chris_t
Second Officer
Germany
Offline
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Hi.
Did a short test flight this afternoon. above sloping terrain. The route was programmed so that on the outbound track, the track was heading into the valley, a turn "in" the valley and back home again.
So if the aircraft would have followed the terrain, there had to be a descent on the way out and an ascent on the way back. But, there wasn't. The aircraft kept the same height during the flight, which was the programmed height of the first waypoint.
So the height of each waypoint is always based on the height of the home point, not of height ASL of the waypoints.
My first thought was, this does not make much sense. As long as you have your notebook with you and your aircraft is connected via Data Link, the system knows where the aircraft is and could adapt the altitude based on the Google Map. But what if you lose the connection. Then there is no way for the aircraft to know how high or low above ground it is at the moment. So, actually the reference to the home point does make sense. In conclusion, if one wants to fly at a fixed altitude above ground, one has to adjust the waypoint heights.
This really should be mentioned in the manual!!!
And if the waypoint height is relative to the home point - which it is - it doesn't make any difference if there is water or rocks underneath the aircraft. Thus, the warning, that above water the default map altitude will be at the bottom does not make much sense. |
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