Here's the situation: I'm flying along my filed route, the FMS is tracking perfectly to the next way point, 0.0 nm deviation from the course. True heading to the WP is 345. ATC comes on and says "fly heading 325 until receiving suitable for navigation, proceed direct when able." Turning to this heading would take me off course, and as far as I could tell, I WAS heading direct to the next way point, so I just kept on course. So now every 30 seconds I get the same instructions from ATC. Finally I turn to the instructed heading just to get it to shut up, and watch the deviation from my filed route grow and grow. After a while I'd turn to head direct to the waypoint, and not long after there was ATC telling me to turn away again, until receiving suitable, proceed direct when able. However, I know you have to pass within 5nm of the waypoint to get credit for it, so when getting close to the way point I would head to it, get credit for it, and proceed to the next way point, only to have ATC start vectoring me off course again. What was it expecting me to do? What nav aid was I supposed to be receiving? Direct to where? This is the first time in many flights that I've had something like this happen.Mark Kuebeler

how far apart are your checkpoints?were you near approach airspace, and missed your crossing restriction?were you in departure airspace flying a departure procedure?send me the .pln, and tell me which checkpoints were causing the problemjd

I'll e-mail the .pln to you shortly. Route was EGPF STN AB MY G3 METIL BIKFbasically Glasgow, UK, up to the Faeroe Islands, then west to Keflavik, Iceland. I started getting the instructions somewhere between MY NDB and the first checkpoint along G3 (LINDA), but I regret that I didn't note the distance. I was nearly 400nm from the departure at that point. Distance between those checkpoints was 74nm. The next one (ROSTI) was 121nm, then ING VOR at 71nm. From ING there was still almost 110nm from the approach space.Mark Kuebeler

Experienced the exact same problems on another flight, this one from BIKF to BGBW. The first waypoint was at 40nm, but the DP called for tracking outbound on the 277 radial for KEF VOR, so I selected Flex DP in the options. Got to the first WP just fine, next one was 79nm, still on 277 radial. First ATC starts in with me being "off course", although I'm showing zero deviation from the direct track to the WP. At around 55 DME from KEF VOR the "fly heading ..., until receiving suitable for navigation, proceed direct when able" crap started up. It seems like the heading it wants you to fly is 15 degrees off the heading that would take you direct to the WP. I tried requesting direct to the WP following the current one, which was granted, but then the message would start up again. Finally I requested direct to the final WP, and still it was telling me to turn off course. I ended up closing RC in mid-flight. Unfortunately something got hosed and I could not select FS9 ATC commands, and decided to abort the flight. I'm going to retry it with FS9 ATC all the way. I will send you this flight plan as well. Does RC have trouble with flights above 60N lattitude perhaps? Never had any problems like this on flights in US, and the problems did not seem to start up until I flew north of 60N.Mark Kuebeler

Hello,I also have encountered this "problem". I thought it was because if waypoints are far apart one from each other, and taking into account that on a sphere, the shortest way between two points is not necessarely a straight line, and I could live with it. Anyhow, if the ATC instructions were executed, I arrived where I had to arrive...Kind Regards,Juul Tango,Hasselt, Belgium.

i looked at the flight plan, and the first two checkpoints are quite a distance from the departure airporti like to keep my checkpoints 60-70 miles apartyou also have two checkpoints in the middle of the flightplan that are 120+ miles apart.try a couple of more checkpoints between these, and see what happensalso, i just thought of something else. what is your heading deviation set for on the options page? jd

Could this also be one of those pesky "mag deviation" problems cropping up?Best, Rob

>Could this also be one of those pesky "mag deviation">problems cropping up?Now this sounds interesting. The airport diagram I have for BIKF does show the magnetic variation up there to be 19 degrees W. I have no idea how well FS9 models this. I tried the flight from BIKF to BGBW again with more waypoints so that they were at most 60nm apart. I got hit with the "off course" instruction just around 50nm from BIKF, which is probably about where the Flex DP ran out. At the time the FMS direct track to the waypoint was 283, RC showed 280, and the magnetic heading was also 283 (almost no crosswind component at that point). 283 magnetic is about 264 true if the variation is 19W. Instruction from ATC was to fly 265. Maybe increasing the allowable course deviation would cure the problem? I'll give it a try tommorrow evening.Mark Kuebeler

I believe this problem is related to the large magnetic variation. I set the allowable course deviation to 45, and flew the same route as before, and got no off course instructions from ATC.Mark Kuebeler

rick flew your flight plan with 15 degree deviation, and never made the controller mad. there is something else going on.are you flying the heading to each checkpoint based on the heading given on the first line of the advdisp?

Well, if I'm tracking directly to the checkpoint along the filed route but correcting for wind, my heading would tend to not agree with the heading shown by RC. Now with the PMDG 737 in LNAV mode the nav display shows your ground track, not heading, and this is usually very close the value RC wants. These last couple flights have been in the Flight1 ATR72, which shows heading all the time, but the wind correction wasn't all that much because the wind was mostly head on. What does RC look at, your heading or your ground track?What about the plane/panel? If it is supplying screwy values to RC as to my actual heading, would that be enough to make RC think I'm off course? That ATR panel does currently have a few outstanding bugs in it, including a tendancy for the direct track to the next waypoint to suddenly flip 180 degrees for no reason. If the AP is in LNAV mode it may try to do a 180 when that happens, but I haven't seen it do that enough to say if it will do so consistently. It's possible that is what was causing the problem. I'll give the route another try with a different plane to see what that does with 15 degree deviation.Mark Kuebeler

Well, it wasn't the plane. :( I get the exact same message with the PMDG B737:I'm departing BIKF from runway 29. The first waypoint (KEF277040) is at 40nm, so I get a "fly runway heading". After takeoff approach has me turn left to 270, then a little while later I get assigned a heading of 275. Finally I get "resume own nav", at which point I set the FMS for direct to the waypoint and engaged LNAV. RC is showing heading 285, my ground track is 288, heading 286. I hit the waypoint dead center and the AP turns to the next waypoint (EMBLA, 79nm). RC is showing 275, my ground track is 277, heading 278. At 73nm from the waypoint, RC tells me I'm off course and the fly heading 265. It happens at this point every single time.If you guys are flying this and not getting an off-course message, I would _really_ like to know what you're doing differently from me, because I do not think I am doing anything wrong.Mark Kuebeler

i'm still working on the problem you're having, i haven't forgotten you.there was a bug i've been trying to squash for 3 weeks, and found it yesterday. i'm a little less stressed, and not time constrainedjd

No problem, now that I know how to configure RC to at least keep it from telling me I'm off course when I know I'm not, I don't feel constrained, either. There must be something very subtle at work here, though, because I've completed many hours of flights with RC now and have never been chastised by ATC for being off course (at least not when I didn't fully deserve it :)) until these last two flights up north. Mark Kuebeler

Experience that from time to time - choose Dir Ckpt - and be sure to know what the name is of the next waypoint. I never allow a distance between waypoints to be less than 20 NM - to be as sure as possible to avoid this.