My copilot thinks our 737NGX is flying when its grounded

[paj 21]

Hi,

 

I've just purchased MCE and have so far only tried it with the PMDG 737NGX. I've hit a few problems which someone here may be able to assist me with. Here are my most pressing MCE issues:

 

1) Starting a new flight cold & dark I find I can't "set autobrake RTO" as the copilot replies "can't select rejected takeoff on the autobrake when we are airborne captain". We are most definitely on the ground.

 

2) When I request him to "release parking brake" his only response is to yell at me "do you want to destroy the gear on landing or what?"

 

3) Whilst I can get my co-pilot to set the vertical speed to a positive value I can't work out how to get him to set a negative VS.

 

4) How do I ask the copilot to retract the flaps by just one notch? (The only command I found in the 737NGX that allows extension of the flaps by one notch is "extend slats")

 

5) If I load a flightplan into FSX and then start MCE it successfully lists origin, destination, registration and crz alt on its ATC tab. But can this information in MCE be updated ? (eg If I load MCE before setting a flightplan the MCE ATC tab remains mostly blank and its "flight plan" button is always greyed out)

 

Many thanks for any suggestions!

 

Cheers

Peter.

[FS++ 710]

Hi,

 

I've just purchased MCE and have so far only tried it with the PMDG 737NGX. I've hit a few problems which someone here may be able to assist me with. Here are my most pressing MCE issues:

 

1) Starting a new flight cold & dark I find I can't "set autobrake RTO" as the copilot replies "can't select rejected takeoff on the autobrake when we are airborne captain". We are most definitely on the ground.

 

2) When I request him to "release parking brake" his only response is to yell at me "do you want to destroy the gear on landing or what?"

 

3) Whilst I can get my co-pilot to set the vertical speed to a positive value I can't work out how to get him to set a negative VS.

 

4) How do I ask the copilot to retract the flaps by just one notch? (The only command I found in the 737NGX that allows extension of the flaps by one notch is "extend slats")

 

5) If I load a flightplan into FSX and then start MCE it successfully lists origin, destination, registration and crz alt on its ATC tab. But can this information in MCE be updated ? (eg If I load MCE before setting a flightplan the MCE ATC tab remains mostly blank and its "flight plan" button is always greyed out)

 

Many thanks for any suggestions!

 

Cheers

Peter.

 

Hi Peter,

 

Just to make sure your installation went smoothly.

 

Assuming you installed version 2.4.9.2

 

You should have fsInsider.dll (version 2.4.9.2) inside \Flight Simulator X\ folder. Always use the same fsInsider.dll version as the MCE version, because they are tested together. Mix and match may work, but isn't supported.

 

 

What module version do you have for mcpmd73X.dll ? (module found inside \Flight Simulator X\MCE dlls\ folder)

 

Also make sure PMDG 737 NGX is updated to Service Pack 1C. There is a separate service pack for 800-900 and 600-700.

[WR269 367]

Hi,

 

I've just purchased MCE and have so far only tried it with the PMDG 737NGX. I've hit a few problems which someone here may be able to assist me with. Here are my most pressing MCE issues:

 

1) Starting a new flight cold & dark I find I can't "set autobrake RTO" as the copilot replies "can't select rejected takeoff on the autobrake when we are airborne captain". We are most definitely on the ground.

 

2) When I request him to "release parking brake" his only response is to yell at me "do you want to destroy the gear on landing or what?"

 

3) Whilst I can get my co-pilot to set the vertical speed to a positive value I can't work out how to get him to set a negative VS.

 

4) How do I ask the copilot to retract the flaps by just one notch? (The only command I found in the 737NGX that allows extension of the flaps by one notch is "extend slats")

 

5) If I load a flightplan into FSX and then start MCE it successfully lists origin, destination, registration and crz alt on its ATC tab. But can this information in MCE be updated ? (eg If I load MCE before setting a flightplan the MCE ATC tab remains mostly blank and its "flight plan" button is always greyed out)

 

Many thanks for any suggestions!

 

Cheers

Peter.

 

Hi Peter,

 

Your questions 1 & 2 will probably get fixed by reinstalling, to be honest i had never heard or seen that issue before?

