SID question

First, I entered KANE as the origin, then waypoint KCPR.  Then, I went back to the departure field in the origin and selected DWN6 with the RW18 transition.  At that point, the screen shows as follows:

  I then activated the flight plan and got the following:

Once cleared to MSP, you would just move the cursor to the MSP leg, press Direct-To, then ENTR twice to confirm it.  At that point, you get the flight plan as shown below.  The map presentation would vary based on the aircraft position at the time you were cleared direct to MSP.

Here I scrolled down just so you could see the end of the flight plan.

As you can see from the screenshots, the map always showed the legs in the SID and there were no discontinuities after MSP (or anywhere else for that matter).  So, I'm not sure exactly what steps you are taking that cause the behavior that you have described.  Can you compare your steps to the ones that were outlined here and report any differences?

I executed the steps that you described on the iPad and was able to reproduce the map artifacts that you described.  When you inserted the SID prior to the active leg, you changed the definition of the active leg to go from ABR to KCPR.  The map generally starts drawing with the leg immediately preceding the active leg.  So, you only see the leg from DWN to ABR, then the active leg to KCPR.

I was unable, though, to get a discontinuity by selecting the SID leg to MSP and doing a direct-to.  There are actually two kinds of direct-to - termed "on-path" and "off-path".  The difference is that an on-path direct-to is a waypoint that is already a part of your flight plan (but there are rules) and an off-path direct-to is an unplanned waypoint.  If you do an on-path direct-to, no discontinuity will be inserted.  For an off-path direct-to, a new waypoint will be inserted before the active leg and a discontinuity is inserted after that.  The theory is that by doing an off-path direct-to, the pilot is telling the FMS where he wants to go, but not what to do when he gets there - thus the discontinuity.  It's literally an interruption in the flight plan.

Here's where the on-path rules come in.  If you select a waypoint using the cursor and then press direct-to, you'll get an on-path direct-to and the leg surrounded by the cursor will become active.  If you press direct-to and start entering an identifier, the system initially assumes you're trying to do an off-path direct-to, but it will search down the path from the active leg for a leg that terminates at the entered identifier.  If it finds one, the direct-to will be on-path and that particular leg will become active (as a direct-to).  Otherwise, it's off-path and you get the new waypoint followed by a discontinuity.  Notice, however, that the rule is to search *down path*.  Therefore, legs before the active leg are not included in the search.  There are a few reasons for this rule, but primarily it's because the FMS assumes that the primary goal is to reach your destination rather than backtrack.

Is there any chance that you manually entered MSP in the direct-to dialog box versus just moving the cursor to the MSP leg and pressing direct-to followed by two ENTR buttons?  That's the only way I could induce the behavior.

Hi

This makes sense. I was suspicious that it had something to do with plane being in flight in the simulator. I tried setting the airspeed to zero in some of my tests but that didn't change the behavior.

In regards to your question the only way I entered MSP as a waypoint in all tests was by highlighting the waypoint in the flight plan and pressing direct->enter->enter.