Subject says it all.
I’ve had too many missions where arrive in a non-IFR capable plane at a visibility zero destination airport
Subject says it all.
I’ve had too many missions where arrive in a non-IFR capable plane at a visibility zero destination airport
Moved to User Support Hub as OP is requesting assistance from the community.
I would check out this thread:
And see this post and the few just after it, too:
It seems that there are some issues with weather in Career Mode — especially destination weather — but there may be some solutions to be found in the linked threads/posts.
tl;dr - do not trust the visibility status ( VFR etC) and range unless airport has metar
(see more details in summary below)
however, I did some more investigations into this yesterday
EBSL is a really good example airport, as its a tiny airport - so no metar,
but is only 7nm from EBHK , which is a large airport with METAR.
(its also in a pretty flat area of the EU, so theres are no ‘mountain weather’ to interfere.
someone also pointed out a useful metar website
anyway, this is a great example at the moment, because EBSL/EBHK over last few days has been getting a lot of freezing fog, making EBHK - LIFR/IFR
however, the mission map AND also free flight are showing it as VFR !
so yesterday, I took the opportunity to do some more test, as again EBHK was IFR, yet EBSL was (incorrectly) VFR !
what I found was…
(**) remember you need to set time to career
you could see whilst EBSL was said to be VFR, if you zoomed in (free cam), you could clearly see it was covered in fog, so was not VFR.
however, the ‘issue’ is, you are seeing the EBSL at takeoff time not landing, which might be different.
if you set a departure airport, its shows the same ‘summary’ of visibility as you get on career mission map.
here however, we can do two useful things.
a) set the time to anything we want ! , so I can use the arrival time for the mission !
b) select other airports, in this case we can compare EBSL vs EBHK
what I found…
the summary visibility was still incorrectly showing VFR for EBSL.
however it was correct (IFR) for EBHK.
interestingly, if I queried EBHK, then went back to EBSL, it now showed IFR.
from here, I then spawned myself at EBSL (and also EBHK) to actually see what the weather was at various times in the SIM.
unsurprisingly, this was as per metar data at EBHK, at both EBSL and EBHK.
it had been foggy there all day, at no point in time was it VFR
my belief is …
when metar does not exist for an airport, then it defaults to VFR/22nm, OR the last airport queried - so it always unreliable for airfields without metar.
basically a UI bug, it should be showing UNKN.
when you use the runway tab of the efb this also seem unreliable unless there is metar, so the wind layer is the only reliable indication you get.
unfortunately, within the sim, this means the only reliable way to check weather for a mission is probably to use free flight and spawn into the airpot at the appropriate (depart/arrival) time.
the alternative is to use an external website, like metar-tar, but be aware they are just going to give you the closest airport info, which in some cases MAY not be what the sim will use e.g. around mountains.
frankly, its all a bit of a pain…we don’t really have the tools we need currently.
and career is generating far too many missions into small airfields without ILS, that you cannot land in… presumably, mainly a problem in winter.
what Ive been doing for now is simply finding a bunch of missions that
if there are airports like EBSL which have the mission I want but are IFR (with no ILS) , then I turn off live weather in options - which’ll give you clear skies.
… so basically, I use live weather only when the missions are generated to ‘appropriate’ locations
I may have found another reason for the weather mismatch: At the moment I fly a cargo mission from Denmark to Italy. The planned departure from mission screen is 1215LT (1115Z) as a real live weather mission (I accepted the mission exactly at that time). But the current time in the PFD is 0924Z with logged departure time of 0752Z, so not live but way earlier as per mission screen
yeah, its not time related in the use-case Ive looked at, since EBSL was IFR all day, and continued to be past live time.
I do agree though the arrival times are bogus… Ive not looked into too much detail, but a 3.5 hour flight doesn’t take this long…
so in a case I looked at, if you looked at the arrival time, it was 4pm, which would have been pretty dark, but in practice it was much earlier. probably more ike 2pm.
as I said, I didnt dig into it too much, as Id already found that it was IFR for the entire 24 hours period, so it was irrelevant what time it chose
Yeah, the mission length is always way to high. That mission was set for 5,5h, but I long since landed after just 3 hours into the mission. But I would at least expect that when the mission starts at 1115Z, that my landing is not already at 1030Z
can you see the time whilst flying? I thought the EFB time was bogus? (the date is for sure) - I guess you using the time on the Garmin?
but yeah, I was doing 3.5 hour VIP flights, and as I take off the pilot tells the passengers its a 45 minutes flight or something like that.
and the prep/taxi/parking only takes 15 mins or so.
doesn’t matter, except, when looking at weather at arrival destination (in say free flight) - the time is probably not what the mission arrival time says it is.
I have the actual time on the PFD and also my takeoff time on the MFD of the PC-12. But maybe the time is synced with the EFB, because that one showed the same time plus 2 hours, which would match with daylight saving time at the used date of August 15.
What I would like is a real-life solution to this - let the pilot decide if they want to divert to the closest airport that has at least a localizer, localizer with DME or full glideslope. Or even the few that have a VOR right in the airport. Or worst case, return to origin if it was a short flight and if the pilot makes any of those secarios happen, they would get full payment and a very big reputation increase.
I want to try the method you suggest - spawn at the destination to check the weather, but when I go back to Career Mode that same mission no longer exists.
Missions seem to disappear if you only even open them to get the information but don’t fly the mission.