Gents,
I came across this little problem while testing out some FP's I'd written for the New Jersey ANG F-16 textures that were recently done. I'd written for a four-ship flight (Devil 41-44 flight) to go to Nellis, routing via McConnell AFB. As I like to try and give aircraft time to clear the runway, without forcing the following aircraft to overshoot I planned the flight at 2 minute intervals and as a quick test went to Nellis on the traffic viewer before the first aircraft comes into range - expecting each aircraft to appear inbound at intervals. The first aircraft (Devil 41) fails to appear, although the following three do as expected. Reset and tried several times, with no change. I checked the flightplan's very carefully, expecting to find a error, but nothing was apparent. Strangely, if I went to the traffic a little later, with either all four aircraft on the apron already parked, or even with all four aircraft appearing inbound the moment I went to Nellis, the whole flight appears, which appears to remove the possibilty of a FP error.
This bugged me, so I ran a experiment to try and narrow down why this was happening. I altered the FP leg for Devil 41, putting that at the rear of the formation with a two minute gap, leaving Devil 42 as the first arrival in the flight and repeated the viewing exercise. Sure enough, now Devil 42 fails to appear, although 43/44 and now 41 at the back of the formation do. Devil 42's FP has not been altered in anyway, it's just the lead aircraft in the formation.
After a few more alterations, I seem to have been able to get four aircraft to fly the leg by having a single ship, followed two minutes later by a pair (which is what I was trying avoid originally), with a fourth at over a ten minute gap and not numbered in the same sequence.
Has anybody else come across this, as I seem to recall having seen this happen before on flightplans without really giving it too much thought? I'm thinking it's just one of those strange quirks that appear with AI behaviour that you can't do anything about. Here's the unaltered flightplan for Devil 42 if anybodies curious.
AC#1100,119FS,20%,WEEK,IFR,2/14:27:00,2/17:22:10,340,F,42,KIAB,
3/12:17:00,3/14:40:13,320,F,42,KLSV,4/13:20:00,4/14:27:38,240,F,42,
KSUU,4/23:40:00,5/00:47:38,240,F,42,KLSV,5/12:12:00,5/14:35:13,340,
F,42,KIAB,6/13:17:00,6/16:12:10,340,F,42,KACY
Gary