ASE SP4 - Fog coming up after landing

[Kyprianos Biris 12]

ASE SP4 B702

FSX

 

Yesterday's activeMETAR on landing:

METAR KJFK 302151Z 17018G24KT 1/4SM R04R/2600V3500FT BR BKN002 BKN130 OVC250 09/09 A2963 RMK AO2 PK WND 17029/2120 SFC VIS 1 SLP033 T00940089=

 

I never got the quarter mile low visibility until AFTER I landed (runway 22L) during the deceleration phase.

 

DWC enabled, destination weather was locked from 80 miles out.

 

Any clues ?

Anything I can do to have the effect of low visibility at low cloud base scenario appear correctly ?

I thought this problem was corrected at some point during the development of ASE at one of the SP's released.

 

During approach I could see the runway from miles out (in between the clouds). I touched down and after few seconds the fog came in. That was a disappointment ...

[Daveo 36]

Did you load the flightplan into ASE?

Force Dest WX won't work without the flightplan loaded.

[Kyprianos Biris 12]

Yes I did !

[Kyprianos Biris 12]

I did one more trial with this weather to try out the problem.

 

I downloaded and used off line weather of 2013-01-30_21Z.Wx

 

METARs in effect (copy paste from Textual Briefing)

 

KJFK 302151Z 17018G24KT 1/4SM R04R/2600V3500FT BR BKN002 BKN130 OVC250 09/09 A2963 RMK AO2 PK WND 17029/2120 SFC VIS 1 SLP033 T0

 

KFRG 302153Z 19018G23KT 1/4SM FG VV002 10/10 A2966 RMK AO2 PK WND 20029/2129

 

 

Test flight: KJFK to KFRG with a slow twin engine.

For take off no DESTINATION was set.

 

Take off JFK 22L right turn to 3000ft and ILS 14 at FRG.

 

At JFK ground the visibility was low low as it should.

 

 

While en route at 3,000ft I set via BRIEFING page DEP: KJFK and DEST: KFRG.

The weather was locked to destination but at 3,000ft I could clearly see few miles ahead.

 

On final approach ILS14 at FRG the runway was well visible while it should have been a white out fog situation.

 

As soon as I landed on runway 14, by the time I stopped short of runway 19-1, the visibility dropped to where it should.

 

ASE_Log.txt of last 3 minutes of approach until landing attached.

Final approach screenshot taken at 7:30 and stopped on runway 14 short of 19-1 at 7:31

 

FSXOptions.cfg attached.

 

Any help appreciated.

 

Can someone please test the same short test flight out of curiosity and see whether you get the same problem of low low visibility not coming up until after landing at KFRG with downloaded weather of 2013-01-30_21Z ?

[Daveo 36]

Hiya,

 

You might want to try turning off the Create Additional Stations and Enhance Route Coverage and see if that helps.

[NeilC 3]

I have always experienced this problem as far back as ASA.

 

I have locked destination weather (which in reality should be simple, all weather gets set to destination wx when 80 miles away), tried everything possible. If you search way back through the forums you will find lots of correspondence between Jim and myself.

 

Nothing worked!!!

 

The work round I figured was to go to ASE Options when approaching the destination airport, and changing max visibility in options to the lowest possible. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

 

ASE is still a fantastic bit of software (as an FS9 user I can't upgrade), but does have some limitations :(

[kterz 49]

Hi all,

 

1. set dynamic rate of change to zero (when using DWC). Otherwise fsx may decide to move away some clouds. This is also possible with dyn rate at zero, since strong winds were present at the area, however, with dyn rate of change non zero, this possibility increases

 

2. you have a graduation ceiling at 25000ft and enabled vis graduation. This way AS will calc the intermediate visibility aloft from the surface one up to the graduation ceiling. Either lower your grad ceiling (to e.g. 8000) or disable visGraduation and recheck.

 

3. The metar in KFRG has no cloud specification (cause the observer can't see any- this is expected). In these cases (when the relevant option -fogLayerSimulation- is set and you did set it correctly), a low ovc layer will be added by AS at 200 ft agl to simulate the fog. This, if CU will probably have issues been depicted in fsx (It's a known issue leading to clear conditions when very low CU clouds are used). I saw you had your stratus cloud occurence set to only 11%. This may be the reason no cloud is depicted as a ceiling there. You may want to increase it significantly (at least for testing these situations).

