Descent profiles into airfields with STARs outside my sector

[Matthew Reeve 914466]

Apologies if this has been asked before - I couldn't find anything to do with this by searching.

 

If an aircraft is flying through my sector towards an airfield which has a STAR, the FP route it has usually finishes at the start of the STAR. For instance, an aircraft flying EGLL-EGPF travels through EGTT_N but the route finishes at MARGO. The problem I am having is that ES thinks that it needs to be at altitude 0 at MARGO, rather than at EGPF which is another 100 miles or so away, so tells me that it needs to start its descent in my sector and that it needs to be handed off to the sector underneath me rather than my adjacent sector.

 

Is there any possibility that the routes can automatically (and probably always) stick the destination field at the end of the route, so that altitude calculations might be better estimated?

 

In the short term, I am looking into creating a COPX but the problem we have is that TT_N should be giving traffic to the next sector still in the cruise so the border COPX has no level. I don't particularly want to have to set up the STARs for all of the sectors around me just to get it to work.

 

On a slightly different note - when does ES [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ign STARs and runways? I should have been the first ES controller with EGBB set up as an active airfield on Saturday for CTP, yet with both my instances set with 15 as the active runway, they all seemed to come to me already defined with runway 33. Would this indicate someone using ES earlier had the runways set too and this would have [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned it? If it wasn't set with an active runway, would it have still set this and the STAR? This is very loosely linked to the initial problem above because if I do set a STAR I may not want nor need to keep track of the active runway - is it possible to set the STAR but not the runway?

[Stephan Boerner 945550]

Is there any possibility that the routes can automatically (and probably always) stick the destination field at the end of the route, so that altitude calculations might be better estimated?

Actually that is how it should work, as the airport should always be the last waypoint used. I have never experienced a different behaviour myself. The only thing You could do right now, is defining the STAR or a COPX, whereas the COPX would just work with the neighbour controller online and a fix to stick it to. A change of that has already been requested, but still needs to be implemented, with several other things, so I don't think there is an ETA for it, currently.

 

On a slightly different note - when does ES [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ign STARs and runways? I should have been the first ES controller with EGBB set up as an active airfield on Saturday for CTP, yet with both my instances set with 15 as the active runway, they all seemed to come to me already defined with runway 33. Would this indicate someone using ES earlier had the runways set too and this would have [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned it? If it wasn't set with an active runway, would it have still set this and the STAR? This is very loosely linked to the initial problem above because if I do set a STAR I may not want nor need to keep track of the active runway - is it possible to set the STAR but not the runway?

ES [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igns a STAR, when the last waypoint of the route, and airport and runway match. If the pilot filed a different STAR, that one overrides ES's calculation, so if someone files a wrong STAR, you need to correct it manually by selecting the right one. I am not completely sure if You can define a STAR without defining a runway. I would say you can't, but I might be wrong. However it should be easy to test this

[Gergely Csernak]

Matthew,

 

As Stephan said the profile altitude is set to 0 at the airports only and ES uses the highest possible profile defined by the COPX points and a 4 degree climb/descend slope. Can you confirm that you do not have a COPX defined for MARGO that accidentally request altitude 0? If all is OK, send me a LOG with the SCT/ESE pair to take a look at.

 

ES [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igns the STARs and RWS every time is scans the ROUTE section of the FP. It may happen in several cases: new FP arrives, change in the active APT/RWY configuration, and probably in other cases too. So actually the [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ignment is not saved but always extracted. When you manually [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ign something it is written back to the FP and extracted again. If there is a STAR name in the FP it is used as [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned independently what RWYs are active.

[Matthew Reeve 914466]

I have a HUGE log (from CTP) but I will trim it for you. There is no COPX for MARGO - there is one for RIBEL (which has two COPXs, one with a climbing level FL260 for traffic in the lower sector, one without a level for those above) which is on the edge of my sector and still another 50 miles before from MARGO. I am starting to wonder if the issue is that my ES at home isn't plotting a route from the end of the route to the airfield. I will check this and send a log file tonight.

 

Re the RWYs - the main issue I had is that I was the first controller in EGTT on Saturday, both screens I had had rwy 15 set for EGBB and yet I was getting traffic in my lists having been set to 33. I am going to conclude from this discussion that someone controlling earlier on had it set as an airport, unless of course it was set when in simulation mode when I had been connected many hours before!

[Stephan Boerner 945550]

Re the RWYs - the main issue I had is that I was the first controller in EGTT on Saturday, both screens I had had rwy 15 set for EGBB and yet I was getting traffic in my lists having been set to 33. I am going to conclude from this discussion that someone controlling earlier on had it set as an airport, unless of course it was set when in simulation mode when I had been connected many hours before!

Your ES doesn't know if someone else was controlling EGBB before, so the only possibility when this should happen is, when the STAR for 33 was in the flightplan, as ES doesn't override the flightplan. In that case, it doesn't make a difference if the pilot filed the (wrong) STAR in his flightplan, or another controller [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned that STAR earlier. If the STAR is suitable for more than one runway, ES always [Mod - Happy Thoughts]umes the first one in the ESE.

[Matthew Reeve 914466]

Ok my main machine is not conforming with Stephan's description that the destination airfield should always be the final waypoint:

 

My laptop is fine - and it handles the log file as described. Is there a setting which may have been turned off or should this be normal behaviour? I have tried "repairing" my installation and get the same issue.

[Stephan Boerner 945550]

If You send me the logfiles, I will have a look. If You think You might be using some special settings, mention it in the mail.