CRJ freeze when in MCDU

[Ha_Ma]

Yesterday, during a flight, i wanted to change the approach in the MCDU. After deleting some waypoints, the MCDU suddenly did no longer react on button press. The pressed buttons move optical and give acustical feedback, but the display was frozen. After this i realised that this happend with the complete cockpit. Any button i pressed moved and made "klick", but no system showed a reaction to its button press. The plane kept on flightplan and the Sim went on, ATC was chatting and so on. I had to stop the flight via main menu then.

I've had this for the first time, but as i wrote about this in an other german forum, some guy answered that it happens often to him when he is for longer in the MCDU of the CRJ.

[Mathijs Kok]

What version of the CRJ are you using?
And is it Marketplace?

 

[Ha_Ma]

Not from marketplace, Install via Aerosoft One. This happened with 900 in Delta livery. Usualy i use the 900 in LH or SAS liveries.

[Mathijs Kok]

Are you able to recreate this (and describe) so we can test it as well?

[Ha_Ma]

I can try, but as i wrote in first post, i have had this the first time in many hours. A guy in the other forum said he can reproduce it, when he stays in the MCDU "for longer time".

What i had done is deleting the runway and the STARs back to the transition, because i wanted to change the runway with a new approach. After deleting these points i made "exec" and klicked dep/appr then the approach page came up and that was the moment when everything freezes.

[Mathijs Kok]

Every occasion of this issue we were able to recreate we were able to solve.  But if there are more issues we simply need to know what to do to trigger the issue.

[Ha_Ma]

I will try to reproduce this issue. But i cannot say when... Will type here when i have tested.

[Ha_Ma]

Well, i have tested and sadly i can report that i can reproduce that failure.

I have started the CRJ 900, Delta Livery, started up the aircraft as i always do (following checklist) and imported a flight plan from simbrief. Eyerything works as it should.

After around half an hour in the air, i decide to change the approach and runway (don't ask why, i just wanted so )

So i go in the Legs page of the MCDU and delete all waypoints from approach transition on. Then i press DEP/APPR and the right page opens but at the same moment all systems of the aircraft do freeze. As i told above all switches and rotaries move and give acoustical feedback, but there is no more reaction to any of these. Only rudder, aileron (both without optical feedback) and roll (with optical feddback) seem to work.

[Richard Dastardly]

12 hours ago, Ha_Ma said:

Well, i have tested and sadly i can report that i can reproduce that failure.

I have started the CRJ 900, Delta Livery, started up the aircraft as i always do (following checklist) and imported a flight plan from simbrief. Eyerything works as it should.

After around half an hour in the air, i decide to change the approach and runway (don't ask why, i just wanted so )

So i go in the Legs page of the MCDU and delete all waypoints from approach transition on. Then i press DEP/APPR and the right page opens but at the same moment all systems of the aircraft do freeze. As i told above all switches and rotaries move and give acoustical feedback, but there is no more reaction to any of these. Only rudder, aileron (both without optical feedback) and roll (with optical feddback) seem to work.

The bold bit seems to indicate it's the well known long-standing systems crash. I thought that'd been fixed somewhat in the last update, though.

[Ha_Ma]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Richard Dastardly:

I thought that'd been fixed somewhat in the last update, though

Well, seemingly not fixed finaly. Or maybe SU10 changed something what brought back the issue? I don't know...

In the german forum another guy reported freezes like this, but caused in another way...

[Mathijs Kok]

If we get the info on what steps causes the issue, it would really help.

[Ha_Ma]

Am 7.10.2022 um 18:06 schrieb Mathijs Kok:

If we get the info on what steps causes the issue, it would really help.

Sorry, but don't you read my posts?

Am 6.10.2022 um 21:46 schrieb Ha_Ma:

Well, i have tested and sadly i can report that i can reproduce that failure.

I have started the CRJ 900, Delta Livery, started up the aircraft as i always do (following checklist) and imported a flight plan from simbrief. Eyerything works as it should.