 

All these issues, are handled significantly differently as AS development progresses (e.g. in AS21012 there is an option for in cloud visibility reduction, not sure if it was included in an ASE service pack). For now, hope the info I provided will help,

 

Kostas Terzides,

Active sky developer

[Kyprianos Biris 12]

Changed:

 

Dynamic rate of change to 0

Graduation Ceiling to 8000

stratus occurrence 80%

Create Additional Stations & Enhance Route Coverage OFF

 

did a couple of trial flights with 2013-01-30_21Z.Wx between KFRG & KJFK back and forth and the problem seems to have vanished.

 

Set up attached.

 

Thank you all.

 

Geia sou Word Not Allowed ;-)

[kterz 49]

Glad it worked. Geia sou file

[ACA857 5]

I've had the same issue intermittently over the years....seems to me it depends on the weather, in particular...days with low overcast seems to inhibit or interfere with the update of arrival airport weather. I was excited to see Kyp post above and changed settings in ASE to Kostas recommendations. Although Kyp seems to have resolved, not so here and with other posters I can see.

 

I was flying around Boston, St. Johns (with ADV INTERPOLATION noted in METAR), and Halifax over the weekend with 2-300ft OVC and strong winds all day in the METAR...I can reproduce the same failure to update destination weather *everytime* as follows (as long as the lowest cloud layers is below 3000'):

 

Winds and visibility will NOT update until flying below the lowest cloud layer to the surface. For example, KBOS had OVC at 300 and VIS less than 1/2 mile all day on Saturday. On approach, once I got below 300 feet (reported OVC) I was getting a dramatic wind and visibility shifts. I repeated this four or five times Sometimes as late as the flare or on touchdown, winds would update to the correct airport weather...exactly what Kyp is reporting.

 

I did a few more tests, this time at around 1000' AGL I got ###### the weather is not updating (I can see the field clear as day just as in Kyp's pictures above where it should be a white-out), I pressed the AI Refresh button and blammo...weather changes to correct DEST AIRPORT weather. So at least I have a work around. Repeated this work around a few more times in Halifax and result is consistent. I also re-did Kyp's circuit test...took off with correct weather, flew 90 miles away from the airport and returned, again weather not updated on final approach until I hit the AI refresh. I do understand surface vs. winds aloft, I highly doubt the wind at 350 feet AGL is dramatically different from the wind at 250 feet AGL.

 

I don't want to suggest where the problem lies, but there does seem to be a correlation between lowest cloud layer and destination airport weather updates not happening correctly. I don't recall ever seeing a problem with destination airport weather where the lowest cloud layer is above 3000' AGL. The problem is noticed in 'low' cloud or IMC only in my experience. Your 'average' normal weather day, ASE updates arrival weather without an issue.

 

Is it possible something in the latest FSUIPC is not set right or causing a problem suppressing wind/vis updates OR depiction while in or near cloud? Is there a possible issue within ASE itself where is is not resetting weather below 3000' AGL when cloud or low OVC is reported?

 

I use: FSX, latest ASE SP, latest FSUIPC, no addons - FSX and ASE (with plan filed everytime) only apps running. Flew tests with 737NGX and LDS767.

 

I will continue to 'Refresh AI aircraft' before landing as a work around. Would be nice if there was a fix.

 

Rob Hall - ACA856.

[Kyprianos Biris 12]

Dear Rob unfortunately I did not solve the problem as I see after further tests.

 

Just landed an hour ago in JFK with the METAR below and the real fog did not come in until after touchdown.

KJFK 111951Z 21003KT 1/8SM R04R/1800V2200FT -DZ FG OVC004 05/05 A2981 RMK AO2 SFC VIS 1/4 SLP093 P0001 T00500050=

What a disappointment :(

 

Only difference from the posts above was that I have left enabled Create Additional Stations and Enhance Route Coverage while I did all recommendations of Kostas.

 

No joy.

 

On next flight I will try your workaround.

 

Thank you at least for provision of the workaround even though that should not be the way solve problems.

 

BTW I have all FSUIPC weather settings OFF.

[ACA857 5]

Ok, so I am not alone and not technically crazy :-)

 

In FSUIPC I have suppress turbulence and variance enabled, with wind change limit set to 2kts/second and barometer smoothing also enabled at the default values. If I set all WXR OFF in FSUIPC, I get the "S" turn problem with PMDG, FSL Conc, and LDS 767 aircraft.

 

I tested with enhanced route and additional stations OFF.

 

With low OVC 2-300 feet it was seconds before touchdown I would get a windshift or seconds after touchdown.

 

It's driving me crazy...it's a short drive.

