1 hour ago, harrry said:

What direction were you travelling?

 

north, CPT-LHR. The Simbrief flight plan actually went back and forth from even to odd flight levels based on my heading but I wasn't going to be able to watch it super close and climb/descend for every one so I just used FL300 > FL320 > FL340 > FL360.

As far as I know, there isn't a way to have the auto step climb feature descend to an altitude, it only seems to go up, but I haven't tested that in a while so I could be mistaken.

 

These step climbs get real interesting if you want to be accurate over Russia/China as they use Flight Levels in Meters so you have altitudes like FL321 and they often have a descent when crossing the boarder going from FL321 > FL320. When I can I will make that adjustment manually by initiating a descent in cruise, but PMDGs Auto Step Climb feature doesn't do that automatically.

13 hours ago, ArannAvi8tor said:

The 777 does not initiate a step climb automatically unless the step size is set to something other than "0". Like I said, I don't know if this is a bug or a feature, just the behavior of my sim.

Interesting.  I wouldn't call it a bug since the auto step climb feature is whatever PMDG elects to make it.  However, such features are usually consistent across product lines and I suggest you mark this up on a support ticket and maybe the next time they tweak the 777 this feature can be modified to behave the same as the 747.  To be honest, I never tried the auto step feature with a step size of zero since when one sets a manual step on LEGs page the FMS will cancel all automatic steps before that point.  Using a 0 isn't necessary. However, I think you have a good point and should go the route of a support ticket... get this into their bug tracking system.

13 hours ago, ArannAvi8tor said:

So you are quoting a section where Kyle didn't even understand what I said?

The ICAO step climb from an initial altitude of FL300 would be FL300 > FL340 > FL380 not the FL310 > FL350 that was calculated. The planned step climbs I entered was FL300 > FL320 > FL340 > FL360 but I never expected the 747 to calculate that as I don't use the calculated step climbs.

No, I still think you're not getting it. I did some investigating here, and it looks like for ICAO standards, only odd flight levels are used when at and above FL290. Thus, eastbound flights would use FL290, FL330, FL370, and westbound flights would use FL310, FL350, FL390. Therefore, FL300 wasn't even an appropriate altitude to use as far as ICAO standards are concerned. With the introduction of RVSM, between FL290 and FL410, you would now fly at even altitudes going westbound and odd altitudes going eastbound. Above FL410, it's back to odd flight levels, with eastbound being FL410, FL450, FL490, and westbound being FL430, FL470, FL510. I'm hoping this makes sense now since I actually went out of my way to investigate this.

8 hours ago, Captain Kevin said:

No, I still think you're not getting it. I did some investigating here, and it looks like for ICAO standards, only odd flight levels are used when at and above FL290. Thus, eastbound flights would use FL290, FL330, FL370, and westbound flights would use FL310, FL350, FL390. Therefore, FL300 wasn't even an appropriate altitude to use as far as ICAO standards are concerned. With the introduction of RVSM, between FL290 and FL410, you would now fly at even altitudes going westbound and odd altitudes going eastbound. Above FL410, it's back to odd flight levels, with eastbound being FL410, FL450, FL490, and westbound being FL430, FL470, FL510. I'm hoping this makes sense now since I actually went out of my way to investigate this.

 

I truly appreciate you looking into this. ICAO's standards of not using even flight levels didn't occur to me (it has been a long time since I learned about ICAO vs the more common RVSM), so thank you for clarifying. However this still misses the point. I don't use calculated step climbs, I enter planned step climbs. The purpose of this thread is related to the auto step climb feature. I never asked for anyone to explain how either the 777 or 747 handled step climbs, planned, calculated or manual. I just wanted to know if the auto step climb feature was working as expected or if there was a bug.
 

I will leave it at that and put a support ticket in as suggested by Dan.

 

Joe O'Connell

1 hour ago, ArannAvi8tor said:

I truly appreciate you looking into this. ICAO's standards of not using even flight levels didn't occur to me (it has been a long time since I learned about ICAO vs the more common RVSM), so thank you for clarifying. However this still misses the point. I don't use calculated step climbs, I enter planned step climbs. The purpose of this thread is related to the auto step climb feature. I never asked for anyone to explain how either the 777 or 747 handled step climbs, planned, calculated or manual. I just wanted to know if the auto step climb feature was working as expected or if there was a bug.

I can't help you with that since I don't own the 777. I was only addressing the following:

On 11/8/2018 at 10:46 PM, ArannAvi8tor said:

I just did a flight from FACT to EGLL with the 747-400 and I set the initial altitude to FL300 and the calculated step climbs started at FL310 and stepped to FL350 even though I wanted even Flight Levels. By setting the step size to 0, the calculated step climbs are removed and my manual step climbs worked beautifully FL300>FL320>FL340>FL360>FL380 even on auto step climb.

Which was then followed by, in the very same post, this:

On 11/8/2018 at 10:46 PM, ArannAvi8tor said:

Also, while i understand that you all don't know me and it is easy to assume I don't know what I am talking about, this thread has never been about my lack of understanding how the 777 or 747 FMC work, I know how they work.

It would appear as though we now have that sorted out.

For organizational purposes, I wanted to share the response I got from submitting a PMDG Support Ticket.
 

They were able to reproduce the anomaly, and indicated that the 777 Team would look into a fix in some future update.

 

Joe O'Connell

Edited November 13, 20187 yr by ArannAvi8tor