PeteP

There certainly is, Terry. We were discussing that very thing in the forum on Saturday. Here's the link: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=18494&page=BestPete

Yep, drdickie is absolutely right. You missed a checkpoint (waypoint) - the big clue is the 180 degree turn RC wants you to do to reach it. You're required to pass within 2nm in the departure phase and within 5nm in the en-route phase to be credited with a checkpoint.To confirm this is what has happened, compare the waypoint RC thinks is next (you'll find this at the top of the advdisp display) with what your FMC, GPS or whatever you're using for navigation thinks is next. If they're different, you've got a problem. The solution is to select the "Dir Chkpoint" item from the advdisp menu (you'll find it on page 2 by pressing the "next" key) and request a direct route to whichever waypoint your FMC/GPS etc. thinks is next. Problem solved.Pete

Well done, Don. Glad to hear you're getting the hang of it. Oh, and thanks for taking the trouble to post again - it's always good to get that sort of feedback. Happy flying.Pete

Disregard.PP

Absolutely, Don and I hope you didn't think I was being critical of your efforts - I was just trying to gently nudge you in the right direction to get the most out of RC. I understand just how steep the learning curve can be but Radar Contact is one of those programs that you'll get so much more out of if you invest a little bit of time and effort reading the manual and flying the tutorials. If, after you've tried my suggestions, you still have questions about altimeter setting procedure - or anything else for that matter - please do post again. You'll always find someone here who'll be happy to help.PP

Don,It's difficult to know where to start here - I think I'll leave the flight plan and (probable) missed crossing restriction issues to jd and just address the altimetry side.In order to get RC to work correctly, you will need to pay a little more attention to the altimeter setting procedures used in Europe and particularly to the dangers of using the 'B' key on such flights. Before you fly again, may I suggest you have a quick look at pages 107-108 of the Radar Contact manual and also read this post: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=16233&page=3Together, they should give you a better idea of how to set your altimeter and the problems of using the 'B' key outside the USA. You might also like to try the European flight tutorial which begins on page 265 of the manual.BestPete

Curiouser and curiouser... it loads perfectly into my RC4. We'll see what Ray comes up with.Incidentally, does Ray's plan load into your RC4 correctly? If so, you may like to dump this one and use Ray's - his has the correct route in UK airspace for traffic inbound to Leeds-Bradford.PPEDIT: sorry, I see Ray already aswered whilst I was typing. Too slow as usual. :>))

Hi Chaz,It's not the route that we need to see but the actual flight plan that's being rejected. If you can attach it here, as Ray did, we can check it properly for a format error.Pete

Steve,Thanks for the report and i'm glad you enjoyed your flight. I'll leave the main response to others but I have a couple of comments to make:Tower instructed us to "Line up and wait, runway 27". Geri replied "Roger" I know she is new to the fleet and not long checked out but I had to tell her that "Line up and wait, runway 27" is an instruction and should be read back "Roger" is not a correct response.You're correct. Yt's a long-time known problem which, I believe is being addressed in 4.1.We were eventually handed of to Dusseldorf which I thought should have been Langan I may be wrong but I thought the airways centers in that area were Maastricht, Langan and Rhine?I did some work with John Burgess a couple of months ago on improving the realism of centre airspace in the UK, Ireland and parts of North West Europe. One thing we did look at was RC's inability to recognise different centres depending on flight level - the case of Maastricht controlling aircraft above FL245 over the Benelux countries and part of Germany was one we sorted out. I don't know what's happened to this work but I'd hope you'll be seeing it in a future release.We were then told "When ready (Or at pilots discretion) descend to flight level 150""When ready" is the correct phraseology for the part of the world you were in - "at pilot's discretion" is FAA terminology.One other thing, it might be a good idea to have "leaving Flight level xxx now", or Leaving xxx this time" call available.There are a great many real-world controllers - me included - who believe a call such as that to be superfluous and a waste of valuable RT time. I can see what you're doing from your Mode C and the rules permit me to take a difference in height readout of greater than 300ft in the anticipated direction as evidence that you've left your level. In circumstances when I'm not permitted to use your height readout such as when you're in a holding stack, I'll ask you to "report leaving..." but otherwise I don't need a call.BestPete

You're most welcome, Huppel. Enjoy your flight.PP

Huppel,I've flown your plan and I now know what happened and why.First, the phraseology. I hadn't realised that Drachten is an airfield without ATC. In these circumstances, RC4 reverts to FAA procedures and phraseology - something, I'm sure, that will be fixed in a future release. After you were cleared to climb to your cruising level of FL60, the controller issued an amended clearance to stop you at altitude 2000ft and added the information, "that will be your final." This amended clearance means that having issued the climb to FL60, the controller no longer considered it to be appropriate and decided you should maintain 2000ft instead. "That will be your final" simply means that no further climb will be given. (JB got this spot-on in his earlier reply to you.)Some of the US-style phraseology used by RC4 can be a little difficult to grasp if English is not your mother tongue. In the UK for example, an amended climb clearance like that would be given as, "stop climb at altitude 2000ft, that will be your cruising altitude." which, I think, is much clearer.So why did you get stopped off at such a low altitude? It was because of your flight plan which consisted of only the 2 airfields - EHDR and EHKD. Radar Contact needs at least 1 waypoint between departure and destination airports to work properly. Fortunately, RC doesn't seem bothered where this waypoint is so I modified your plan by adding the Den Helder VOR (HDR) which is just to the south of De Kooy. Flying the plan with this simple addition, I was allowed to climb to FL60 before approach gave me a nice radar circuit with descent clearances to FL50, 3000ft and 2000ft as you would expect with a normal RC flight.Try it again with the plan EHDR HDR EHKD and you'll see the difference - RC performing as it was designed to do.BestPete

