Hello! I’m following a WT CJ4 mod tutorial and before descent it says to lower altitude bug, press vnav, and then “VALT” and “PATH” will appear on the MFD.
However as you can see in my screenshot I’m just a few miles from TOD and “PATH” had never appeared. This means VNAV will not work as it will not follow the path. As you can see in the screenshot I have a correct 3 degree vnav path set up, so how come PATH doesn’t appear?
Thanks!
WT has a discord channel in which they are very responsive. I would check there.
i dont have a discoed. link?
Try this one: https://discord.com/invite/Fa6w2xK
So, I find the CJ4 VNAV still a little mysterious despite reading the manual many times and flying the CJ4 a lot.
You have the magenta ‘snowflake’ showing vnav is active and it should engage when it intercepts TOD…
This much I suspect you already know! But I think for you to get a PATH you need to have an altitude constraint against a waypoint. You might get these from the STAR loaded via the arr/dep. Or you can programme them in yourself on the Legs page. You also need to dial down the alt sel -this could be all the way to your final MSA for the localiser intercept and VNAV will step you down smoothly all the way.
I’ve had this work flawlessly many times…but other times not. And never quite sure why. One reason MAY be due to incompatible livery which can definitely impact things like FLC and FADEC. So try and test in a stock Asobo livery.
Just did some more VNAV testing - if you go to VNAV pages you can go to a sub page which is VNAV monitoring - this will tell you if a VPATH is available. You definitely need to have an altitude constraint against a waypoint in the legs page for a PATH to become available. Also make sure your cruise altitude in PREF INT is set to what you are actually flying otherwise it will not calculate the path correctly.
hi. so from talking to the devs they seem to think you need an approach with altitude restraints for the PATH to work. I was manually entering a single altitude near the airport which apparently isn’t enough for the PATH to trigger…
Interesting. I think the times I tried it and it didn’t work was because there was only one constraint set so that would explain it!
you should try at least 2 manual constraints and see if that works. i will as well when i have time
I just had a perfect VNAV descent into EGKK - stepped me down all the way with 4 constraints overall
manually entered constraints or loaded from approaches?
A mix, actually. The first constraint on the STAR was missing, so I added it and then the other one for the STAR and the two for the APP were already there. Just before TOD I dialled in the MSH/ILS approach altitude of 2000ft and it took me all the way down from FL450, levelling off at the appropriate constraint heights without me having to change things again.
One of the main problems with VNAV is that ATC never let you use it properly - usually on Vatsim the UIR controller always wants to bring you down before you get to the PATH!
yeah so I haven’t been able to get VNAV PATH to work when just using manually entered altitude constraints. which is a problem because a lot of airports don’t have approaches.
Can’t remember if I said this above or not, but the VNAV and TOD will only ever be ‘advisory’ and with no PATH available (either from pre-programmed or manually entered constraints) unless you have a destination airport and runway entered via the ARR page.
Once I was told that, I’ve never had an issue with VNAV, always works 100% of the time for me now.
I used to wait to enter the arrival runway until I knew what the active was from ATIS, but now I always program one in as part of pre-departure flight planning and then change in flight if necessary. If changing the STAR or APP, I always enter HDG mode first, make the changes and then check LEGS with the MFD in PLAN mode to make sure it hasn’t double entered the STAR waypoints (fairly common) or something else unexpected. Once good, I’ve re-engage NAV mode and all should be fine.
great to know! i’ll try this out asap
yep this worked. i had to select a runway under departures, and then manually entered an altitide constraint.
even without manually adding a constraint, the advisory VNAV used the runway itself as its VNAV descent waypoint, so it would lead you all the way down to the runway.
However you had to add a manual altitude constraint for the VNAV PATH autopilot to work. Shew finally solved it!
