Wellbasicallyhere goes...I am sitting at the gate or on the end of the rway or whereever i decide to startup. so i start up engines they are running nicely everything is good exept next to where the N1% shows up i have a message in yellow saying fuel tank/eng. what is this?but the main problem iswhen i open my FMC i type in the departure airport and the rway and the arriving airport then i go through the other pages ( takeoff , thrust limit. etc.) and click execute but no line or anything shows up on my navigationl display and when i turn on the F/D and press lnav or vnav after putting my V2 speed in, LNAV and VNAV do not light up. im newany help is very very much appreciatedpleaseRichy Gibson

You didn't say if you use the checklist.The fuel tank message is telling you something is wrong with the configuration (cross flow valves in wrong position most likely).Before you program the flight, the IRS need aligned. Checklist item.

How do i allign the IRS properly?where is this checklist?Richy

i HAVE rotated the switches to NAV and the ND is fully workingbut LNAV and VNAV will not light up or the FMC line will not show on the NDRichy

Did the runway appear on your display when you entered a runway and SID?Have you checked on higher ND ranges for a route line?Maybe there is a "route discontinuity" that you haven't closed (i.e. on the LEGS page, there is still a blank line)Did you programme a cruise altitude?Cheers.Q> イアン　/ Ян

Richy,I think you need at least one waypoint between the departing and arriving airport for the route to show up. I would also suggest a thorough studying of the manual shipped with the product.Hope it helps,

I have to agree with the above, you really need to go through the manual or a detailed tutorial to understand this aircraft. It is clear by your questions (which are a bit elementary) that you really don't understand the aircraft systems and functionality. The 747 is not like a cessna, you can't just jump into it and expect to fly around with little to no knowledge of the systems. But,on saying that there was a time when I, like you, needed to learn too, and thankfully there is a lot of good training material to help us out! It's great fun learning! FUEL TANK/ENG - This is the aircraft telling you that your fuel system configuration should be in to the tank to engine mode, which means each tank supplies fuel to just one engine. Main 1 to Eng 1 etc.. etc... You'll probably find tanks 1 to 4 have roughly the same amount of fuel within them, and the total is around 50,000Kg ish.As for setting up routes, there are several ways to do this, but, since you're not sure about the IRS and other systems I think it's really best that you start from the bottom and work your way up. I hope you don't take this post the wrong way, it's meant in a friendly way :)The 747-400 is going to take some time to learn, there are a lot of things to consider. Nav, A/P functions, FMC, Hydraulics, Pneumatics, Air Con along with various display functionalities. I would strongly suggest that you forget flying a route by yourself with no help for now, and look at the tutorials on the PMDG OPs page and go through them. Also there are a couple of decent ones on the British Airways Virtual website. One of which I wrote that (although not perfect by any means, actually working on an updated version at the moment) should certainly explain a significant proportion of the functionality and give you a good grounding for using this aircraft. You can find those here.http://www.speedbirdonline.co.uk/747.htmlLet us know how you get on!CheersCraig

okwellfirstlyim sorryim sorry for all the trouble ive caused and i am very grateful for the number of people who have posted trying to help meafter reading your posts i loaded up straight away at seattle and tried the same flight to KSFOand nowi have realizedmy mistake was the stupidest mistake you could makethere were no way points in my flight plan whatsoeverso i made my way pointsandSUCESS!!!my IRS and systems were fine all along and now i can fly from A to Bwith no trouble whatsoverPMDG you did a great job on this 747thanks alotand thanks to you guys for helping meCheersRichy