 

Question three, i remember attempting a while back using "set vertical speed minus 500" and it worked fine.

 

Question four, just try "flaps up one notch" and see if it works, if it doesnt, you can always call out the value of the next flap up position, ie if you are on flaps 15 and one notch up is 10, then "flaps ten" will definitely work.

 

Question five, your v-speeds will be read directly from the values you enter in the fMC... Everything else you can change yourself... Just say "departure airport is KJFK" reading the airport name with the phonetic alphabet... Do the same for destination airport... You can use several variations... Like "we are going to KMEM"

 

You can also tell your first officer "departure runway is 11" and he will read it back... Most cases, the first officer will prompt you for that information before you remember to give it to him.

 

Strongly advice reinstalling, run the training wizard and speech training, and if you use the NGX, Dan has created an extremely good flow document to get you going, it even has some emergency procedures for your first officer to help you with, you can find it in the Avsim library, look for reference in this forum.

 

Will

[BartEnder 2]

1) Starting a new flight cold & dark I find I can't "set autobrake RTO" as the copilot replies "can't select rejected takeoff on the autobrake when we are airborne captain". We are most definitely on the ground.

 

2) When I request him to "release parking brake" his only response is to yell at me "do you want to destroy the gear on landing or what?"

Try to right click on the taskbar and select "force flight mode" or the other one (cannot recall it here and no MCE on this PC). You can also try to slew up ("Y" and F4 next) and down (F1 till the ground).

 

3) Whilst I can get my co-pilot to set the vertical speed to a positive value I can't work out how to get him to set a negative VS.

Have You tried 'Vertical speed minus fifteen hundred' or similar? There is a nice set of doc's providing You what can be said to MCE's FO.

 

4) How do I ask the copilot to retract the flaps by just one notch? (The only command I found in the 737NGX that allows extension of the flaps by one notch is "extend slats")

Flaps fifteen when You are at flaps 20, flaps twenty five when You are at flaps 30 and so on. This is documented as far as I remember and I encourage You to read the doc's. It is a half an hour read, but worth every minute to have the communication seamless.

 

5) If I load a flightplan into FSX and then start MCE it successfully lists origin, destination, registration and crz alt on its ATC tab. But can this information in MCE be updated ? (eg If I load MCE before setting a flightplan the MCE ATC tab remains mostly blank and its "flight plan" button is always greyed out)

Can't help here. My way of doing business is preparing the flightplan in external program, starting FSX plus tons of addons loaded via FSUIPC: some of them loaded before FSX, some of them when I am on the parking spot inside the cockpit (MCE is one of them).

 

Good luck!

[paj 21]

Hi all,

 

Many thanks for the responses.

 

I've found many of my problems were caused by my attempting to run MCE with user-access-control on.

 

I had of course installed MCE with UAC off and always run it using the "as administrator" option. But on my Win7 x64 box it seems UAC=on stops several MCE commands working. Just in case it helps somebody else I found the following commands were recognized by MCE but resulted in no actions:

1. engine generators on
   
2. IRS to NAV
   
3. Start switches continuous relight
   
4. select tow-gar power
   
5. start engine (1|2) - with UAC off this process required manual change of engine start switch to GND before it completed successfully
   
6. set autobrake RTO
   
7. release parking brake
   
8. set flaps xx - with UAC off the first call to set flaps works, but subsequent calls move flaps to full deflection up/down only!
   
9. equipment tests (GPWS, fire protection system, overspeed warning, lights, stick shaker, transponder etc)
   
10. calls to ground and cabin crew
    

That may seem like a lot of things not working but in fact most of the most common commands worked fine for me with UAC on.

 

I was reluctant to turn UAC off permanently due to the fact that I've never needed to before, there is a (admittedly slight) increased security risk and mainly because I knew EZdocCamera (EZCA) does not work on my computer when UAC is off. I've since found a forum post suggesting uninstalling and reinstalling EZCA with UAC off will allow it to subsequently work regardless of the UAC setting. I've just tried this and I now have MCE and EZCA working with UAC=off and I'll continue to run my computer that way.

 

Well, there are a few other small questions I have regarding MCE but I'll put those in another topic.

 

Thanks again for your suggestions.