Everything you wanted to know about route planning in the PMDG 737-700 FMC but were afraid to ask

hello today we're going to have a look at the flight management computer in the pmdg 737-700 for microsoft flight simulator so first things first you would imagine when you get into a cold dark 737 you would have to provide some power before you can turn the fmc on but the pmdg one that isn't true i found this out yesterday if you hold the menu button on when you're cold and dark it powers up so the reason for this is you can only get to the pmdg setup menu and you can get to fs actions so you can come in here and you can configure your aircraft for example to change the hardware on the aircraft you also you can save and load your panel states so if you wanted to load straight into a ready to take off configuration you can do that in load panel state so we'll select runway for example and we'll execute that and the aircraft comes to life it will take a few moments for the ephis system and the flight control systems to all power up properly but the engines are spooling up as we speak if we go and sit outside you can hear everything coming to life so give it a few moments for that to happen and while that's happening let's go and look at little nav map and see where we are and what we're going to do so we are at stansted airport we're parked up on the ground and we're going to program this very short route in which i've used in some of the other demonstration videos but we're using it on purpose because we're going to use it to meddle with the flight plan to show some of the functionality that's in the fmc to do with managing flight plans and legs and waypoints so hopefully this will be very instructive for anybody that's not seen any of this before and for some people even if they're experienced they'll think oh my word i didn't know it could do that well that's the plan anyway okay we're just waiting for things to power up in the cockpit hopefully the the screens will come on very soon it usually takes about a minute for it to happen we'll give it some time if you've never seen this before people often ask me on the videos i've recorded how do you get the aircraft to either start in a cold and dark state or in a different state so if you go into the pmdg setup menu in the fmc you can see that there is a startup state and you can choose from the predefined states and there's three pages of them so we just chose runway obviously but there are lots of others so cold and dark for example so on my startup state i've got cold and dark so normally i work up the aircraft myself the advantage of doing that is i know what i've done okay and the the checklists i've made available to download on some of my other videos um they rely on that cold and dark state okay so the aircraft is up and running it's actually ready to roll on the runway so that was a rather fast way of starting it wasn't it so let's go and program our flight plan which we haven't done yet so we go to the menu page of the flight management computer we click on fmc we go to pause in it like we normally would and it's already been done but we can put in our reference airport e g s s for stansted then we go to our root page the origin of our route is stansted we are going to pretend to fly up to edinburgh e g p h and we are going to take off from runway 22 at stansted and then if we go to the departure arrival button we are going to leave stanstead on runway 22 and the bky 5r standard instrument departure so then if we go to the root page and activate and execute that gets things ready so we can actually fly in this configuration but if we go and look in the legs page that obviously hasn't been done and we haven't set up the initialization parameters so we'll quickly whiz through this i do this in more detail in another video so i'm not going to cover it in great detail here so a thousand pounds of reserve fuel cost index 20. um we're not going to bother putting any winds in and we're going to go to n1 limit oh forgot to put the cruise altitude in so we'll say 32 000 and n1 limit and takeoff and 5 degree flat that will let us calculate the v speeds and calculate center of gravity which gives us the trim 5.87 so we then look across to the trim wheel and we spin it until the the small needle goes to 5.8 ish on the on the uh the take-off margin there so there we go and that's done and that's pretty much it as far as we're concerned for today so we'll also go and program our arrival into edinburgh so we'll arrive on runway six we'll take the agp e1e standard approach route and we'll execute that and if we go and look in the legs page and we go to the next page of the links we'll find there's a discontinuity in the middle of our route so this is where we get into changing our routes we are going to put a waypoint in the middle of our route so at the moment we've got the legs up to the end of the standard instrument departure and then the beginning of the standard approach route and obviously the the fmc or flight management computer is not going to guess what's going on in between so we're going to put in a waypoint called tnt for trent which is a vor station and we'll insert it and there's trent and we insert it and it's put it in between the end of the sid beginning of the star and made another discontinuity so we can close that up by selecting agped which is the first waypoint after the discontinuity and then select the discontinuity which will pull it up okay we'll execute that and you can see that has closed the gap if we go and look further down our flight plan there's another discontinuity so that's quite common the reason for that if we look at our flight plan if you notice the star ends at t-i-r-t-a-r-t-n and the approach doesn't start until ci06 so there's another area of the flight plan that the fmc is not going to solve for us so we can just close it up and say execute and that's closed that up so we now have no discontinuities in our flight plan okay so we're going to take off and get on route so i'm going to pause recording until i've done the take off because obviously that's going to save you some time on watching a video of seeing yet another take off and i'll restart again while we're on route okay so you rejoined me and we're climbing out of stansted we're on a level change up to 10 000 feet at the moment so we'll continue that up to 32 000 it really makes no difference to us at the moment so we're not going to get into using the master control panel today but we are going to have another look in a moment at the flight management computer and the