B747 Difficult To Taxi?

[thepilot 571]

Hi,just completed another flight on the 747, and once again I found taxiing the A/C to be the most difficult phase of the flight. Even with mediocre payload/fuel, a lot of N1 is needed in order not to come to a complete stop on the taxiway. In particular, making a turn slows the jumbojet down a lot. I've watched many B744 videos to date and in each of which taxiing seemed to be much easier, and also requiring far less engine power. No 3 is normally shut down after lading. Anybody have similar experiences?

[downscc 1,327]

The taxi can be more difficult than the flying, I hope that's not a surprise. I remember my first instructor making it very clear that I was still piloting the airplane until the engine stopped, didn't matter if I was on the ground. I think statistically, there's more damage done on the ground and there's certainly been many incidents with loss of life.

[thepilot 571]

The taxi can be more difficult than the flying, I hope that's not a surprise.

That is true, as evidenced in the cases where pilots ignored ATC instructions (B757 on take-off while CRJ is crossing runway, ATL), take-off from wrong runway resulting in a fatal accident (Lexington), etc. However... I am not really referring to the difficulty of the taxi itself, but more about the characteristics of the 744, which I find is much harder to move on the ground than the PMDG MD-11 for instance.

[Gary A 8]

Hi,just completed another flight on the 747, and once again I found taxiing the A/C to be the most difficult phase of the flight. Even with mediocre payload/fuel, a lot of N1 is needed in order not to come to a complete stop on the taxiway. In particular, making a turn slows the jumbojet down a lot. I've watched many B744 videos to date and in each of which taxiing seemed to be much easier, and also requiring far less engine power. No 3 is normally shut down after lading. Anybody have similar experiences?

I really hadn"t noticed any issue with mine. Around 468,000 pounds TOW, starts to crawl around 33 N1 with the GE's. Certainly no more than 35 N1 and once moving I have to peel her back to 29ish N1 to maintain 15kt taxy. Handles (tills) like a dream, no issues. All four engines running.

[Turbine777 13]

Same here. It takes the lady some pushin to get going/started but if you don't quickly drop thrott once you do, you'll be taxiing like

[Gary A 8]

Same here. It takes the lady some pushin to get going/started but if you don't quickly drop thrott once you do, you'll be taxiing like

I luv that vid.

[SMITI07 53]

There is also a limitation in the ground friction model in msfs. You will notice you will require a larger amount on thrust to get the aircraft moving than in real life. but once your moveing you can bring the throttels back a bit to keep it going.

[windshearDK 52]

There is also a limitation in the ground friction model in msfs. You will notice you will require a larger amount on thrust to get the aircraft moving than in real life. but once your moveing you can bring the throttels back a bit to keep it going.

Friction is an issue. LVD has gone around this problem and thus you can taxi at idle thrust.But I would recommend those who has problems taxiing, to push the throttles forward for some acceleration then down to almost idle and let the speed bleed off, then accelerate again.For tight turns run at idle thrust until you are at 3 knots at the point of turn, then foreward the thrust and turn and power down, then up again if another turn is needed.It is very difficult, especially at older taxiway designs or using taxi routes given to you by FS ATC(crazy and dangerous routes sometimes!).Good luck! :( Boaz.

[Ralgh 43]

The FS9 747 does seem to lose a lot of speed in the turns. There were some other threads in this forum that had a solution by downloading a new SIM1.dll. It changes the surface friction in FS9 i guess. The thing is that it does make the 747 taxi more realistic but the other planes that were fine before will tend to pick up a lot of speed you don't want during taxi. I ended up swapping the two different SIM1.dll flies depending on what I wanted to fly.

[Guest 413X3]

I've noticed the FSX version is far more driver friendly on the ground than the FS9 version was. I can easily pull off some tighter turns when I would struggle just with regular turns on the FS9 version

[claviermichel 0]

Although not very realistic there is a groundhandling application available for both FSX and FS9 on the Avsim library. Don't remember the name but if you do a search with the keyword "groundhandling" it will pop up. As far as I recall it handles both pushback and taxiing and is fairly easy to install.Cheers