Hi there, I have a question on refer to the topic when making a flight plan. There are several times that my aircraft could not reach to the next waypoint on autopilot and just do circles instead of keep moving to the next waypoint. I do noticed that it could be two waypoints are too close together and autopilot could not make the turn. So my question will be what is the minimum distance between two waypoints to avoid aircraft circles during mid flight? I know that I can always monitor the plan but the thing is that I usually set up a long haul flight when I’m going to bed, so there is no way I can monitor the flight while I’m sleeping. I usually create a flight plan on flightplandatabase.com but it seems like this software does not care if the waypoints are too close to each other.
I tend to delete any waypoints within 20nm of each other…
This will happen if your aircraft cannot touch the waypoint it was supposed to, and overshoots it with a considerable distance. There is no real way to avoid this, as you don’t make your flight plans, at least for long hauls, but softwares such as Simbrief do, if that’s what you are using.
The best way to tackle it, and the way I do it, is by just selecting the next waypoint on the plan, the one your aircraft was supposed to follow had it not overshot the previous one, and activating it by selecting the “Act. Leg” button. This will activate the route to that particular waypoint, and get your aircraft back on track.
If there are too many waypoints placed close together, you can skip a couple, and activate the one which your aircraft will be able to catch in time.
Sorry, I just saw this. Well, the same thing goes, regardless of what software you are using.
It depends on the aircraft’s rate of turn and roll rate into and out of the bank, and the turn rate depends on TAS.
It also depends on wind speed and direction, because it’s the GS that gets you between waypoints.
And finally it depends on if the heading to the next waypoint is at a small angle (say 10 deg) vs a large angle (in theory up to 179 deg).
Which is why, I just eyeball it: If it looks too close (allowing for some safety margin), skip the waypoint.
This had happened to me a couple of times but is easy to solve. You see, when you take some sharp turns, the autopilot might not make it exactly on the waypoint. The autopilot just recognizes as the plane has not reached the waypoint and keep turning to reach the waypoint, which lasts forever. To solve it, you just need to open your map, select your next waypoint, than press Activate Leg on the bottom. The autopilot will just forget about the last waypoint and starts to fly toward the other one. ;)
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.