40 mile Waypoint problem??

[Guest United]

I know this prolly has been covered somewhere in some thread on this forum, but I can't find it, if it is. At any rate, I think I've forgotten some cardinal rules about formulating waypoints at the end of a flight plan. Is it true that one should not have any waypoints after about 40nm from your destination airfield. The reason I ask is that I flew two flights today, both of the flight plans had several waypoints past the 40 mile mark and clean up to about 5 miles from the destination airfields. Then on both flights, ATC vectored me away from the airport until I had to cancel the IFR plan as it was getting to be 50 and 60 miles away from the airfield in both cases. I was never asked to decend less than 13000 in both cases as well as never receiving vectors back to the airfields (One field was KCLT, the other KMIA I think). I have the feeling that my flight plans were improper and confused the arrival controller programming in some manner. Thoughts??Randy Jura, KPDX

[PeteP 2]

"Is it true that one should not have any waypoints after about 40nm from your destination airfield."No, it's not true, just the opposite, in fact. We recommend that wherever possible, the last waypoint should be a VOR on or within 5 nm of the destination airfield. The reason for this is that it allows RC to use descent phraseology based on that VOR - "...be level 40 miles before ABC", for example. If there is no such waypoint in your plan, RC is forced to use the alternative phraseology of "... I need you level in 30 miles or less"."Then on both flights, ATC vectored me away from the airport until I had to cancel the IFR plan as it was getting to be 50 and 60 miles away from the airfield in both cases. I was never asked to decend less than 13000 in both cases as well as never receiving vectors back to the airfields"The reason for this vectoring away from the field is nothing to do with your flight plan - it's simply that you missed your crossing restriction. You never reached the altitude you were cleared to so RC was vectoring you away from Approach's airspace until you did. The most likely reason you didn't get to your cleared altitude (even though your altimeter no doubt said you had) was that your altimeter was incorrectly set. It's likely that you were either still on 29.92 having forgotten to set the local pressure after descending through FL180 or you incorrectly set the wrong value for the local pressure.If you fly these 2 flights again paying special attention to setting your altimeter correctly for the phase of flight and achieving your crossing restriction, the problem of being vectored away from the field will disappear.Pete

[Guest United]

Hmm, well... I was cleared in both cases to 13000 and never got another altitude reduction again and I just dont think it was a barometer problem, my finger presses the "B" button much too often for that, oh well, we'll see. Nonetheless, I'll pay more attention the next flight around. Thank you for the help Pete and I'll report back if problems persist! Randy Jura, KPDX

[jd 57]

well, you can send me a log, if you think you can reproduce the problemlaunch rcv4click debugload the .plnclick start rcfly the flight, duplicate the problem, zip up the .log file, and send it to jd@jdtllc.com with a description of what happened, where, when, etc.jd