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PeteP

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Posts posted by PeteP


  1. I've created a debug file and sent to JD ;)Thank you, Martin, that will be a great help in tracing the problem.the altimeter check came too early (at around 12,500 while the TA there is 11,000)Ah no, that's when it's supposed to give the altimeter check and it is working correctly. It's not the Transition Altitude that's the important datum for resetting the altimeter on descent - it's the Transition Level. If you read my previous post again you'll see that I said the "altimeter check" call is programmed to run as you pass 300ft below the actual altitude of the Transition Level which could well be around 12500ft with low pressure and a Transition Altitude of 11000ft.You need to remember that the "altimeter check" call is just that - a check by the co-pilot to ensure the altimeters have been reset correctly. It is not an instruction to do so. When flying outside the US you should reset your altimeter as soon as you commence your descent from a Flight Level to an altitude. If you leave it too late to set the QNH, you'll be through your cleared altitude before you realise it and you risk what we call a "level bust".Pete


  2. About QNH, I very often get the message "altimeter check" during descent but didn't get a QNH yet.Thank you for reporting this, Martin. The "altimeter check" message is set to be called by the co-pilot when you pass 300ft below the actual altitude of the Transition Level on your descent to an altitude. In these circumstances, you should always have been given a QNH before you hear the "altimeter check" message.It would be a great help if you could try to replicate this situation with 'Debug' on and then send the log file to jd. The full instructions on how to do this are pinned at the top of this forum.If you're absolutely certain that this is happening in the way you describe, you may have found a problem that needs investigating and the log will be very useful.Pete


  3. how can i get rc4 to give me the qnh in millibars instead of inchesRC4 will give always the pressure setting in the format appropriate to the area in which you are flying. In what we class as the 'FAA area' - essentially North America - inches of mercury are used and in the 'ICAO area' - essentially the rest of the world - hectopascals/millibars are used.If you are asking if there is a setting you can change to force RC4 to always use hectopascals wherever you are flying, then the answer is "no".Pete


  4. Ryan,The only "Global Supply Systems" listed in the current ICAO Doc8585 is "Global Supply Systems Ltd", registered in the UK, ICAO code "GSS", call sign "Jet Lift". If this is the one you're after, then I have - as the saying goes - some good news and some bad news.The bad news is that it's not in version 4. The good news is that it is in the version 5 scripts.Pete


  5. To do this in an unregistered copy of FSUIPC, you need make the change manually in the FSUIPC.ini file - you'll find it in your Flight Simulator 9/Modules folder.Open the FSUIPC.ini file in Notepad and look for the 'TCASid' entry - It should read TCASid=Flight. If not, change it, save the ini file and restart FS.Pete


  6. "I read a post (I believe it was on this forum)on how to change millibars to hectopascals in Fs9."Don,The answer is you don't need to change them as, for all practical purposes, they're the same thing - 1 millibar is equivalent to 1 hectopascal so there's no need for any conversion. As far as I know, it's only the UK that still uses the millibar as its unit of pressure with the rest of the world outside the US using the hectopascal but, whichever unit the pressure setting is expressed in - mB or hPa - it has exactly the same value.Pete


  7. IAP stands for Instrument Approach Procedure and is used by Radar Contact to allow the user to fly a published approach procedure including a full STAR without intervention by RC. However, if you want to be vectored onto final approach by the Radar Contact approach controller, there is no need to select anything as this is the default procedure.Pete


  8. I decided to return to FS9 and fly with all the addons which I posses Would one of your add-ons be FSHotFX by any chance? If so, there is a known incompatibility with Radar Contact caused (as Ray pointed out) by a change made to the FSUIPC.ini by FSHotFX.Have a look at this FAQ which explains both the cause and what change to make to the FSUIPC.ini file to solve the problem: http://www.jdtllc.com/faq.htm#51Pete


  9. I was flying from Prague to Munich last night and my first instruction was to go down to 100 feet! It's difficult to be sure without more information but you were probably instructed to "Descend FL100" which is spoken as "flight level one hundred". If you're an American - which your signature suggests - you're used to hearing altitudes in feet below 18000ft and so assumed the RC controller meant one hundred feet.If for some strange reason you were cleared to one hundred feet, the controller would have preceded the "one hundred" with the word "altitude". Try the same flight again and listen very carefully to check whether the words "flight level" or "altitude" are used in front of the "one hundred"BestPete


