I read some very interesting articles about the concepts of the MD-11 FMA as well as documents describing how to improve it recently. I've seen some rather strange and unexpected (by me) annunciations myself already during my virtual flights but haven't taken the time so far to "decrypt" and analyze them in detail.The FMA of the MD-11 is still somehow "unfamiliar" to me and works very differently to others if you ask me, and at times it surprises me, I have to say. FMAs in general seem to work in a way that's not necessarily very "human friendly" and need to be kind of "deciphered" to get an idea of what is going on. After all what I've read so far it looks that it's still possible even after the decipher step that the FMA doesn't present the information from which one could conclude what the automatics does and tries to achieve in detail. This to me looks as a "design flaw" created in the past when not enough research in the area of human-machine interfaces was yet performed. So, my resumee would be that FMAs in general are some kind of a compromise and not stringently designed (i.e. there may be exceptions to the rules and "illogical" combinations of modes to cope with rare or uncommon flight situations).Is there some documentation available which covers the MD-11 FMA in more detail such as the possible mode combinations and especially the ideas behind vertical guidance and the autoflight modes assigned to different situations?

A lot of thought has gone into the FMA's on Boeing,Airbus and the MD11. They are pretty easy to understand once you have 'fully' studied the relevant section in the FCOM's.If there is something you don't understand that is more down to the level of studying you put in rather then the design of the system.http://www.md-11.org/FMA%20pdf.htmhttp://support.precisionmanuals.com/KB/a18/tips-for-boeing-pilots-learning-the-md-11.aspxhttp://www.airlinepilotforums.com/cargo/32046-fdx-md11-gouge-help.html

A lot of thought has gone into the FMA's on Boeing,Airbus and the MD11. They are pretty easy to understand once you have 'fully' studied the relevant section in the FCOM's.If there is something you don't understand that is more down to the level of studying you put in rather then the design of the system.http://www.md-11.org/FMA%20pdf.htmhttp://support.precisionmanuals.com/KB/a18/tips-for-boeing-pilots-learning-the-md-11.aspxhttp://www.airlinepilotforums.com/cargo/32046-fdx-md11-gouge-help.html

Thank you, but it's not that I don't understand the annunciations themselves. We better leave this thread alone. It was probably more a "shoot in the dark" as I'm referring to much more complex things here which potentially don't fit this forum. Nevermind, I'm more than happy with the MD-11 and keep studying!