A few more for you then,
- If you think a weather diversion could be likely, you can type in the route from your destination to your alternate at the bottom of the current plan on the ROUTE page. You won't be able to finish with the alternate runway or STAR/Approach, so just put in the four letter ICAO code. This will allow you to view the route on the route page for orientation should the diversion become actually necessary, and any "direct" clearances can be seen as the route legs are already on the LEGS list.
- If you think an instant diversion is necessary, think "RALFIE". R for Route - change the destination on the ROUTE page to your new airport. A - ARRIVAL select the runway and ILS likely die to winds or ATC information on the ARR page. L - LEGS get to the bottom of the legs page, and bring the new ILS initial fix to the top. F - FIX place the airport identifier in th eFIX page, with a 25 mile circle to remind you of terrain etc. I - INIT/REF hit the init ref page to select the Vref, and see the ILS frequency, ILS course and runway length displayed so you can tune them up. For the -700 an appropriate autobrake setting is (9 - [number of 1000 feet of runway] ) E - Elevation - go to INDEX>NAV DATA>Airport enter the airport identifier and you will see the info page giving the Elevation. Set this in the pressurisation window, and if you like add 200 feet for a rough ILS minima. 20 seconds work gives you everything you need to put the aircraft on the ground at an "unknown" airport.
- If you have an older update, you can access the Alternate and Nearest airports page (if your company hasn't paid for them anyway) by placing a random offset in the offset page, then pressing the "erase" line select key on both CDUs simultaneously.
- You can define a waypoint by describing two intersecting tracks, and having the FMC work out where the intersection is. Useful when, say a vector leg has been planned before an ILS, and you would rather have an intersection. The format is [the first point][the outbound track]/[second point][second point outbound track] i.e.: AAA065/BBB350 in the legs page will place a point where the 065 radial from AAA intersects the BBB 350 radial.
- Place two equal sized circles around two airports on the fix page, big enough to overlap. Looking at the map - if you join the two intersection points (mentally) together you will gat a line that is half way between the two airports and perpendicular to them. Where this mental line crosses your track is the nil wind critical (or equal-time) point. You can adjust this for wind - but while easy to do, the explaination is too long for me to type. If you adjust the circles until the intersection point is on your track, you can use the intersection feature from the fix page to add the fix tou your route. If you want to be fancy, you can define a better name for the point on the NAV DATA page.
- You can set up a free standing way point by placing any random point at the bottom of your LEGS page, adding the point you want to be a free standing way point under that, and then deleting the first random way point. This sets up a deliberate route discontinuity, and the free-standing waypoint then exists by itself. It is good if you don't want to use up your fix pages to define points (more useful when there were only two fix pages) You can also form a holding pattern on the point - useful for setting up engine out procedure holding points before departure etc.
I've got a few more, but that's enough for my typing for now
-- Seeing as the aircraft cost so much, they are not advertised well - in all of the cockpit, the word "Boeing" only appears in three place. See if you can find all three on the next few sectors!
