Conceptual issues with training scenarios

[agk]

Hi,
while running the ATC Voice enabled scenario Geneva-Zurich on Fenix A320 I encountered several issues:

- the (I think) scripted design of these scenarios is very limited and very easily leads to frustration since one never knows if we are still in concordance to the designed scenario. For some reason I never got the instruction to climb from FL130 to FL150 and from that point on I was completely out of sync with resepect to the planned scenario. Did not get any further instructions.

I think FSIpanel could easily keep track of current flight path, direction, altitude and could give an ATC warning if the user does not follow correctly. Thats what would happen in real live also, right?

- since I know from the youtube video that I was way after the point where the B747 would kick in I tried to climb to FL150 without an ATC instruction. That way I resynced some kind of way, however the instructions I received referred to waypoints I still had left far behind me.

- The switch to the other ILS28 runway never occurred, so completely out of scope of the designed scenario

[jpgarraio]

Hi,

Many thanks for your message.

- the (I think) scripted design of these scenarios is very limited and very easily leads to frustration since one never knows if we are still in concordance to the designed scenario. For some reason I never got the instruction to climb from FL130 to FL150 and from that point on I was completely out of sync with resepect to the planned scenario. Did not get any further instructions.

I think I know exactly what was the issue. You were cleared to climb FL130, then departure told you to contact Swiss Radar on 128.90 and a few seconds later, you got the failure to deal with. Did you contact Swiss Radar as requested? This is the controller that will give you further climb to FL150 and more.

I think FSIpanel could easily keep track of current flight path, direction, altitude and could give an ATC warning if the user does not follow correctly. Thats what would happen in real live also, right?

Not easy to track all actions done by the pilot in command, in real live we only have qualifed pilots behind the controls, therefore if you need to get a correction from ATC, you are probably in trouble FSiPanel is designed to help pilots with different levels of experience to get better. As stated on almost every scenario, if you fly it according to ATC instructions, you will end up on the destination runway.

- since I know from the youtube video that I was way after the point where the B747 would kick in I tried to climb to FL150 without an ATC instruction. That way I resynced some kind of way, however the instructions I received referred to waypoints I still had left far behind me.

If you have time, give it another go and pay attention to the ATC call during the failure, it is a high distraction but we pilots have to deal with these.

Cheers,

J-P

[agk]

Hi J-P,
thanks for your quick reply, appreciate that.

I'll give it another try, just want to mention that I think I had positively contacted Swiss Radio, however I often switch back and forth between internal and external views. Maybe ATC voice is not audible while in external view? Since I was on voice only mode I might have missed the transmission. Will switch to voice + text mode next time.

Keeping track of the pilot's position shouldn't be that hard, it's done by Navigraph Charts and some addons to display and update the plane position on the map very frequently. I think it's more on how to integrate this position knowledge into the pre-determined flow of the scenario, right? That might be a lot trickier.

Let me add some ideas on enhancing the scenarios, especially for beginners like me:

a) make the failures a user configurable option.
In a first step I would be happy to just be able to follow the instructed waypoints and land at the destination. When feeling confident about that I might switch on the failure(s) as the next step.

b) maybe it would be possible to have some slight variations in the routing at different points in time. E.g. using another STAR, approach, runway.
(all within one and the same scenario)

c) make the route available in the EFB (and Navigraph Charts), maybe via link to the underlying SimBrief route (not just the printed SimBrief OFP that is added to the lesson plan)

thanks,
best regards,
- Andy