And Sometimes Things Go Right

After reporting last night that I just can't seem to autoland the PMDG 737NG for FS9, tonight everything just went right.

I got tired of flying the same old SEA rwy 34R to PAE and back to SEA 16L tutorial flight in the great Mike Ray book, Flying the Boeing 700 Series for Home PC Flight Simulators, so I planned out my own flight from STL runway 30L out to the west, circled around to the north and back east to the VLA VOR, then back south and west to land on STL 30R. I may have touched down a tad fast, but not too bad. Overall, I'm very pleased with how it all went.

So, what did I do differently? First, I realized I was punching in the wrong info in the CDU with regards to the gross weight. Dumb mistake, but I was telling the FMC the plane was considerably lighter than it actually was. Next, I did a much better job of getting lower and slower than I usually do.

What else did I learn tonight? Glad you asked. I learned to trust the CDU display when it said you don't have enough fuel. Turns out a simple typo when typing in intersection names makes a big difference. As in, wattr and watrr make a difference of about 1500 miles.

I'm glad I finally made a successful flight from start to finish. Now, I'm going for a glass of wattr (or was that watrr?).