Position Reporting

[awralls]

Gents, can you advise the factors that cause the 'Positon' option under Comms to be greyed out?

Thanks

Andy

[peter]

Hi Andy,

that usually happens when

- you haven't reported TOC yeat
- you have already reported TOD
- you failed to report a position for too long.

Cheers,
Peter

[awralls]

OK, so if I get a call saying I'm late to report TOC, then I immediately report it, would you expect it to be greyed out?

Is altitude a factor? For example, if I climb or descend to avoid ice or turbulence, and leave my filed cruise alt, would that cause position to be greyed out?

Thanks,

Andy

[peter]

Apr 16, 2019 17:22:49 GMT -5 awralls said:

OK, so if I get a call saying I'm late to report TOC, then I immediately report it, would you expect it to be greyed out?

Nope. If you really report right away (< 10 seconds?), then - in my experience - FSCaptain accepts your report without an issue. I am not sure what happens if you wait for 30 seconds, though. My recollection is that the FCDU will relatively quickly deny you the possibility to submit further reports. Dutch or Travis may provide more details when they get to this thread.

Cheers,
Peter

[Travis]

Hi Andy,

TOC / Position Reporting had a thorough review in the latest 1.8.1 SP releases. The "Grace Period" for a missed report had been fairly fuzzy, so after consulting with the ACME Pilots Union, a new protocol was established.

Peter is correct in that the "<POSITION" switch is only available once you've made a TOC call (if you're in the air obviously), and is not available after you make a TOD call.

If you miss TOC or a single POS report, you are "Cautioned" to submit the report ASAP. You have until your next reporting cycle to make that report... at which time the "report timer" resets and the report cycle starts again.

Your "Time since" line in the FCDU will turn Yellow to denote that you're in a Caution situation. There's no Penalty assigned, and if you make all of your remaining report calls, you will get the +2 bonus points when you go IN.

If you miss two reports (either TOC and a POS, or two POSes - and they don't have to be consecutive POSes) then you're penalized. The "<POSITION" switch is then disabled, since its purpose is moot at this point. And the "Time Since" line will turn Red for a while to indicate the Penalty... then will eventually turn gray / grey until TOD.

We don't have a concept of "Flight Level Change" for now, so altitude doesn't come into play except if you have travelled more than 1/2 of your Block Time. and you descend more than 1/3'd of your max altitude. We will automatically call TOD, and you're on your own then. We'll also call TOD if you have travelled more than 1/2 of your Block Time, and you're descending over 500fpm and have lost 25% or more of your max altitude.

Best,

[awralls]

Trav,

Thanks for the explanation. I only patched to SP2 yesterday after doing a 6 hour flight during which I missed the TOC call by a couple of seconds only and it still greyed out the POSITION call for the rest of the flight. I'm going to fly a couple of legs today and I'll see how the changes affect things.

My only comment on the criteria for calling TOD would have to do with low-altitude flights. Descending 1/3 of filed altitude if you're at FL300 is fine, but not so much when you're cruising at 11,000 and there's dodgy wx up ahead. You may need to drop 4000-5000 and bang goes your TOD call. Any chance this could be adjustable?

Cheers,

Andy