Accessory: Dispatch Summary form

[Will]

This is a pretty useless accessory, but still, maybe someone will find it helpful.

The purpose is to provide a form, upon which you can write down a summary of your dispatch information from your flight planner, so you can switch to PSX without printing all 15 pages of your OFP or keeping your flight planning software open (or referencing a PDF version of your OFP on your desktop).

Here's how this may be helpful. Let's say you use PFPX for flight planning (and Navigraph charts to verify your route). Let's also say you are in the habit of printing out your OFP for reference while doing your preflight and flying your route in the sim.

However, because it's real life and you have a small child and a spouse, you rarely (if ever) get the time to fly a full 13 hours enroute. So instead of that, you fly to altitude, and then use the "Jump To" feature to time-jump to the TOD, after which you fly your approach and land.

That's fun and all, but you end up with reams of wasted paper with all of those waypoints in your OFP that you don't actually refer to while enroute. So maybe you don't want to print out the OFP; you'll just refer to an electronic version. Fine, but that leaves you flipping back and forth between applications as you preflight, from PFX to your flight planning software and back. That's an adequate solution, of course, but it may not be sufficiently... immersive.

What you really need is a convenient way to record the vital data from your flight planning software so you can set up PSX for your flight, without all the extraneous pages that just end up in the recycling bin.

For the three of you still reading this so far, who are saying, "yeah, I get that!", at this point, I submit to you the Dispatch Summary tool.

If you complete this tool by making the proper entries, you can close your flight planning software before you load PSX, yet still have all the data you need at your fingertips to set up your aircraft for the flight.

Here's what it looks like (with sample entries):



Looking at it step by step, the first main row is "Basic Data." This contains your airports and your runways, so you don't forget where it is that you're flight planning to.

The next row is "PSX Instructor Pages," which is the information you need to import from your flight planning software to the PSX Instructor Pages, to prep your aircraft. You need the filename of your company route (as saved by your flight planning software into the Routes folder of PSX), the ZFW, and the release fuel. You enter filename the company route on Situation > Human > Dispatcher, while the ZFW is set on Aerodynamics and release fuel is either set on Aerodynamics or Service (if you're requesting real-time loading to a preset value).

Next on the example comes "FMC Route Page," which contains the data you need to build your route in the FMC. Although now that I'm looking at it again, I see that these entries don't really go into the Route page but the DEP ARR pages, so I'll fix that on the download version.

The next main row is "FMC Perf Init Page," which contains the data from your OFP that gets entered on the Perf Init page of the FMC: Reserves, CRZ ALT, CI, and step size.

Then comes the entry for the "FMC Thrust Lim Page," which is where you record the derate (if any) you'll put into the FMC.

Next is "FMC Takeoff Page," which your entries for the Takeoff page: flaps and V-speeds.

Finally, there is a main row called "Planning Data," which contains other planning data that could be helpful for dispatch but aren't entered into the FMC: your takeoff weight, so you can compare your flight planned weight with the FMC weight, and your predicted OOOI times.

Caveats, warnings, extensions... First, of course this is totally unrealistic. In real life, these might be the items you'd circle in red on your OFP, but you wouldn't throw the whole OFP out the window and just rely on a summary like this. This is enough to get you up and off the ground, but it totally unrealistic in that in real-life you'd have the full OFP with you at all times. This summary just lets you operate your sim without printing out endless pages of waypoints that you never fully use.

This is a Word document instead of a PDF, so you can customize it. Remove the Boeing logo, and replace it with your favorite alternative graphic. Change "LBS" to "KG." Add and subtract rows.

There is of course a tendency to add too much... like the fuel at destination, the approach speeds, the entire ATC route, the souls on board, etc. To that I say: do it if you like, but this is intended to be a summary, just what you need to bring necessary flight planning data into PSX and your FMC. Add rows as you see fit, but if it goes beyond one page then I think you are defeating the purpose. And anyway, approach speeds and other arrival information will vary based on conditions during your cruise phase. So there's not much sense in carrying them on a summary made at the beginning of your trip.

Lastly... for the two of you who are still reading... if you are using a Mac and the Word file ends up messing up the formatting, I'd be happy to upload a PDF version. Of course, then it would be harder to edit it.

Lastly, lastly... Dear Boeing's legal team... if you want me to remove your logo, no need to go to the trouble of a Cease & Desist letter, I'll take it off if you ask, no worries, but please trust that I put the Being logo on there because I like you and we are friends. This won't hurt your brand, I promise. It's for simmers, not competitors.

Lastly, lastly, lastly: If you use this for real-world ops then you need to resign from your job immediately. This is for simming only!

Here's the download:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mjsydrx9r7vp46z/Dispatch%20Summary.docx?dl=0

[asboyd]

what happened to the file, it is no longer there?

Cheers,

UPDATE.... I must have been too quick
There now, thanks Will...

AlexB

[Will]

Yep, should be up now, thanks!

[beat578]

Great Idea Will. Thank you for that one!

[RogerH]

Nice one Will! I am one of those 3 people and I'll find this very useful. I usually just print off the first page of the OFP and also the loadsheet, but this gives a bit more info.

[Will]

Thanks! I kept jotting things down and then realizing that I forgot something, so this just systematized it for me: all the stuff calculated by PFPX that needs to get to PSX to fly the planned route.

[Ton van Bochove]

Thanks Will

[David Palmer]

This is a Word document instead of a PDF, so you can customize it. Remove the Boeing logo, and replace it with your favorite alternative graphic. Change "LBS" to "KG." Add and subtract rows.

Thanks Will.
FYI on what I did...

Replaced the 'Boeing' logo with a 'WorldFlight' one
'LBS' changed to 'KGS' (as suggested)
Amended the bottom 'Planning Data' times by adding 2 columns of 'Estimated' & 'Actual' with 4 rows of Out, Off, On & In.
Replaced 'Z' with 'UTC'.

Thanks again for designing the document and making it available to the PSX community.

Regards,
David

[James H]

If this is for Worldflight Commodore, can you add a row that has "Beers consumed / planned / actual" too 

[David Palmer]

Great suggestion James!
I've conferred with the Commodore who has approved of your suggested amendment.

Bottoms Up,
David

[Will]

Well, I updated the Dispatch Summary form. It turns out the estimated off and on times were nowhere near as useful as I originally thought; with regard to times, I really just care about the ETD and the ETA.

So that gave me room to add to the "Other Planning Data" section. It now includes TOW, LDW, and MIN T/O Fuel, which are all helpful to refer to while in the aircraft. I shaded that section grey, to make the point that unlike the other values on the form, the values in the "Other Planning Data" aren't entered into the PSX Instructor Pages or the FMC. For example, it's just handy to be able to reference the MIN T/O Fuel number before actually starting the takeoff roll.

Anyway, if you like this, you can build the suggestions into your own copy, or else click on the link for a fresh download.

Image of the changes:



Fresh download:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gsomq0ha4qwf4kr/Dispatch%20Summary%202.docx?dl=0