Has anyone purchased yet?

[Airline2Sim 489]

Thank  you Dave! Yes I think the Majestic guys deserve huge kudos for coming up with an aircraft that a real pilot (guys who often hold simmers in some contempt, from reading many threads on sites like PpRune) can hop into and operate to within a 99% tolerance of the way he does it everyday. That's some achievement. With the exception of the icing spigot and its associated lighting, not much has been left out.

 

And point of order - I'm actually from Cheshire   but you're bang on with Josh - he's an East Midlander. For our foreign viewers, I'm grateful he's not a West Midlander  .

 

Wait until the Airbus course - our EasyJet skipper is Welsh!  :lol:

[pete_auau 1,153]

Wait until the Airbus course - our EasyJet skipper is Welsh

 

Ah  so you got inside information on the fs labs airbus being released soon

[klamal 282]

 

 

My enthusiasm for the Q400 has been hugely revitalized due to everything I learned from this training, and now that I'm operating it more closely to real world methods ......   it's all I'll be flying for a long time I think now.

 

Couldn't agree more!!  I bought this today from Just Flight as they had an $8 discount for Easter.  Add some credits I had with them from past purchases and I got this for $16 instead of $30.  At that price, this was a steal!!  This is easily worth $30.  Excellent!!! Excellent!!!!  Excellent!!!  It has revitalized my interest in the Q400 too!!

 

I'm not really going to do justice on a review or trying to put into words any better than has already been said.  Very professional!  Very informative!  Very well done, really all the way around!  I normally just watch youtube stuff for learning how to fly aircraft.  But, those videos are mostly never from real pilots.  So nice to have Josh, a real pilot, guiding us through.  He does an excellent job and really seems extremely knowledgeable about flying and the Q400.

 

My only critique would be what was already said too with the tips that pop up.  Some of them don't stay on the screen long enough for you to read.  Very minor thing though.

 

To sum up, a big two thumbs up for me!! If you're on the fence at all, you can jump on over and buy.  It really is good!  Thanks so much and look forward to your airbus series(for FSL?)!!

[Airline2Sim 489]

Thanks guys, very kind words and useful feedback for the future for us.

 

In terms of the Airbus, we have a pilot earmarked and the course contents outlined but nothing finalised yet about which Airbus we'd use for it.

 

The FSL would obviously be a 'study sim' level aircraft well suited to this kind of thing but we've not chatted to the guys from FSL yet and of course there's no timescale on release.

 

The focus of our attentions for the next 10-12 weeks will be the First Officer course for the Q400.

[Q_flyer 766]

 

 

I'm actually from Cheshire 

 

Ahhh.....funny lot you Cheshire people - a bit scouse, a bit manc, and a tad Yorkshirey .... :lol: ..... smoother accent than the scouses though!

 

It's a little like people from Northumberland up here;   definite Geordie traits but with some Scottish and other influences (like Norwegian!). :smile:

 

Looking forward to the F/O course, and the news that there will be a Airbus curriculum has made my day.

[Airline2Sim 489]

Ahhh.....funny lot you Cheshire people - a bit scouse, a bit manc, and a tad Yorkshirey .... :lol: ..... smoother accent than the scouses though!

 

It's a little like people from Northumberland up here;   definite Geordie traits but with some Scottish and other influences (like Norwegian!). :smile:

 

Looking forward to the F/O course, and the news that there will be a Airbus curriculum has made my day.

 

Whereabouts are you Dave? Airline2Sim's office is in Durham.

[Q_flyer 766]

Whereabouts are you Dave? Airline2Sim's office is in Durham.

 

6 miles from Durham! (East, towards the coast) :smile:

[Airline2Sim 489]

Wow, small world! We're at the Rivergreen Centre in Durham. Pop in sometime for a coffee and flight sim chit chat! 

[taylorcam 0]

Going to in may from Sim Market not Vimeo

[henri5 16]

I have now watched 8 of the 10 episodes, and it is well worth buying given the modest price and the lack of  a suitable  operations manual (as opposed to a system manual) for this aircraft. Buy it, you will learn a lot. Here are a few comments I mean to be helpful, please do not take them too seriously.

 

1) I tried to watch the episodes without first downloading them, and despite having a 1.2 Mb/sec download speed,  the stopping of the video every few seconds made it a pain to watch, so I downloaded the episodes and watched them without any problem. These videos seem pretty big, and I wonder if there is not a more highly compressed format than the mpeg 4 format used (perhaps not?).