first thing we are going to do just get this rolled around to 32 000 there it goes okay so you can see there are the waypoints of our standard instrument departure from stansted ahead of us okay so the first thing we're going to do is change our route and do a direct two so how do we do a direct two let's go and look at the legs page on the fmc and you can see here's all of our weight points and we remember we inserted tnt mid route what happens if we want to go straight to tnt so we select it which puts it in the scratch pad and then we select the top line in the legs page on the first page and it's effectively going to modify the route and we're going to go straight to tnt so we effectively pulled from tnt the whole flight plan upwards over the top of anything that was there and we say execute and we're now going direct to tnt so you can see the plane is already turning left okay so the next thing we're going to do is vector waypoints so if we go and change the map to plan mode we can see oh that's fortuitous it's centered on tnt because it's the next waypoint basically what if after tnt we were actually wanted to carry on rather than turning north up to eggped which is 124 miles north of tnt what if we wanted to go another 300 degrees for another 15 miles or so so let's increase the range on the efis display what if we wanted to carry on this way so what we can do is key into the fmc tnt and then a bearing from tnt so 300 degrees then a slash and then the distance to go so 15 miles after tnt at 300 degrees so after tnt so to insert a waypoint remember we can just select an existing one and it will insert it in front of it and move that down okay so that's done that look what's happened so 300 degrees from tnt 15 miles and it's made a new waypoint called tnt01 so then we can close up the discontinuity and we can see that's a new part of the route and we can execute that okay so that's how you can make vectors now the important thing now if we have a look at that on little nav map so we've made an extra waypoint out here somewhere that doesn't refer to anywhere on the map and we based it on somewhere on our flight path the clever thing is you don't have to it doesn't have to have anything to do with your flight path so we could put in oh let me stop this from centering on the aircraft we could put in another waypoint referenced from tiphill so say five miles south of tipil so if we go step on this to center ourself on on here and we could say actually can you show us the waypoints on here that's interesting i thought that was going to show us all of the the nearby ones let's have a look maybe they're too far away at the moment we can see yeah everything's too far away to see it easily okay so what we're going to do though is type in tipil that's a shame otherwise that would have been a lot easier to see what i'm about to do so t-i-p-i-l yeah and then 180 degrees from it and say five miles along that track and we'll do that in front of eggplant as well ah it's because it's behind where we're talking about okay so you can see it's figuring out where to put that into the root so we'll execute that so it's made another part of the root that's in reference to typical okay and it's got a discontinuity obviously but we can delete that back out we don't have to use it and we can close that gap up and execute but what all i'm really trying to say here is you can base the the roots on any waypoints you want so let's do one from roddle just do one more to make this obvious what we're doing so we go roddle so instead of going straight to roddle we're going to go at say 90 degrees from it and 5 miles from roddle and we'll do that after our tnt one oh it doesn't know where rodol is that's interesting oh we have we've keyed it slightly wrong it's zero nine zero so that's a really good pointer there so you have to do the i've keyed it wrong again haven't i zero nine zero slash five so the the angle has to be and it's asking which rod all we mean so it's going to be the 53 degree one because it's in the uk and there you go yeah so relative to rodol we've made a new waypoint and we can close that up and execute so we're making these points the aircraft must fly through that are near other waypoints now it gets even more clever than that so let's go and remove these ones because we're not actually going to use it delete and delete and close the gap up so we've got rid of our custom waypoints so we're back on the path we originally planned what if leaving tnt we wanted to fly through a point on this route that we're flying along that passes tipple but we need to put an entry point in here to maybe change direction at that point so what you can do and this is called a beam waypoint you can go into fix and say say if we type in tipil t i p i l and we type and we click the abm soft key what is done is calculated the closest point on our route to tipil as a reference from tipil so if we click on that again it puts the full reference in the scratchpad for us so then we can go over to the legs page so after tnt before agped we can insert this close up that gap and execute it and look what it's done on the flight plan if i zoom in slightly so you can see there's tiphill and it's made a waypoint marker that's on our existing route so it's done a vector waypoint for us that's on our route so we could use it as a turning point perhaps okay another thing we might want to do we're flying towards tnt at the moment when you're looking at your flight plan you'll notice that the aircraft automatically figures out the route between the waypoints so for the for the one you're actually flying towards you can change that route in so we can change the radial so we're going 317 degrees into tnt at the moment what we can do if we click on the root page sorry wrong page if we go to the legs page sorry select tnt select tnt again so you're modifying tnt this will only work for the first leg in the list that you're actually flying towards it comes up saying interception course okay and it's saying 316 degrees at the moment so in other words we're flying 316 to get there what if we wanted to fly 350 to get there so we'll go here and we'll type clear this and we'll go three five zero and put that in instead so we want to fly it and notice it's put it onto the flight plan we want to fly actually the 350 radial into tnt so we can execute that so then if we are flying in el nav mode which should be working oh we've got the wrong speed up here sorry i'm busy killing the airplane while we're doing this let's go to altitude hold mode for the moment let the aircraft