I know there are a few more threads about this subject but they start to get difficult to read with all those messages! :-)I took the new babe for a test ride last night. Of course I merged the looks with the brain and attached her beautyful looks to the inteligence of the PIC panel. ;-)The babe wore the Rolls Royce engines and the Air2000 Livery. Flight was LGIR-LGAV, a long enough flight to get the feeling, but not too long.These are my comments on the flight. I would love to hear from real 757 pilots (Iz, CaptBill etc) to comment if the action, speed or behaviour is the correct. I am not to judge the model. I will just point out what I would describe as "strange" compared to what I've used until now.The figures: ZFW=72.1T, FOB=18T, TOW=90T, TF=6T, LW=82TISA Weather conditions so that I get no weather effects on the flight model.Ground Behaviour/Taxing.No problems with parking brakes on. After releasing the parking brakes the a/c needed just a little push on the throttles to get her rolling and then back to idle. Kept accelerating slowly but not too fast.Turning was a bit too slugish and when too much rudder was used it behaved like a tank taking the turn at a point.Take-Off/Climb.FMC was programmed for a Gross weight of 130T, flaps 15 take-off, 50C D-TO engine setting, VNAV SPDTRANS 280/13000, SPDLIMIT 250/10000. The MIL1C SID required a shallow climbing right turn at 500Ft AGL so I would fly the SID manually with reference to the FD. A/T Was armed, APU Off, FD ON, VNAV/LNAV Armed.Throttle advanced to 65-70% N1 and stabilized. She already started accelerating down the runway. N1 A/T selected and D-TO Setting of 95.4% was set. Acceleration appeared very nice. Nothing like the rocket lounch style I've tried so far. This babe behaved nicely.V1 at 131, Rotated at 140 with slight back pressure to reach the initial attitude of 15 degrees. Rotation and lift off was very smooth as was the initial climb. Hand flown the babe up to FL70 following the FD and retracting flaps at their schedule. Acceleration was smooth and constant she was giving me approx 4000-5000Ft/Min initially which reduced to 2000-2500Ft/Min above FL100.Cruise/Initial descend.Nothing special to report here. Nice and smooth flight. Doing 315KIAS/M.705 at FL240 with N1 being approx at 80-90% which seemed right to me. Near the TOD FMC warned me to reset the MCP Altitude which I then changed to FL100. Descend was initiated normally at TOD and she smoothly started to descend with approx 2000Ft/Min. She decellerated to the 296KIAS descend speed without a problem. Passing FL140 the VNAV SPDTRANS kicked in and once again she started decellerating to reach the 280KIAS speed at FL130. She managed to be at 286KIAS at FL130 which isn't so bad. Vertical speed was approx 2000Ft/Min all the time. The hard time came when she had to slow down to 250KIAS at FL100. She didn't make it, and use of spoilers helped a bit.Approach and landing.Having 255KIAS passing 7000Ft was not bad, but the airport was getting close fast and we really needed to slow down. So the spoilers were used once again. Did not do much good though... So V/S mode was selected and reduced the descend to 1200Ft/Min. She started to slow down. By 3000Ft she was at 220KIAS so flaps 1 were commanded and spoilers retracted. ILS captured with no problems and we started slowing the bird down for the approach. Flaps extended at schedule, gear down, and fully ILS established at 12DME. Autopilot disengaged and took her on hand the rest of the way. Nice and responsive, yet smooth. A/T was kept engaged to take care of the speed. VRef was given by FMC to be 138Kts with Flaps 30 and a (fake) GW of 115T.Approach was done mostly with idle power (32% N1, is this is approach idle Iz was talking about?) Attitude was approx +2 which seemed correct according to the weight.Overall I think we have a winner here (IMHO), at least until someone else releases a more advanced 757 ;-)The only thing that seemed 'strange' from this flight was the difficulty to slow the aircraft down to 250Kts and below even with spoilers, and that during the approach, almost no thrust is needed.If the real 757 pilots would like to comments on these please.I really enjoy the aircraft. She got the looks and now the brains too...Thank you IFDG and Iz for your excellent work!George DorkofikisAthens, Greece

