies.
That said, since updating to 2.5.0.5 R2 I noticed that I'm having weird problems with VFR flight following.

I am currently flying a lot in France and on my last two flights, both times ATC couldn't find my destination airport.
First flight was from LFPB to LFAO, second flight was from LFAO to LFJR. Both times I validated and filed a simple VFR flight plan (using "Autoplan" - so direct-to and then pattern directions), I checked in to center at the ground with "Ready to copy VFR flight plan", got my squawk code and ATC did announce to give me radar advisory from the correct departure to destination ICAOs. So Pilot2Atc most definitely knows the airports. ATC then said to check in after airborne for further radar advice. I did just that with "Cessna 5C5 climbing to 6500 feet. Requesting VFR flight following from LFAO to LFJR." but ATC just let's me know: "Sorry, I can't find your destination airport." I made sure to also try SayIt, to exclude any voice recognition problems.

Nevertheless, ATC correctly follows my flight 

[the_korben 1]

Sorry, I submitted this post to early. Wanted to add: ATC follows my flight properly and hands me off to approach and everything works out.
I'm using the current Navigraph 1808 cycle data both for X-Plane and Pilot2Atc.
 

[Dave-Pilot2ATC 870]

When you already have flight following, which was given in the clearance, you do not request it again.

The initial call to departure or center should have been something like "Cessna 5C5 climgin to 6500 feet"

If you are making a new VFR Flight Following request, it would be like the call you made.  If you pronounced LFJR as L - F - J - R, it could have just not been interpreted correctly.  Lima Foxtrot Juliet Romeo would likely have worked as expected...but was unnecessary in this case.

Thanks,

Dave

[the_korben 1]

Hi Dave,

thanks for the quick response! I was unaware that "ready to copy VFR clearance" would at the same time activate VFR flight following. I read in Jeff Kanarish's book "Radio Mastery for VFR pilots" that getting clearance for a flight plan and requesting VFR flight following are two separate things. But good to know, thanks!

Oh, and I did use the NATO alphabet when requesting the flight following and to rule out that I made a mistake, I also tried using the SayIt feature and selected "Request"->"VFRFlightFollowing". Still "can't find requested destination". But it makes sense that it wouldn't work if flight following is already active, I was just a bit worried about the integrity of my data due to the ATC response. 😉

Anyway, thanks again and keep up the great work & support!

[the_korben 1]

Hi again Dave,

so I finally found the reason for my problem but I still think that it might be a bit problematic. Turns out my autoplanned VFR flight plan (after selecting VFR, entering departure and destination airport and the clicking "Autoplan") ended not on the runway but above the runway midpoint at the destination airport in the pattern. I missed that the first couple of times, because the waypoint is named after the destination ICAO code.

So selecting a valid approach instead, everything now works just like I thought. I can ask for VFR clearance and then -- even though it's not necessary -- request flight following and ATC will respond as it should.

I feel a bit stupid now, but it's easy to miss this I think and I would still call this a small bug. Although ATC will accept your flight plan and tell you that it goes from, e.g. LFAO to LFJR, and even though it guides you to that airport and hands you off correctly, the logic behind the ATC rightfully can't find any destination airport because it's actually missing from the flight plan. If that is true, this might potentially also cause some other issues when requesting information about the destination airport from center.

[Dave-Pilot2ATC 870]

I found a bug in the code that was causing the controller to not recognize the destination airport.  It will be fixed in the next release.

Thanks for all the details of the issue.

Dave