recover while i was busy talking obviously we were not taking any notice of the airplane and we'll go back to el nav now or it should let us see look now we are not on an intercept heading okay which makes perfect sense if we go and zoom out and show this and zoom out further yet we're not on an intercept heading for that course so we need to enter heading select mode and we need to tell the aircraft to go on to an intercept heading for us so it's not going to perform wonders so we're just changing our heading for heading select mode which is fine so now we are on an intercept heading notice it says that down here we can then say el nav and it jumps across and it will intercept for us and you can see it's already plotted the route and the turn to make so that was changing the intercept course for the waypoint we are heading towards and the reason you might do that is atc might tell you i want you to fly into this vor from this direction okay the other trick we can do is an offset course so we're flying along and imagine there's another aircraft exactly on our track and we want to go around them wouldn't it be great if we could just fly a few miles to the the left or the right for a while so what you can do is click on the root button and you can click on offset and you can say l or r and a number of miles so if we say keep an eye on this while we do it i'll zoom back in to make it obvious if we say l and two left two miles and then it asks for a start on an envoy waypoint to do it uh we're going to take no notice of that but we can execute it and it's actually not drawing it very well but what it will do is fly a couple of miles to the side of the waypoint let's do a direct 2 so we can see it it's obviously not going to render it while we're going straight for that so we'll leave that there with offset 0 down and we'll go root and we'll go direct to tnt now of course we've got the the radial set haven't we so if we went for 3 20 yeah i'm gonna pause and wait till we're back on the track obviously you can't completely overload these things because what should happen when we go to root we should be able to offset and say l five for example so left five you can see it was starting to draw it then let's say we'll do it from tnt just to make this easier for the for the system yeah there you go it's worked it out look so it wanted a start waypoint so when we get to tnt it's going to go five miles to the left of the track and then further on down the road we could make it come back in or just stay out there so we execute that and you get the offset route okay the final thing we're going to look at is range rings so if we go further along our track we'll go back to plan mode and we'll go next on the legs page so we can move the plan center further along our our route so step step so maybe we want some range rings eggped for example just a big circle drawn on the map so we know in when we're in map mode we know the waypoints coming from a long way out so if we were to zoom this out to show us 160 miles worth which is almost the rest of the journey we can then go into fixes so we can't quite see it and because the light's shining on it there's the fix button we'll say next and we'll can we'll type in agped a g p e d so at agpad we want some range rings so we type in a slash and a radius for the range rings and there we go so we've got a green dotted line around eggplant okay and you can just leave that there so then when we're in map mode it'll make more sense when we look in map mode if we're zooming in you can see when we get to within a hundred miles of eggplant you'll you'll see those lines coming so you can make reference markers and it doesn't have to be something on your roots it could be like an airspace you want to make sure you stay away from or an airfield so you could draw a line around it okay so hopefully that's really useful so just to go back over what we've looked at today we've looked at adding and removing waypoints we've done direct to we've done vector waypoints we've done a beam away points which is really a way of pre-calculating vector waypoints we've done intercept courses we've done offset courses now the thing that we missed initially when we set the offset course was um let's just zoom that in was that you have to set a start point for it it won't do it from where you are you have to say you know at what point so you can see this it's all rather complicated this kind of plan that we've started to draw out here as we draw closer to this you'll see it happen we also looked at range rings so there's a ton of functionality hidden away in the flight management computer to help you really you know go to town on your route so you can see here we've got offset waypoints we've got offset flight plans it's very cool okay so there you go so you should be able to now pretty much make up any flight plan you like so using custom waypoints using the waypoints that are actually out out there on the map and doing offsets and intercept courses and the world is your oyster for navigating the skies so hopefully you've enjoyed this and i will see you again soon so yeah you can see this actually really quite detailed isn't it so we'll just hang on for a moment and we'll watch the plane as it goes yeah look the top of climb has now deviated to the offset route it's very cool so we'll wait for the aircraft to turn off onto the offset route just to prove that it's going to do it so it's busy turning left at the moment and it should just keep the turn going i imagine it might straighten up momentarily so what's actually going on here is we've inserted a waypoint here but it's offsetting five miles to the west of it or to the left of it sorry so i guess the main reason you might use an offset is yeah if you are in a queue of other aircraft and you're ex you know you're closing in on an aircraft in front of you you could offset by a few miles if it's like a long range route without changing altitude and just get out of the way of the a car's warnings so there you go it's following it it's very cool okay so we covered quite a lot of ground there today and we almost stalled the airplane while we were busy looking at the fmc but it's all good if you didn't see me making the mistakes you wouldn't learn how i got out of them that's my covering story for that one okay i'm going to stop recording there hopefully you enjoyed this and i'll see you again soon

Channel: Jonathan Beckett

Views: 13,403

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Id: eYSk2VvTSaY

Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2022