Glad you have some progress. Keep us posted on how it is working out.You might find that the choice of FMC gauge you use has a bearing on the aircraft you place it in, in terms of how usable it is. What was it, a Hawker Siddeley Trident? It's not unknown for older jets to get an FMC of course, many first and second series 737s have such an upgrade, but keep in mind that some stuff on FMCs relates to the aircraft itself, such as flap and thrust settings, and it is doubtful an FMC would be aware of what the hell the high-lift droops are on a Trident for example, since it was far more likely to use a Carousel and have a navigator, so you might have to blag some of the entries on the FMC a bit. The Trident is a very unique aeroplane (one of the reasons it was not a major commercial success), so you may run into things which require a bit of head scratching as far as settings go, but if you just want it to do LNAV and VNAV via the ISG FMC, you should probably be alright.It's not too unusual to find FS9 stuff has some relation to FSX, often things such as gauges are aliased to other locations, which might explain the weirdness in it starting to work. anyway, have fun.Al

Yes pretty much all I want it for are the LNAV and VNAV, hold patterns, SIDS and STARS. Other calculations such as thrust indexing and cost indexing isn't so important to me on this one.

Infact in some of the older aircraft I've been in (real world), the INS has been ditched and a Honeywell style FMC has been added. Perhaps I might be better off with the Honeywell style in this aircraft.One thing I've noticed so far, is the SID and STAR list on the FMC is empty.

I tend to put departure and arrival routes in manually when there are no SIDs or STARS available. If you read my review of the Ariane 737NG, you'll note that I pointed out this could be done with that aircraft to get around the fact that the SID/STAR database was somewhat limited for some parts of the globe, by adding offset fixes.I do know that the Trident was actually still flying up until about 1998, where it was in service with the Chinese Air Force of all things, one of the reasons for that, is because military aircraft can be exempted from noise restrictions that would otherwise have prematurely turned noisy things like the Trident into museum pieces, so it is extremely likely that one or two Tridents found themselves with upgraded avionics, although they might have been a bit like something you'd find in a Shenyang J7!Many Tridents were relegated to service in places around the globe where ground-based aids were limited, and so a GPS is probably a wise thing to add as well, and it is reasonable to imagine this happened on the real thing. As you point out, there is quite a cottage industry of companies producing FMCs for 'old bangers' - especially the 727 and 737 - with companies such as DAC International, ARC Avionics and Universal Avionics offering a range of very sophisticated avionics upgrades which can 'NG-ify' stuff like old B737s and the like, so it might be worth taking a look at the systems they offer and trying to emulate that look for your Trident, which is where FS Panel Studio might come in handy. You can find a bit about such upgrades in Chris Brady's 'Boeing 737 Technical Guide', which is a book no serious 'propellerhead' should be without, as it has a wealth of really good info on FMCsAl

The thing I don't get it is why the SID and STAR list is empty, when with other FMCs and navigational aids, the list isn't empty.There's already a GPS on the aircraft, but I'm not sure how to connect the FMC, rather than the GPS unit. There aren't really any instructions with this, just pages telling us what things do, rather than how to do them.

Are there meant to be any other pop up panels to connect the FMC with the aircraft?

Yes, there are, see the final paragraph of this post for an explanation of that.There is just the FMC's CDU (although see below for a caveat to this) which is a simulation of the CDU unit in the sense that it controls stuff in concert with the autopilot, so there is no need to link it, as it is already linked up in the same way as the real thing would be. You can, however, edit how that actually does what it does. Take a look at the PDF file 'ISG Settings' in the folder 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\ISG\Docs'. It gives you a guide to how you can add text lines to the main ISG config file to alter how the FMC behaves. Mostly this is pretty simple, usually just a case of looking in the PDF for a specific behaviour, then adding that line to the main ISG config file with either a 1 or a 0 at the end indicate either yes or no.But.... You may of course have to pick and choose autopilot settings on the mode control panel to get things to work, so in the case of the Trident, which may not have a VNAV or LNAV button on the panel, you would have to add an autopilot panel with those switches, so that you could engage those buttons, otherwise you might have no way to tell the autopilot to follow what you have put into the FMC. You could simply add the default 737 A/P, or any other one you fancied, but ISG comes with gauges for the purpose as well; ISG includes small gauges that are autopilot buttons for things like VNAV and LNAV, so you can add those to your panel. This is why I got you to add the panel to the A321, so you could try it out just in a very rough fashion, since the autopilot buttons are already there in the A321, but for your Trident, you will probably have to add them. Scroll down on that same PDF I referenced above in this post and you will see those gauges, and their names, so it is not hard to add them to your panel, all you have to do is decide where you want them.Al

Ok, what I've done, which I didn't have before, was the MCU. Now I have that, I select LNAV, have the Tridents AP on Heading hold and the FMC will control the LNAV of the Trident. I don't think I can get VNAV to work. It's a bit of a faff, but I can get SIDS and STARS, but it's not as simple as say, the Wilco 737's FMC to get arrival and departure routes. I've still got some messing about to do. The direct to etc works a little different.I might still try the Honeywell one, if I can work out how to put that into the CFG file, as it looks more like what an older jet would have.

Strange, did the same with my HS 1-11, and I'm just getting nothing again.

Ok, managed to sort that out. Boy, this is some work.Anyway, how do I ensure that these units are up to date, how can I update the AIRAC cycles?

Yup, things like this take a bit of work initially, but once you get familiar with how the trick is done, it doesn't really take long. With regard to updates, to be honest, I've no idea how you update the ISG stuff. I would imagine that you download the latest version or patch, and from what I've seen, it does tend to get updated every once in a while.Al

It's odd, sometimes I can get SIDS, sometimes I can't, and this is when leaving EGLL.

This is some bizzare software.Nothing has changed since I got it working.Now, it's decided it doesn't want to work.When I select the FMS or anything from it, I see a box flash up then dissapear.#####? :(

Might want to try PMing the developer here on Avsim, since he does frequent the place.Al

This is some bizzare software.Nothing has changed since I got it working.Now, it's decided it doesn't want to work.When I select the FMS or anything from it, I see a box flash up then dissapear.#####? :(

Did you try their support forum??