Observations during 744 flight from LLBG (Tel-Aviv) to ...

[JSACKS 0]

I just landed the Queen at JFK intact despite misplanning the fuel. I flew in real time (no acceleration) as I always do. I have a few observations of the flight as follows:1. On approach, as I was in the PMDG EL AL 744, I noticed the flight directly in front of me was the same aircraft, same airline (!), same origin, flight No. 3, by Ultimate Traffic. How's that for sheer coincidence? I had planned this flight with no reference to timetables. FS continues to surprise and amaze like this--makes it a great hobby!2. At intervals during the flight, starting about halfway across, I found that if I clicked the mouse over the MCP dials, such as the EFIS range dial, the range would flip several steps in one go when all I did was click once. I have had a similar mis-dialing of the speed on approach, as if the MCP SPD button is out of control following a single mouse click on that window. Ditto for the MCP ALT setting which went nuts once or twice before doing a step climb and rotated quickly to 50000 when I clicked once for up, and then spun down to 13000 when I clicked once on down. I can't remember the term for this jumping of digits but I have FSUIPC and I have it programmed to prevent this jumping about from happening (oh, yeah, just remembered, it's called "Control Acceleration", isn't it?). Is this a control acceleration issue? Or is some of my hardware suspect?3. I also found from time to time that clicking the dials in the VC simply did not work at all. This has happened periodically before on other flights. I have to click the dials in the 2D cockpit when this occurs.4. I thought I was going to run out of fuel because I had a strong headwind all the way over and it seems the FMC gave over optimistic indications about my landing fuel. Initially, it projected landing fuel of 40K but some time into the flight, that started to fall in stages and actual landing fuel was a mere 16K lbs, presumably because the flight took 1 hour longer than planned because of the wind. I thought that maybe I should have programmed the expected WIND in RTE DATA but when I tried to do that, I got INVALID ENTRY or some such reading. How does one enter data there and is that what I should be looking to do to prevent such a situation from recurring?5. The N1 and fuel flow oscillated a fair bit during the cruise portion in the steady 70 knot headwind for the cruise portion. The wings also flexed quite a lot (it looked good!). I found this surprising. I would have thought that N1 and fuel flow would be fairly steady and that the wings would also be pretty steady unless we hit clear air turbulence. N1 oscillated about 5% throughout much of the cruise (i.e., would go from 98 to 96 to 93, then back up to 98 in a matter of 5-10 secs) and fuel flow fluctuated maybe 4,000 lbs/hr as N1 roller coastered. Is this normal? Were the flexing wings normal in such circumstances?6. I don't really know much at all about fuel management. I just waited for yellow EICAS alerts and then PRESSed the appropriate buttons on the overhead fuel panel in response and this worked OK. Is that a normal procedure or is one supposed to pre-empt such EICAS alerts?I'm sure there's more that I'll recall, but that's a good start. Overall, the flight worked brilliantly. LNAV and VNAV were superb. Step climbs were flawless. The descent was perfect all the way down, including the rollback to the 10,000 speed limit, the landing was fantastic just past the ILS TD lines. I was only ever 2K lbs out on fuel readings in the FMC from start to finish no matter where I checked fuel consumption and remaining fuel. I was hugely impressed once again and had a super time with this marvellous add-on. Thanks and congratulations to PMDG for their outstanding work!I look forward to any posts, thanks!Jonathan

[Guest Jock in a Frock]

Re: 2Are you using a wireless mouse? I have found that sometimes my wireless mouse does not detect the "Mouse Up" event when I release the mouse button, and this could cause the MCP knob to think you are still holding the mouse button, so it will continue to dial in that direction. I don't think FSUIPC will have any control over this as it's intended to smooth out noisy controllers, joysticks, yokes etc.Andy Scholes.

[JSACKS 0]

Huh, Andy, you might have hit a major nail on the head. I do indeed have a wireless mouse and it seems to be "sticky" at times. You may be correct in your assertion. I wondered last night if it needed new batteries (yet again) but it does not seem reasonable so soon.I did bring up FRSUIPC during the flight and re-clicked Fix Control Acceleration and I wasn't sure if that really worked or did anything during the flight. I was just happy to land without crashing. On approach when I went from VNAV to MCP SPD< I clicked the SPD window from IAS 170 and it scrolled down to a very deadly IAS 113 in 2 seconds, aarrgh!!! I just managed to inch back up carefully to Vref25 of 150 before losing the GS, phew! But I can't go on like this.I might try to swap the mouse for a wired mouse and see what happens.Appreciate your post, thanks.Jonathan