  10. on leaving EHAM I should have set standard at 3000 and on descending at London Heathrow I should have reset it at 6000If you reset your altimeter at the TA going up and the TL coming down, you won't be far wrong and your co-pilot will help you with this. When you pass the Transition Altitude climbing and the Transition Level descending, your co-pilot will say "altimeter check" which is a reminder to you to reset your altimeter sub-scale to the correct value i you haven't already done so. One very important thing to note: DO NOT USE THE 'B' KEY to reset your altimeter. It is set up for the US TA of 18000ft and will give an incorrect setting when used with the low European TAs.Pete


  11. Martin, the problem is an altimeter setting error. The Transition Altitude at Amsterdam is 3000ft and at Heathrow, 6000ft. If you were cleared to FL170, your altimeter should have been set to the standard setting of 1013.2 mB/hPa and not the QNH.Remember FL = standard pressure, altitude = QNH. If you still had a QNH of 1000mB set, when you though you were at F170, you would have been approximately 350ft too high.Pete


  12. Please take my observations as constructive points of view.Of course, Neil and I hope neither I nor anyone else here gave you reason to think otherwise. We welcome input from all users and the team takes careful note of and frequently discusses the suggestions and comments posted here.As you mentioned you were ex-ATC I thought you might appreciate some background on why RC outside the US is set up the way it is. To be honest, I don't see the generic nature of the procedures and phraseology used for the non-Us parts getting any less so in the immediate future either. The more work I do on researching international ATC procedures, the more variations I find. Emulating US ATC is a relatively simple task - an integrated system with a single controlling authority setting the rules. In the rest of the world, everything is (usually) done on national boundaries despite the contribution from supranational organisations like Eurocontrol. For example, you have 2 centres for the whole of Australia, the US, I believe, has somewhere in the region of 21 and in Europe, we have 41 despite all 3 areas having similar-sized land-masses! Heaven alone knows how many more there are in the rest of the world but the vast majority seem to operate as individual units under the control of their own national administrations, each with its own set of variations from ICAO SARPS. Trying to find common phraseologies and procedures to use in RC is very difficult and at times it's completely impossible to answer a question from jd such as, "what's the Euro/ICAO equivalent to...". Usually, the only solution is some sort of compromise but, as with all compromises, someone will always be left feeling unhappy. :( Keep your comments coming.Pete


  13. Neil,I'm afraid it's not as straightforward in Europe as you seem to suggest it is in Australia. We do have an international code allocation agreement - ORCAM - but with the amount of aircraft in the air over the busier parts of Europe and the limited number of codes available for worldwide transit use - theoretically 4,096 but with large blocks reserved for military, local and special purpose uses, in reality considerably less - it's inevitable that a large number of long distance flights, to, from or overflying Europe will get at least one transponder code change.Some long-distance flights will be unaffected but, equally, some short-distance flights will get a change because of the juxtaposition of multiple ORCAM regions they may pass through. Some centres such as Maastricht UAC, for example, sit on the boundary of several ORCAM regions and all flights entering Maastricht airspace from the north require a code change to avoid conflicting with the codes worn by aircraft entering their airspace from other regions. This is a fairly common situation here.As jd has pointed out, he doesn't want an "if" statement in his code for each country so, with RC outside the US, we try to steer a middle course with things like this which gives a reasonably accurate feel to non-US ATC procedures without claiming to be 100% accurate for any particular country. Maybe one day there will be country or region-specific versions but at the moment we have to keep things generic.I agree that 4 code changes is unrealistic for any flight let alone a short internal one. So, for version 5, I've suggested to jd that he continues with the occasional random code changes with a maximum of 2 for any single flight which will take place only at national boundaries rather at sector or same-country FIR/UIR boundaries. This should prevent any occurrences on internal flights such as the ones you got but will still allow a "flavour" of changes because of the type of conflicting ORCAM region codes I mentioned above.Pete


  14. "By the way, the route you supplied for EGCC-EGPF is highly unrealistic."Yep, and years out of date too. A1/UA1 hasn't existed in the UK for over 2 years, more's the pity.x( Oh and btw, max permitted level for flights between MTMA airfields and ScTMA airfields is FL240.PP

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