Something fishy

[Guest AJ]

I am probably doing something stupid, but I need your help in figuring it out.I have been enjoying the Queen for many months, but I recently bought a new computer, and just goth through instaling FS2004 and the 744/744F on to it. On my first flight, somthing really wierd happened. The autoflight system seesm to be uncoupled from the airplane, when it is active.After preflighting the bird and programming the FMC as I have many times before, I set off for the runway and all all seemed good. During takeoff, however, I noticed that the flight director crosshair did not rise for rotation, but instead remained pegged at the horizon. As I climbed, the crosshair actually sank below the horizon. In order to buy myself some time to figure out what was happening, I flew manually up to 10,000 feet and then activated the autopilot in simple heading/altitude hold mode. The little green lights came on as they should have, and the annunciator on the PFD also indicated that the autpilot was engaged. However, when I released the controls, the plane proceeded to descend and then winged over into a spiral dive. All the time, the autpilot appeared to be active. The flight director continued to point in every direction except the one in which I wanted to go.I have never encountered anything like this before, and I'm sure there is probably some setting I messed up during configuration, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what's going on. Any ideas. Later I tried to repeat the flight and encountered the same thing again. Thanks,Andrew

[Chaos81 110]

Two things. One, what is your FMA showing when this happens? Two, can you take a screenshot when this happens?

[Guest AJ]

I'll try to get some screenshots when I get a chance. The FMA displays are all normal, i.e. it shows heading selesct when that is active and alt hold when that is active. As I said, however, the oddest symptom is the dead flight director. It displays the croshair on the PFD, but it just bobs around the horizon, never moving away from it beyond 1 or 2 degrees.Andrew