Hi,

The short answer is that you have to set up a fake airport way above ground level and no runways.  Then it comes back, I think.  You should ask over at MAIW for more info:

http://www.militaryaiworks.com/

Hope this helps,

gypsymoth wrote on Nov 5^th, 2010 at 6:50pm:


To get the aircraft to fly out and return without landing, you should plan the flight as an IFR flight instead of a VFR flight.  You can still use just about any altitude you wish as long as it's above about 3,000 ft. 

Your FP is a bit off, it's missing some code.

Try this:

AC#19,POV,5%,24HR,IFR,23:25:00,TNG02:55:00,200,R,0000,EDDT,02:57:00,07:00:00,031
,R,0000,EGXC

You were missing the seconds from your ETD and ETA's.  Also you have to give the aircraft a slight time gap so that it will properly transition to the return leg.

In this example, the aircraft will depart EGXC at 23:25:00 and fly to EDDT, once there is will conduct IFR low approaches only until it reaches the planned ETA time of 02:55:00Z.  Once that time is reached the aircraft will then be somewhere in the local area on the approach or missed approach.  It will reach it's new ETD for the return and ask ATC for an IFR flight back to EGXC where it will arrive at approximately 07:00:00 or whatever the flight plan derived ETA is for that route.

Hope that helps you out.  Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy.  Try to keep the gap between the end of the IFR TNG segment and the return segment to 3 minutes or less.

Indeed it is. 

See the MQ-9 AI model in my signature banner?  When I sit down to write flight plans for it, they will need to replicate that UAV's long duration flights which can be 10-14 hours.  To do that I will create a series of far off waypoints for the model to fly to that will take it roughly that amount of time to complete.  It will simply do low approaches out at those waypoints where no one will see it until it's time for it to come home.  Pretty straight forward.