I want to start at the gate cold and dark. How do I achieve this? thanksbrian

The way I've found is to load a default C172 then cutoff the mixture to kill the engine, turn off everything including master, avionics and starter switch. Then load the PMDG plane. It will be a dark cockpit. The only remaining item that I do is use the FS aircraft menu to lower the fuel on board to a couple thousand pounds each tank. Then, I save the situation at a gate.

I recommend you visit http://smithplanet.com/fs2004/pmdg/and you can download the cold/dark scenario there. I think it is the best cold and dark. hope you enjoy it.