Need help with Altitude Reading & ATC

[johnno1970]

Hi Fello Simmer's

I am after sum help with ATC flight order's and my Altitude setting on a boeing 737-800.

Prior to take off ATC will tell me to climb to 8,000 and carry on with my own navigation ( sum thing along those lines ).. I put in to the Alt knob 8,000 and start my take off.

Once I have started to climb and have reached 4,000 ft ATC will inform me with the flollowing " PLEASE EXPIDITE YOUR DECENT TO 8,000 " other msgs will say " IS AT 16,400 DECEND TO 8,000 "

Now what has me stuffed is i havent even reached 8,000 ft and ATC will start telling me to expidite my decent to 8,000ft??
I press the B-KEY to reset my ALT but nothing really happens?

Today I reached the altitude of 3,000 ft when the ATC was telling me to decend to 8,000ft, now like I stated before I havent even reached the alt to even start a decent.

I hope Ive made sence all and would love sum help as its really effecting my flying as ATC is getting an incorrect reading of my Altitude or Im doing sumthing wrong sum where.

Kind Regards
johnno

[deepsea345]

welcome to the forums!!!

can you try the flight again and post a screenshot (press "V", shot should be saved in "My Pictures/Flight Simulator X Files") of the time when ATC gives you the descent instruction so i could see the actual panel state

alternatively, try the flight with "Clear Skies" as the weather option, to make sure its not the altimeter pressure setting

[lnuss]

It's possible that you have your altitude set to read out in meters, rather than feet, depending on where you're reading the altitude. If so, that could explain the anomalies.

[johnno1970]

Thankyou for your input Deepsea & Inuss,

I will take a screen shot of the actions and post it on here as soon as I can.

Regards

Johnno

[deepsea345]

hey johnno! i believe i may have come up on a clue, not quite a fix yet, but i saw the screens and calculated the altimeter reading in the second shot (approx. 2800-2900 "ft.") and found that:

2800 meters = 9186 feet
2900 meters = 9514 feet

so i guess Inuss was right about the entire feet to meters thing

ill try to replicate the problem on my install and see if i could come up with a fix

[ascot2054]

Guys,

Some thing i have found out on FSX panel..

If you "hover" the mouse over the altitude know on the Autopilot panel it will show you meters or feet depending on what setting you set in preferences......

ie.. if you set american output... autopilot will be in Feet, (hover the mouse over the adjuster, it will show equivalent Meters...)

Hope this helps..

[deepsea345]

i figured it out! after much tinkering with settings i found that in the "general" options under settings, there is a section for units used (U.S., Hybrid, Metric)

when set to Metric, i get the same problems exhibited by johnno:



for some reason, ATC uses feet while the gauges show meters

The Fix: Go to options/settings and click "General," there should be a section (lower right-hand corner) that deals with units (US , Hybrid, or Metric), set this to "US" (for feet and inHg "29.92") or "Hybrid" (for feet and QNH "1013")

"Metric" causes the problems

hope this helps

[MK182]

What exactly is hybrid? I'd look myself but im smack in the middle of a flight from MYNN - KATL and I'm doing perfect to far :P

[deepsea345]

Hybrid uses feet for altitude (US system) and QNH for altimeter setting (Metric system: e.g. "1013" instead of "29.92")

so its a combination of US and Metric

[MK182]

Oh. Thats not nearly as cool as I thought it would be

Though, thanks.