IT-AUTOFLIGHT RC3 (Beta Testers Needed!) (Page 6)

[Octal450]

No-one?

[KL-666]

I need a saturday or sunday afternoon without visitors for testing. You do not expect me to approach Jomo on a friday night with a plane i am not sure of to be able to control, do you? You know what happens then So this or next weekend i'll give it a try.

Kind regards, Vincent

[Octal450]

Yes, makes sense.

Note that the worst thing that would happen is it fails to activate descent/climb at the proper time, you can always push FLCH, or HLD and revert to manual climb/descent/hold

The actual flying part of the AP uses the same PIDs as manual function, think of VNAV pushing the buttons in the dialog for you, at the optimum time.

Regards,
Josh

Note:
in 8 days I got Florida, and I work with my Math Professor Grandfather on more calculations for VNAV, so then I will be hoping to know whether the current logic works, so I can add descent calculation, and optimum descent FPM calc and so on.

[KL-666]

In the md-82 i could not find a VNAV button, and in the md-88 i found one on the AP dialog. But it was greyed out. How to activate VNAV?

Kind regards, Vincent

[Octal450]

There is no VNAV button in the cockpits, as I don't want people pressing it unless they know what are they doing.

There are 2 ways:
temporary:
Open DEBUG-->Internal properties

Set /it-autoflight/settings/vnav-test to 1 (or true)

VNAV buttons should be available in ITAF box now.

permanent:
Open Nasal/it-autoflight.nas
PASTE this on LINE 7 under print("IT-AUTOFLIGHT: Please Wait!");

setprop("/it-autoflight/settings/vnav-test", 1);

Now the VNAV button is enabled int he ITAF box forever, until you download an update to the aircraft.

Josh

[Octal450]

Gents, I've pushed a quick bugfix (167), as well, the ITAF changelog is now available here!

[KL-666]

I flew this flightplan with the md-88.

LEBL
LOTOS FL227
SOPET FL340
VLC FL340
NARGO FL281
RESTU FL160
LEAM

Climbing works as expected. It leveled off at FL227 until LOTOS from where the climb to FL340 started.

But the descent does not adhere to the levels in the plan. From VLC i would expect a descent to FL281. But the plane just continued at FL340. At about 100 mi from LEAM (between NARGO and RESTU) it finally started to descend. Before RESTU it leveled correctly at FL160 and after RESTU it descended to the set altitude in AP.

So the thing that does not work is to respect lower altitudes in the plan. The plane seems to want to decide on it's own top of descent, regardless that the flightplan says that it should be lower already.

Kind regards, Vincent

[Octal450]

Hmm okay.

Keep in mind that it won't start descending until the calculated top of descent point. This is correct. It should have met the restriction though. But I may need to tune that calculation so it can meet the restriction. What altitude did it cross NARGO?

Thx
Josh

[KL-666]

NARGO FL340. It stayed all the time on 340 until it decided to desc between NARGO and RESTU some 100 mi from LEAM. I think it should have gone down to FL281 from VLC to NARGO.

Kind regards, Vincent

[Octal450]

OK something is definitely not right. Thanks Vincent!
I'll test it out and see if I can find the source if this issue.

Josh