George, I read your report with joy and thank you for your compliments. I take it you're departing from Athens? I've been to many Greek airports but not to Athens, but I'm wondering why you did a flaps 15 takeoff since that gives deteriorated climb performance and the only benefit is a shorter takeoff roll with lower rotation speed. But that's no big deal, if you want to do that, that's fine.To be honest, many many times, the aircraft will prove too slippery even for its own VNAV calculations. Many times, you'll end up above the VNAV path or significantly faster, even with a tailwind. I heard this is due to a very very slight increase in the idle thrust setting, a modification to protect against engine stalls/surges but in the descent, also to provide enough bleed air for cabin pressurization etc. The small bump has not been corrected in the FMC performance database (it's really really small) and sometimes results in these situations. Or so I've heard.Bottom line, the aircraft is really hard to slow down. The design of the aircraft is superb, which you can tell by the fact that in 20 years of service, there have been no significant FAA AD's, which are mandatory limitations or actions imposed on a certain aircraft type in this case. The 737 for example has had numerous AD's and most 737NG's in service today are hampered by a 270 knot airspeed limitation, no speed brakes allowed above 300 knots (which is no biggie if you can't fly faster than 270 anyway) and extra high approach speeds to prevent the loss of aircraft control should the rudder make an inadvertent full deflection (anyone still want to fly on a 737?:). Descending and slowing down at the same time is very very difficult, sometimes it's almost impossible. Slowing from 300 to 250 knots will take about 90 seconds at idle in level flight. So does slowing down from 250 to 200-210 where you start extending the flaps. The 90 seconds are a good thing to keep in mind when you're starting the approach, but remember that this is while not descending. 90 seconds is a long time.Unless you started your final descent to the runway (glideslope) in full landing configuration (gear down, flaps 30), yes, you would need idle thrust all the way down to around 600 feet in order to keep the aircraft slowing down. Once again, that totally depends on your weight and wind situation (you had no winds here).It happens sometimes that I have to ask for flaps 25 (normally not used) to slow the aircraft down enough so I can go to flaps 30 (max 162 knots) because she really doesn't want to slow down with the thrust at idle. One more thing to note is that when setting your final approach speed on the MCP and having the A/T control thrust during the approach, it will add thrust when it's approaching the speed earlier than in real life. This means that when your approach speed is 130, it will start adding thrust at 142 already, which is what you don't really want. This also plays when you're slowing down to a minimum flap speed. So in that case, either override the A/T by pressing the F1 key or disconnect the A/T altogether.One thing regarding the taxiing with idle thrust. I bumped up the idle thrust level quite a bit to achieve this. This does result in slightly unrealistic fuel burns on the ground but since we're not watching our pennies and pounds here (like in real life ops), I don't mind that too much, I really hate having to add thrust all the time during taxi. The problem is that the ground friction drag is way too high, but this is a parameter that cannot be changed in the .air file. It's built into the FS2002 physics engine.Happy simmin,Iz

Hi Iz.Thanks for the reply. I knew the 757 is slick and beautyful (it IS my favorite aircraft!) but had no idea she's so hard to slow down... Well, some babes do have a hard time to slow down after all! ;-)I was actually departing Heraklion (LGIR) to Athens (LGAV). TORA in LGIR is 2600m.Is Flap 5 more usual setting for take-off for the 757?As for the ground drag, this is a long story going back many FS versions... Even in FS2000 you will remember that the a/c turned into the wind even with parking brakes on a slight wind!!!!They fixed that in FS2002, but it seems they did it by increasing the ground drag or something, although I'm not quite sure that ground behaviour is properly simulated...Thanks again for your help. I know I'll enjoy the new bird!George DorkofikisAthens, Greece

Ah Heraklion, been there countless of times. I heard they finally installed that taxiway extension so we don't have to backtrack the runway anymore. This'll make a huge difference in the airport's capacity and delays will be greatly reduced, finally.We do however use flaps 5 all the time there. With a 3,5 hour flight time to Amsterdam, we don't carry enough fuel so that with a full payload we'd need to go to flaps 15 in order to comply with obstacle clearance and such.Do you have a good LGIR scenery by the way? I'm still looking.