 

Hopefully someone can point to some variable or setting that could be tested in ASE / FSUIPC / FSX. I see you had all wxr off in FSUIPC Kyp, but I also know FSUIPC does all kinds of stuff with ASE weather data...would not be surprised if the problems were a combo of ASE and FSUIPC.

 

Happy landings.

 

PS - Still have fond memories of you and Mr. Scanlan at VATSIM YYZ many moons ago. So much wine, so little time.

[Kyprianos Biris 12]

All these issues, are handled significantly differently as AS development progresses (e.g. in AS21012 there is an option for in cloud visibility reduction, not sure if it was included in an ASE service pack). For now, hope the info I provided will help,

Kostas I assume ASE and AS2012 have the same programming "base" as infrastructure. I can't imagine AS2012 started from scratch.

Would it not be possible to implement code changes like the in cloud visibility reduction that suposedly fix the low cloud - low vis errors in ASE as well in another service pack update ? It can't be that hard !

 

PS - Still have fond memories of you and Mr. Scanlan at VATSIM YYZ many moons ago. So much wine, so little time.

Yeap little time indeed B)

Thanks for the tip on FSUIPC settings for the S-turns. I had forgotten all about the issue by deactivating them in the hunt for ASE's troubleshooting.

[kterz 49]

I think we're talking about 2 different problems here.

 

@Rob, do you use DWC?

@Kyp, it's Damian's call, what is included in a SP (given the time restrictions and our need to move forward). What you can do now is to disable vis graduation. This way surface visibilty will "suddenly" come up when you are at least 3000 ft agl (at least it should).

[Kyprianos Biris 12]

I think I found the culprit

 

AI refresh did not do.

Rob try it again, it may have just been a coincidence.

It just reloads the scenery.

 

By further thinking about the issue I took a look at ASE's Map with the weather patterns from the local METARs of stations around KJFK.

With this thread's reference off line 2013-01-30_21Z.Wx weather report loaded :

 

I put in to view only airports and VISIBILITY (the yellow clouds).

 

Then I checked nearby weather reports and saw that even though KFRG and KJFK has 200ft overcast and quarter mile visibilities, KLGA and the rest near by did not and had 10SM visibility.

 

METAR KJFK 302051Z 18021G29KT 1/4SM R04R/1800V2200FT FG VV002 09/08 A2967 RMK AO2 PK WND 18029/2051 SFC VIS 1/2 SLP046 60001 T00940083 56025=

METAR KFRG 302053Z 20017G24KT 1/4SM FG VV002 10/10 A2970 RMK AO2 PK WND 20026/2020 SLP056 T01000100 55020=

 

METAR KLGA 302051Z 17012G23KT 10SM OVC035 11/09 A2964 RMK AO2 SLP036 T01060089 56027=

 

METAR KEWR 302051Z 10007KT 10SM BKN028 BKN034 OVC130 13/11 A2962 RMK AO2 SLP028 T01330106 58011=

METAR KTEB 302051Z 15007KT 10SM OVC029 15/12 A2961=

 

 

That made me suspicious since LGA is really close to JFK.

Also I saw that very close to JFK there were various dubious or not weather data stations which may or may not affect the problem.

The different visibility color clouds made me think that most probably JFK is getting affected from other stations even though destination is locked in ASE Briefing page.

 

 

I started checking the Edit Station Data tabs from Options.

 

Then I deactivated the following airports (orange) and stations (blue) - too many! and very close to JFK :

 

 

Airports: CGAS NK30 NJ00(zero zero) 54NJ NJ72 KLGA

 

Physical Stations:KN84 K50N K51N KNYC KN28 KLGA

 

Data stations: KNYC KLGA

 

I had left KLGA last in the end intentionally.

I did one more of this thread's reference test flight (light twin, tkoff rwy 14 KTEB, right heading 315* for 2,000ft and then ILS 22L JFK).

I then saw that things were getting better with less changes of clouds and visibility between the two airports but the fog in JFK still did not come up until 2 DME on the ILS (300ft AGL) and half way down the runway at 0.6 DME of the ILS the fog dissipated again.

That meant that something close by was affecting it.

 

Last I deactivated KLGA (Airport, Data Station and Physical Data Station entries).

 

 

I did one more test flight.

This time the weather was locked to destination (KJFK) and I never saw ground from take off until 50ft before JFK !

This proves that KLGA which is only 10nm away affects KJFK weather even if destination weather is locked to it.

 

This is clearly a bug in ASE.