Hi,I've been following Timothy Metzinger's fine tutorial on the PMDG 737NG, but have had some problems creating the base scenario for the flights. After a number of attempts, I managed to save a flight with a cold & dark cockpit(PMDG 737NG 700 series), but there are still some issues:1. When I load the saved flight, the cockpit is indeed cold & dark, but the engines are not shut down fully, and take a minute or so to spool down completely. This is the case despite the fact that throttles/fuel switches are in the cutoff position.2. If I switch to another flight and plane which has the engine(s) running, and then switch back, the 737 engines are also running, although they should not be(I am not sure if this happens every time, but it has occurred at least once).(By the way, I created the above flight by positioning the Cessna 172SP at the Dade-Collier airport, shutting down everything, except the avionics master switch, loading the 737-700, and saving the flight.)Is there anything I can do about this, or is it a limitation in FS itself? I would appreciate your help!Frank

Hi Frank,don't know about your second question, but regarding the first: when you saved your "cold & dark" NG, did you wait BEFORE saving the flight that your engines really spooled down ?I did the same once and my engines kept spolling down when reloading the flight. So I shut them down and waited a couple of minutes for everything settling and then resaved. It worked fine.

Gee, Enrico, of course that could be the problem!! :-)Will try out your suggestion tonight.Many thanks,Frank

Sometimes, and I don't know why, your saved flight does not get written to the "SITUATION=" of the FS9.cfg file for startup. I would never have believed this if it didn't actually happen to me. I kept saving the cessna with cold and dark cockpit, but whenever I restart FS, the Cessna's engines will be running, my view transition setting would be gradual, etc.I had to manually put in the path to the saved flight name in the FS9.cfg file. I have no idea why it wasn't being automatically saved. This could be your problem.....worth a look maybe.

The best way I've found to ensure a reliable cold and dark startup scenario is to make my default flight a cold and dark flight with an MS plane (at Meigs in the Cessna, just for old times' sake :-))Paul Croft10 miles SE of EGLL

Just to add to Paul's good advice; If you would like to have FS start with your real world time zone, adjust the airport location to some airport in your time zone. If you live in Sweden use an airport using CET (Central European Time). If you live in Toronto use an airport that uses EST (Eastern Standard Time).Cheers,