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  1. X-Plane Plugin
  2. Special Procedures

Flight Continuation

How to resume an FSC flight again, which hasn't finished yet

PreviousSpecial ProceduresNextUser Interface

Last updated 5 years ago

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There are several situations in which your X-Plane session gets disconnected from an active FSC flight: X-Plane crashed, you had to shut down X-Plane due to some real life interruption, or had selected "Start Over" from the plugin's menu. In such situations the flight is still active on the FSCharter platform.

You can try to resume this flight in X-Plane, i.e. you can try to reconnect a new X-Plane session (even from a different computer) to the active FSC flight to finalize the flight at a later point in time. This works based on the regular status information that the plugin passes back to the platform and which shows up there in the flight status window as points on the map and telemetrie data: The general idea of flight continuation is to bring back the X-Plane aircraft to that last known position / altitude / heading / speed (the "resume point") and then "just" continue flying. You do not need to fly the entire FSC flight again, just start your continuation from any suitable airport close to the resume point.

There are basically 4 options:

Option

Advantage

Disadvantage

In-Air Start:

Quick & Simple

Not all complex aircraft models will support In-Air Starts.

You cannot prepare your flight / aircraft yourself (like nav aids or FMS).

Teleport:

You prepare you aircraft at any nearby airport, take off, match heading and speed of the resume point and activate Teleport, which makes the aircraft jump to the resume point's location and altitude instantly.

You can prepare your aircraft yourself.

Still fairly quick.

Some aircraft models might not like being teleported.

Manual:

You prepare our aircraft at any nearby airport, take off and then fly the plane yourself to the resume point where the FSC flight is automatically picked up once you meet all criteria.

Will work for any aircraft model.

Requires the most effort.

Saved Situation:

Fairly quick.

Should recreate most of the aircraft configuration depending on quality of the "save situation" feature.

Only works if you had time to prepare your flight interruption, or if you aircraft model can save situation files regularly automatically.

How To

  • Startup your new X-Plane session with the same X-Plane aircraft model. Use X-Plane's [Resume Last Flight] button and you will be placed in the same aircraft model on an airport near where you left off. This will be any airport nearby and could be a small grass field not suitable to your A380...then you will need to choose a suitable larger airport e.g. by way of looking at . Airports with ILS paths are usually quite large.

  • Once the scenery loaded, the will open and list your FSC aircraft as being "in flight". Select it.

  • The following buttons become available:

    • [Revert on FSC] will open the browser with the flight information page on FSC. There, you could click on [Revert], which would your flight. Don't do that if you want to continue it...

    • [In-Air Start] will immediately perform an .

    • [Continue Flight] will validate your aircraft model, but otherwise leave you with the Status Window for further options. Read on in section .

In-Air Start

As soon as you click [In-Air Start] X-Plane will configure scenery and aircraft to continue the flight at the last known position.

Once loaded, you will find yourself in the air, in level flight at the speed recorded at that position. The plane will be in a suitable configuration to fly as selected by X-Plane. The plugin has no say here.

You will need to immediately take over control of the flying aircraft and stabilise the flight, maybe reconfigure the aircraft. Be prepared before clicking [In-Air Start]!

No auto-pilot or even FMS settings are restored this way, but our FSC flight will be resumed immediately.

Continue Flight

After you selected [Continue Flight] in the Flight Selection window, the status window will open. It will offer a button to move you to the nearest airport.

Once you are at any nearby airport of your choice your challenge is to bring your X-Plane aircraft to the location, altitude, heading, and speed it was when the FSC flight got interrupted.

The plugin will from now on monitor your aircraft and will automatically pick up and continue the FSC flight, as soon as all of the following conditions are met:

  • heading +/- 15° of last known heading, the target heading,

  • position in a +/- 45° sector forward of the resume point, relative to the last known heading,

  • max. 3nm forward of the last known position,

  • altitude +/- 500ft of the last known altitude,

  • speed +/- 20%.

