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Any advanced tutorial planned?


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This great tool is being used by me right now probably to 30% of it's capacity. I don't know how to plan an over the ocean flight, or ETOPs, just simple routes. Is there an advanced planning tutorial schedule?

Thank you!

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Hi Alec,

Planning flights over the pond is actually quite easy. When you click on the open route field, click "Find". It should find a suitable route for you. Then, you will see a tab marked red at the top of your plan called "Advanced". The second menu down says "ETOPS". When you click on that it will actually give you suggestions for suitable ETOPS airports. What you do then is start entering them in the open blocks. You will see their timed circles start appearing on your map view on the right. Enter your airports so your entire route is covered. You'll then see the light at the top switch from red to green. Click Compute at the top, and you're off!

While I can't say if there will be an advanced tutorial or not, hopefully I helped answer some of your questions. This is just a basic run through though. If you need screenshots of what I mean, I'll be glad to. Just know it may take a day or two due to my work schedule.

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This great tool is being used by me right now probably to 30% of it's capacity. I don't know how to plan an over the ocean flight, or ETOPs, just simple routes. Is there an advanced planning tutorial schedule?

Thank you!

I am hoping that Christian or someone will do this soon. I want to be able to put this tool thru' its paces.

As it stands, it is readily evident that there is much much more to this tool.

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Thanks for the basic ETOPS tutorial! PMDG 777 Advanced Tutorial will probably use PFPX in it's totality, but I don't know if they will teach us how to use it, or just show the end result!

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I believe Scandinavian13 (Kyle Rodgers) over at the AVSIM forums is going to create a tutorial, probably based on the PMDG 777. I don't know what skill level it will be geared to, but he knows his stuff and I expect it will be intermediate at a minimum.

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Hi Alec,

Planning flights over the pond is actually quite easy. When you click on the open route field, click "Find". It should find a suitable route for you. Then, you will see a tab marked red at the top of your plan called "Advanced". The second menu down says "ETOPS". When you click on that it will actually give you suggestions for suitable ETOPS airports. What you do then is start entering them in the open blocks. You will see their timed circles start appearing on your map view on the right. Enter your airports so your entire route is covered. You'll then see the light at the top switch from red to green. Click Compute at the top, and you're off!

No it does not do that. What it gives you are adequate airports along the route that are within 60min reach of your path. The portion it cannot connect with adequate airport circles defines the ETOPS segment. You do not know if the airports on that list meet the ETOPS minima and thus they may very well not be ETOPS suitable at all. You can keep the list of adequate airports as is, and manually find, evaluate and put ETP airports in the blocks, considering weather and NOTAMS etc. Weather is very easily fetched from the map when you put the cursor over the airport. If on a 180 rule, you only need EINN and CYJT (as an example) as your ETOPS alternates and it gets the job done. The 180min circles will cover the ETOPS segment and you will have a valid route. Don't put the adequate airports in the blocks, it might very well leave you with uncovered ETOPS segment and in certain routes there won't be enough blocks.

Because of weather concerns, on my flight to Montreal later today, my two ETOPS alternates will be EINN and KBGR, because CYYT, CYJT may end up not meeting the ETOPS minima with the low ceiling forecast there. KBGR offers a better alternative for today. Point is, adequate airports is a list made with aircraft performance in mind disregarding wx. It defines the ETOPS segment of the route, but it does not solve the ETOPS alternate issue. That you do yourself after checking everything is in order in terms of weather. If for example I were to divert to CYYT this evening(zulu) with one engine inoperative as well as a decompression scenario, I would get there and find a ceiling of 800ft and a crosswind component of 17KTS. This is a foreact for 2200Z, The minima for CYYT is 300ft of ceiling and that I am not risking :D. PFPX is an amazing piece of software that does a lot and enables us to do neat stuff but it won't do everything for you. You need to get familiar with the concepts and make sense out of ETPs and critical fuel scenarios, weather minima for ETOPS, go through the NOTAMs etc. You will check the same while enroute to make sure those minimas are indeed met and if not re-plan.

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