After around half an hour in the air, i decide to change the approach and runway (don't ask why, i just wanted so )

So i go in the Legs page of the MCDU and delete all waypoints from approach transition on. Then i press DEP/APPR and the right page opens but at the same moment all systems of the aircraft do freeze. As i told above all switches and rotaries move and give acoustical feedback, but there is no more reaction to any of these. Only rudder, aileron (both without optical feedback) and roll (with optical feddback) seem to work.

Maybe i misunderstand your question for "steps", so please define it for me.

[Secondator]

It always helps us if you can find a case where the issue can be recreated and explicitly give the steps how it can be recreated. It makes it easier for us to investigate when we have a clear case we can try to check and see if firstly we are able to recreate as well, and if we are, use that case to check for any potential fixes. I understood that you were able to recreate the issue as well, but it still took me few tries with the instructions you gave to find the exact cases where it happens. So, in the end, I was able to recreate this issue after some investigation in certain fairly specific cases. I will use this also as an example of reporting an explicit case to recreate the issue.

I tried to recreate this issue on a flight from EFHK to EFOU flying a route EFHK/22R TEVRU3N TEVRU Y75 SUVIB EFOU/ILSZ12.TEGBO (transition). I loaded the route in normally including the departure runway, SID, STAR, ILS and the transition. Next, I went to the LEGS page and started to remove waypoints by deleting them manually from the very bottom of the LEGS page starting from ADKIN all the way TEGBO but left SUVIB still in the LEGS page. Then I went back to DEP/ARR page to select new arrival for EFOU and right after I had the runway selected again for ILS Z 12 the FMS freezes. The FMS does not freeze if I delete the waypoints all the way to GITVU and leave TEGBO on the LEGS page before selecting the new approach. In other words, the FMS freezes only if I delete all the waypoints manually on the LEGS page that I previously had selected as the approach procedure through the DEP/ARR page. Also, if I leave ADKIN and start the deletion from altitude waypoint (700) and delete everything all the way to TEGBO leaving SUVIB in the LEGS, I am not able to reproduce the freeze. I used the latest Navigraph AIRAC 2010 for this test.

 

This gives us clear steps how to recreate the issue at one go instead of trying to guess what kind of routes, steps, configurations, procedures etc. could cause this issue to first find a case on our side where we can recreate the issue. It also increases the chances that the issue that you experience will get promptly fixed and is not easily overlooked because we could not find a test case where we could recreate the issue to begin with due to ambiguous instructions. It's simply not possible for us to spend hours upon hours interpreting what the user might actually have done to cause the issue. We always try, and if we cannot find a way, we ask for more information for the very steps that caused the issue to make sure that we are doing things the same way. I understand that it's not always easy to give these instructions because these issues can happen out of nowhere and it's hard to remember the exact steps. But it always helps us if you can find a way to recreate it to give the exact steps including the exact flight plan, procedures selected, exact point where the issue happens and any edge cases where the issue might not happen that can give us a jump start for our own investigations.

 

Now about the issue itself. I have noted this down on our issue tracker and forwarded it to the developer. But it should be also noted that this is not really a correct way to change your arrival procedure by manually just deleting the remaining flight plan on the LEGS page. You can simply overwrite an existing approach with new approach by not deleting anything on the LEGS page, going into the DEP/ARR page and selecting the new procedures you want to follow. This is the standard way to handle this case where approach procedure must be changed and should not cause any issues with the FMS. But nevertheless, the FMS should not cause a fatal freeze that ends the flight in any case, so we'll have a look into it.

[Ha_Ma]

Thank you @Secondator, this was a clear answer that i understand and i will keep this in mind for the future.

Am 9.10.2022 um 17:20 schrieb Secondator:

You can simply overwrite an existing approach with new approach by not deleting anything on the LEGS page, going into the DEP/ARR page and selecting the new procedures you want to follow. This is the standard way to handle this case where approach procedure must be changed and should not cause any issues with the FMS

This is the way i usualy done this. But nearly every time i have had approaches with double waypoints or some not been overwritten, so the complete approach was a chaos and i had to sort it.

That is the reason why i wanted to try it by deleting legs first...