While this might sound all very tricky, just remember that for a landing all these parameters are a lot more tight! So if you can land an aircraft you can resume an FSC flight. And the plugin will help you, just like ILS does for a landing. And even with a very similar tool, the Resume Path Indicator:

Resume Path Indicator

The status window shows the "Resume Path Indicator" (RPI), with some striking similarities to any standard navigation indicator, which guides you to the resume path and point and match all required flight parameters:

The center instrument helps you finding the location and altitude. It works as if you are flying an ILS path, but here the path is a straight line through the resume point with target heading.

  • The blue bearing arrow points into the direction of the resume point.

  • The triangle on the circle marks the target heading.

  • The vertical bar indicates the lateral deviation from the path through the resume point. Each mark represents 3nm.

  • The horizontal bar indicates deviation from target altitude. Each mark represents 500ft.

The vertical bar to the left of the circle indicates speed.

The vertical bar to the right of the circle indicates distance to the resume point. The white area below the green marks will shrink upward while flying towards the resume point and it will grow above the lower green mark when flying past the resume point. Each mark represents 3nm.

Generally, white indicates non-matching value, and green indicates matching values. The green marks indicate the acceptable range for each value.

Teleport

  • Prepare your aircraft to your liking, especially try to match payload and fuel already.

  • Take off.

  • Point the aircraft into about the right direction, and

  • fly at about the target speed,

  • Aircarft needs to be at about level flight...pitch and roll must be less than 15°.

  • As soon as the [Teleport] button enables -> click it.

  • You aircraft is instantly teleported to the resume point where your FSC flight will continue.

Fly Yourself or use a Saved Situation

  • Prepare your aircraft to your liking, especially try to match payload and fuel already, and take off.

  • Alternatively, load your saved situation.

  • Using the Resume Path Indicator fly to the resume point:

    • Climb to the target altitude and

    • Turn into the direction of the resume point as indicated by the blue arrow.

    • Remember that you need to near the resume point "from behind" so that you can fly with target heading when reaching the resume point.

Your X-Plane aircraft is loaded with engines on in a flyable state right at the resume point similar to X-Plane's option to .

Before you interrupt your flight you save a situation file. , some complex aircraft models have custom-build features. Some even offer writing those files regularly in the background. When you want to resume you load the situation and then use the Teleport or Manual technique to fly to the resume point, which will not be far away.

See below for the different options to find the resume point. Once you reach the resume point your fuel will be set to the last known fuel level (if ). So you don't need to worry about fuel consumed while flying to the resume point.

Complex third-party aircraft models may or may not support in-air start. If you are able to set up your aircraft in for a 3 or 10nm approach, then chances are you can use in-air start for FSC, too.

i.e. on the make sure the speed indicator on the left and the triangle on the circle turn green. No other elements of the RPI are of interest for teleporting.

The Teleport command is also available as a , which can be assigned to a or even a , so that you don't need to take your hands off your controls.

When nearing the resume point (somewhere between 3nm and 6nm before reaching it, the white box of the distance indicator fills the bottom half) start to pick up the resume path as guided by the vertical bar in the circle: If the bar is to the left of its center, then turn left, more left than the blue bearing arrow points, to fly towards the path. When the vertical bear centers turn right towards target heading (triangle), which then will be about equivalent to the direction the bearing arrow points to. (And vice versa if the bar is to the right of its center position.)

Fly to and over the resume point (watch the distance indicator) and wait for a message to pop up, which confirms that your flight continues. At that point, the status window will change to show your flight status as in :

X-Plane's Flight Configuration
Resume Path Indicator
start an approach 3nm or 10nm out
X-Plane has a standard feature
X-Plane's map
Aircraft Selection window
In-Air Start
Continue Flight
menu item
keyboard shortcut
joystick button
allowed in settings
regular flight
Select Aircraft window options for an In Flight aircraft
Resume Path Indicator
Pop-up message when flight resumes
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