 

2) The speaking habit of the pilot to speak fast and to end his sentences with a decrease in frequency and volume along with and increase ins speed ending in a whisper as if running out of air makes it more difficult to understand than it should.

 

3) One or two of the videos having to do with flight planning have little to do with the specific aircraft and require additional software, and for a person like me who does not care very much about spending a half hour of preparation before taking off  could do without them.

 

4) A complete newbie not familiar with the Q400 and/or with all the acronyms of flight (ACARS, PFD, FMS, ILS, MDA, ATC, charts and so on) will find it very difficult to follow these tutorials and should probably learn some of the basics first. These videos seem aimed mostly at experienced simulators already familiar with the main features of the aircraft able to start from cold and dark, taxi to a runway, take off and land with the autopilot. Some of the explanations go by very fast, ad there is not always a cursor showing which specific  screen  they are talking about. In a couple of cases, the screen disappeareed before I could identify which specific screen I was not very familiar with or button was being talked about and had to backtrack the video to recognize it.

 

5) I had no problem going back to the videos screen on the following day (today) where the videos were still available for download. Probably because i have cookies turned on).

 

6) If like me you can fly the plane, but are unsure of how some of the less obvious things work (like fuel calculations and weight distribution, the de-icing equipment and toggles like the hydraulic or fuel pumps) or the reason for some specific procedures and whether they are really necessary (many are not), then it is really worth it to shell out the modest amount of money for this video course.

 

henri

[Q_flyer 766]

3) One or two of the videos having to do with flight planning have little to do with the specific aircraft and require additional software, and for a person like me who does not care very much about spending a half hour of preparation before taking off  could do without them.

 

I loved those parts.

 

To me, they are part of the whole appeal of having a real life pilot who works on the line day in day out, explaining how the things that we tend to skip over in the sim, work in the real world.

[klamal 282]

I loved those parts.

 

To me, they are part of the whole appeal of having a real life pilot who works on the line day in day out, explaining how the things that we tend to skip over in the sim, work in the real world.

Exactly! We want to see all of what it's like to be a line pilot. Not just the flying.

[WotanUK 289]

I purchased from Just Flight, ironically using the points i had from purchasing the Q400.

 

I enjoyed the videos, again like Dave i'm a northerner from the UK and had no issues with the language speed; i did however have a problem following the first line flight, i felt it was a little rushed.

 

Overall, i enjoyed my purchase.

[Biggles205 0]

+1

 

" ..............despite having a 1.2 Mb/sec download speed............." 1.2Mb/sec is not very fast by todays standards so I am not surprised you had trouble streaming. The good news is that you could download the training & watch offline whenever you wish

[Airline2Sim 489]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

 

It's very hard to pitch a product like this. There are all manner of different customers to cater for of all different abilities and you just have to stick the fork somewhere in the sausage, so to speak. We do assume you have a basic working knowledge of how to fly - in 10 hours we can't teach you to fly, but we can teach you to 'operate' the Q400.

 

I think one thing the films teaches us simmers is that the role of a modern line pilot is more of 'managing' the flight and the operation on the ground than any heroic stick and rudder stuff.

 

There is a vast amount of information being portrayed and indeed I'd fully expect most people to have to watch it at least twice to take it all in and rewind/pause at times. We took the decision not to stop the action but do the flights in real time to convey the sense of pressure every crew is under. There's no P button in Josh's aircraft .

 

The IOM-BHX flight was rushed but it's the same in the real one as it's a very short sector. Things calmed down a bit in the longer sector to Guernsey. We tried to keep the sector length under an hour to keep the interest up.

 

I take your point about streaming but that's out of our control. A lot of industry people told us that the product was too big and that people would complain about download times and their HDD drive space etc but we dug our heels in as we wanted this to be an HD product. In reality in 2014, 12GB down a decent broadband connection can be done while you're having dinner and we have had no reported problems at all. Unlike scenery or aircraft you can delete it once you've watched it, safe in the knowledge you can download it again at any point from Vimeo, Simmarket or Just Flight.

 

We've taken on board the feedback about speed of the speech and the on screen graphics etc and our F/O product for the Q400 will incorporate all that we've learnt since this one was produced.

 

Thanks guys.

 

Ben.