OK, Huppel. I suspect that the runway you were landing on at EHKD did not have an ILS in which case, the RC controller probably said, "Maintain altitude 2000ft until established on the final approach course" but I'll know more when I fly your plan.Pete

>>That will hopefully make it onto the 4.1 release.<<That's good to hear, Ray. Thanks.PP

>>When I heard 998 I thought I'd missed the 2 and set 2998<<Huppel,Thanks for letting me know what had happened. You are not alone in making this mistake as it's not uncommon for real-world pilots to do the same thing. In real-world UK air traffic control, there is a requirement for UK controllers to add the word "millibars" when the QNH value is less than 1000 to help US pilots - and those more familiar with US procedures - to avoid that very error.Now, from my point of view, the interesting thing is that for 18 months of RC4's 2 year development and beta testing, that procedure was actually there - RC controllers would always add millibars when the QNH was less than 1000! Just before release, I asked jd to remove it and I'm now kicking myself for doing that. The reason I had it removed was because the UK is one of the very few countries (perhaps the only one) that still uses millibars - all the rest use hectopascals. Although for all practical purposes, 1mB = 1hPa so there's no difference in the value, just the name, I thought there was more chance of complaints from users that RC was unrealistic in not using hPa than there was of anyone mixing up the pressure settings. Well, we all make mistakes.The message here for the RC team is to record a "hectopascals" wav and to return the procedure to use with that wav. I hope jd and/or Ray will pick this up and add it to a future release.I nearly forgot the second part of your question. I'm not entirely certain that anyone, even jd, has a complete knowledge of all the possible phrases in RC but I've never come across one that's anything like "and that will be your final". If you attach your plan here and let me know the QNH, your cruise altitude/level and the landing runway that was in use at EHKD, I'll fly your plan and see if I can work out what instruction you were given.BestPete

Thanks, that would be good - do let us know what happens.Pete

No, if your altitude deviation is set to 300ft and you are less than this distance away from your assigned altitude/level, RC will not "bust" you for failing to maintain altitude level. Despite what you say about the QNH, the most likely cause is a mis-set altimeter. Can you provide some more details please?Pete

Whoa, steady on, Ray - Mark is a Kiwi not an Aussie! There's a huge difference in the accent, you know. Whereas an Aussie would describe our national dish as "feesh and cheeps", to a Kiwi, it would be "fush and chups". :) Fascinating.Oh and by the way, knowing your predilection for oxymorons, I bet you spotted Mark's cracker - you know, the one about "cultured citizens"! :D PP

>>Is it mandatory to have the same flight plan created in FSBuid or FSCommander etc, be activated in the flight planner menu of FS2004? No it isn't. RC does not require a plan to be loaded onto FS to function. Obviously, if you wanted to use the FS GPS as your navigation system (or for example, the feelThere B737 FMC)you would have to load the plan to FS as well but RC functions entirely separately from these or any other nav systems.Pete

>>Is it possible that someone out there might have a solution for the annoying habit that FS9 has of reminding that the altimiter is not set correctly. <<Yep. In FS, go to the 'Aircraft' menu and select 'Realism Settings...'. Uncheck the box labelled 'Display Flying Tips' (top right-hand corner) and FS won't bother you again about a mis-set altimeter.Pete

>>Yes I wrote 14000ft but of course it is FL140 (that is 14000ft ?)<<>>What do you mean: >> But, my guess is that if you are flying in Europe then there isn't an altitude of 14000ft.<<Roger, Looking at those quotes above from your reply to Ray, it's pretty certain that your problem is caused by an incorrect altimeter setting. Before you do anything else, may I suggest you read this post: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=16233&page=3Just substitute your 14,000ft/FL140 for the example 8,000ft/FL80 and it may help to explain why you are having problems.Pete

Mike,RC uses the following information from your flight plan:1. Departure and destination airports so it knows where you are and where you want to go;2. The waypoints (actually their lat/lon) on your route so that it knows how you want to get to where your going;3. The cruising altitude/level you've filed.It does its own calculations to work out the required track between the filed waypoints and the position where descent clearance is given. I don't quite understand what you mean by "I seem to have problems at times with altitude restrictions that are ignored by rc4". Could you explain a little more?Pete

Tyrolean was one of a small number airline names we recorded which were missed out in the list of available callsigns. It's a very simple process for you to add it. First, copy the line below:Tyrolean,Tyrolean,Tyrolean Airways - Austria,0, 0 Then, open your RC4data directory where you'll find the c4.csv file which holds these callsigns. IMPORTANT: Open this file with Notepad or another text editor and NOT Excel or another spreadsheet!Paste the dataline into the file and save it. Start Radar Contact and the callsign "Tyrolean" should now be available from the drop-down list.Petehttp://www.jdtllc.com/images/rcv4bannerbeta.jpg

You're welcome, Ian and thanks for taking the time to report back. It's always nice to know the final outcome.BestPetehttp://www.jdtllc.com/images/rcv4bannerbeta.jpg

>>I was perfoming a 'PD' and letting the aircraft follow the FMC VNav Path<

>>During the last flight I was vectored by centre and told to fly heading xyz. I tried to ignore and continue flying the STAR however after the third time I thought I had better follow instructions and turned away from the STAR I was trying to fly. After about 10 miles I was then handed to Approach and was able to select an IAP.<