Yeap... Taxiway 'E' is finally operational...As for the LGIR scenery... I'm making something... Soon.. very soon...George DorkofikisAthens, Greece

since I didnt want to start a new thread again on ifdg757/pic I'll just write here.did you notice that on vnav climb the pitch oscillations of the pic767 have disappeared.the ifdg757/pic will climb rock steady at .80 up to f390 with no instability at all.now if somebody could tell me what to change in the pic767 so that it will behave the same way.james

Now that you mention it I did notice the a/c was rock steady all the way to FL360 and then when I step climbed to FL380 on my way to Oslo.I have no idea what to change however, although I don't have too much oscillation in the 763.Now, regarding the slow down of this babe. The PIC FMC will calculate TOD according to 767 performance (of course). This is accurate regarding the vertical profile and rate of descend, but not that much regarding the speed! So, in order to correct for the descend and allow the 757 to slow down, you have to take into account those 3 minutes Iz mentioned. 90Secs to slow down to 250Kts and another 90Secs to slow down to 200Kts where you start to extend the flaps.Doing the calculations this gives us an approximate distance of 20nm.So I do from now on is initiate my descend 20-25nm prior to the TOD calculated by the FMC. This will give me enough time to slow down.George DorkofikisAthens, Greece

Hi, I did a flight from santander (lexj) to oporto (lppr).ZFW was 82, but I didn

Look for 757perf.zip by Matt Zagoren in avsim library.It's a pdf file that includes all weights and numbers.I personally use for t/o 280klbs(127.0)and landing 220klbs(99.8).have fun james

Hi, Sorry, but that doesnt really answer to all my questions. Must wait for the next post.Anyway thankscoimbra

Hi!>Questions: >1. where to set a good value for ZFW in the 757 and what and >where to modify? You don't need to modidy anything and actually should not.The ZFW is hardcoded into the aircraft.cfg file and it's always the same. Not very realistic I know...>2. what is the best cost index for the 757? It's up to you, the costumer and pilot to decide.>3. good tables for the speeds in the 757: where to find >them? No idea... If you do find them let us know!>4. how much fuel does 757 burn in this sort of flight? what >are the standard values? if you want to make a flight of 2 >hours, there should be more or less a standard value or not? Question relates to the a/c operations. I don't have a 757 POH so I have no idea.>5. what are the minimum and maximum values for take-off >weight and landing weight in the 757? This is no minimums actually... Practically it's the Zero Fuel Weight plus the take-off fuel. Burn that and down you go... But you WILL take-off!>6. Are there some more issues to set to have a good and real >performance with the 757? Not sure I understand what you mean...George DorkofikisAthens, Greece

Hi!>Questions: >1. where to set a good value for ZFW in the 757 and what and >where to modify? You don't need to modidy anything and actually should not.The ZFW is hardcoded into the aircraft.cfg file and it's always the same. Not very realistic I know...>>>>>>>>>>> So, how is possible that everybody is asking for different aircraft.cfg files since the file is the same for everybody? How is then possible that everybody uses different values for the ZFW in the 757?>4. how much fuel does 757 burn in this sort of flight? what >are the standard values? if you want to make a flight of 2 >hours, there should be more or less a standard value or not? Question relates to the a/c operations. I don't have a 757 POH so I have no idea.>>>>>>>>>>> well, there has to be a standard value more or less, like for other aircrafts ... somebody to asnwer?Thankscoimbra

Coimbra,Regarding the typical fuel burn of a 757, it's not like a Cessna. It depends on so many factors, like your payload, your cruising altitude, your cost index, winds, departure and arrival delays and such.On a short flight, you may be very light and should go up to FL410 right away, but since it's a short flight, ATC may not let you go up that high and go through all those other flight levels and get in the way of other traffic.The higher you fly, the less fuel you burn, and it's quite significant too. If your optimum FL is 410 and ATC clears you to cruise at FL310, you may burn up to 30% more than at FL410. Maybe even more, I don't have the numbers handy.But just as a ballpark figure, you can say this:1st hour of flight including takeoff and climb: 5000 kgs (11,000lb)2nd hour of flight: 4000 kgs (8,800lb)rest of flight: 3500 kgs (7,700lb) per hourSo on a three hour flight, figure to take about 5000 + 4000 + 3500 = 12500 kgs trip fuel and 4500 kgs reserve fuel with you, so that's a total of 17000 kgs, as long as your alternate destination fields aren't a long ways away from your destination.This means you should have around 4500 kgs in your tanks when you land at your destination after three hours.Enjoy!Iz

Hi,And what about ZFW? What to modify and what value is a good one in a 757, regarding that I am using PIC panel of course? Certainly not the 111 used by a 767; must be much or a little bit less. Could we modify the entries in the aircraft.cfg? And what about other weights like TOW and LW? Regards