Any Australian pilots got the FMC working?

[kneighbour]

I was wondering if anyone flying in Australia has got the FMC to work without Gizmo crashes?  I have only had one occasion where entering a flight plan worked, and at that time I could not fly as I had to go to work! Every other time it has crashed. On some flights I get to the point where a dotted magenta line is visible, so I can fly the route manually. On some flights I still fly after the Gizmo crash, but that can be fraught with risk (things often do not work). I am becoming very gunshy - hate touching the FMC as the chance of a crash is so high.

I think the problem (or at least one problem) is that the IRS thinks we are in the Northern hemisphere. If this is the case, then no other Australian (or NZ) flights should work either. I seem to recall one other pilot mentioned the same problem - but was wondering if anyone has managed to get it to work? 

[lomel]

Hi there,

I am using co-route file input flight plan and it's working fine. I have not tried departure from any of Australian airport yet. I will try tonight from Brisbane. 

[mmerelles]

On 2 de mayo de 2016 at 4:05 PM, kneighbour said:

I was wondering if anyone flying in Australia has got the FMC to work without Gizmo crashes?  I have only had one occasion where entering a flight plan worked, and at that time I could not fly as I had to go to work! Every other time it has crashed. On some flights I get to the point where a dotted magenta line is visible, so I can fly the route manually. On some flights I still fly after the Gizmo crash, but that can be fraught with risk (things often do not work). I am becoming very gunshy - hate touching the FMC as the chance of a crash is so high.

I think the problem (or at least one problem) is that the IRS thinks we are in the Northern hemisphere. If this is the case, then no other Australian (or NZ) flights should work either. I seem to recall one other pilot mentioned the same problem - but was wondering if anyone has managed to get it to work? 

 

ohhh i got your post via your profile posting.

Not much description here as well, but i presume you are using the GPS position resulting from entering the airport ICAO as gps reference. The FMC always assumes to be in the northern hemisphere, this is a known bug.

To align your IRS, press POS then press NEXT PAGE and clic the LSK of the current aircraft GPS position for copying it to the scratchpad, then press PREV PAGE and paste on the GPS RSK for alignment. You will be good to go.

 

If you have any other issue please share us more details

Edited May 4, 2016 by mmerelles
misspelling

[kneighbour]

Yep - tried that. Did not work. Mind you, there is a back story. I start with the engines running - so everything is aligned. So I turn the IRS to off, then back to NAV. If you then try to do the alignment as you say, it does not work. You cannot select the GPS values. I have even tried to type the Lat/Lon in manually, but that does not work either.

[mmerelles]

can you try cold & dark just to confirm?

 

if you share me your airport, route, procedures i can try to help you out if anyway to get it re-aligned and working starting ready to fly.

[kneighbour]

8 minutes ago, mmerelles said:

can you try cold & dark just to confirm?

 

if you share me your airport, route, procedures i can try to help you out if anyway to get it re-aligned and working starting ready to fly.

Yes. I have the thing on 'Turnaround' so that next time at least it will not be with engines running. I think I have tried cold start, but when I did I did not (at the time) notice that it was putting in the Lat as N, and not S. 

I put the route that I have been trying to fly in another post. Getting pretty close to cross posting here! 

I am at work at the moment, so cannot easily do any tests. But I understand what you are saying - I need to make sure that the IRS has been aligned correctly. 

 

[WR269]

I have done plenty of flights in Oz, no issues but I always start Cold and Dark....no point having all those systems if you are not going to use them [emoji106].

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kneighbour]

21 minutes ago, WR269 said:

I have done plenty of flights in Oz, no issues but I always start Cold and Dark....no point having all those systems if you are not going to use them .

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Good to know. Do you manually set the IRS position?  ie use one of the GPS locations, or enter the position manually?    

And I understand that it is very rare for a RL pilot to go through the Cold and Dark sequence, so I could claim to be a bit more realistic

 

Edited May 4, 2016 by kneighbour

[kneighbour]

Well, I did a Cold and Dark start, and made sure to align the IRS with the correct GPS settings, and not the Departure airport. Still get a Gizmo crash when I add the STAR transition

 

[poodster]

14 minutes ago, kneighbour said:

Well, I did a Cold and Dark start, and made sure to align the IRS with the correct GPS settings, and not the Departure airport. Still get a Gizmo crash when I add the STAR transition

 

Can you show us a video of what you are doing. Because you seem to be causing something. Also can you attach your gizmo and x plane log file. Also attach a debug log file by pressing the dot button 4 times.

[kneighbour]

23 minutes ago, poodster said:

 Also attach a debug log file by pressing the dot button 4 times.

Will do - but what is the Dot Button?

[poodster]

25 minutes ago, kneighbour said:

Will do - but what is the Dot Button?

This: "."  the period key

[mgeiss]

The decimal point button on the FMC/CDU.

[kneighbour]

Pressing the Period button on the FMC does not seem to do anything except generate an error message. But there was a Cycle dump file so included that.

Youtube video showing the problem

Gizmo errors

This happens 99.99% of the time. Can reproduce it every time. 

Started the plane cold and dark. Put on external power, turned battery on and switched IRS to NAV. That is where the video starts.

Log.txt

GizmoLog.txt

Cycle Dump.txt

[poodster]

1 hour ago, kneighbour said:

Pressing the Period button on the FMC does not seem to do anything except generate an error message. But there was a Cycle dump file so included that.

Youtube video showing the problem

Gizmo errors

This happens 99.99% of the time. Can reproduce it every time. 

Started the plane cold and dark. Put on external power, turned battery on and switched IRS to NAV. That is where the video starts.

Log.txt

GizmoLog.txt

Cycle Dump.txt

I think I know why. Enter the perf page first and then do the route. I'll bet you won't have a crash. If I remember, Tom said he fixed the issue where you put in a route before entering anything into the perf page for the net hot fix. It was because the fms is trying to sort out the vnav path without any cruise altitude. 

 

Just a quick question. Does it crash every time no matter what route you enter in with the method you are using? 

Edited May 4, 2016 by poodster

[Litjan]

1 hour ago, kneighbour said:

Pressing the Period button on the FMC does not seem to do anything except generate an error message. But there was a Cycle dump file so included that.

Youtube video showing the problem

Gizmo errors

This happens 99.99% of the time. Can reproduce it every time. 

Started the plane cold and dark. Put on external power, turned battery on and switched IRS to NAV. That is where the video starts.

Log.txt

GizmoLog.txt

Cycle Dump.txt

Hi Kerry,

this is an excellent bug report - almost perfect. The debug.txt can sometimes not be generated (four times .... on the left CDU) because either the code crashed too bad before, or the user hasn´t selected the "DEBUG mode" option in the PREFERENCES.

I believe that Tom has already fixed this bug in the next version coming up - there was a bad quirk in the STAR and TRANSITION selection process, that hit a lot of people...

I will forward this to him just to make sure it is the same error, and please do me a favour and check again after the next update, would you?

The N/S thing will also be fixed - just be aware that sometimes using the REFERENCE AIRPORT position is not accurate enough - especially on big airports. Use the GPS like you did, that should work fine everytime.

Thanks again, Jan

 

[kneighbour]

No problems. I was holding off flying the plane until the next update came out. Too many workarounds to keep track of!  Hopefully the next update will not be too long as I am dying to do some 'real' flights.

And hey, I am a programmer- fixing bugs is my job.