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JimJam656

Boeing 747-400X Queen Of The Skies Vertical Pitch Issue.

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Hi, I recently bought 747-400X for FSX on the DVD payware. I am totally stunned by the virtual cockpit and exterior models. They are fantastic. However I have a vertical pitch related issue, which stops me from really flying the plane altogether. 

 

I can takeoff well, everything goes to plan, but when I get to about 5000 ft, the vertical movement is uncontrollable. In other words, when I push my joystick down nothing happens. If I let go altogether the plane pitches at 30 degrees or so, ascending up to 20000ft a minute, and soon stalls. The pitch is reversed, descending at 30 degrees up to 20000ft a minute. Again the controls are useless. I end up crashing. I try to engage the autopilot to but the CMD buttons don't engage, and I have no control. I was very interested to find that the aircraft.cfg has no autopilot section also.

 

I know the problem is not with the joystick. I have flown many different types of planes, not all the default FSX planes, some custom ones, and there has been no problem. I can fly this, then crash due to lack of vertical control (the lateral movement is very controllable), and then fly the FSX B737-800 and be completely fine.

 

Please can someone help me, I really do love this plane, well worth the money, but I cant fly it at all, because the pitch and the autopilot are uncontrollable.

 

Thank you.  :smile:

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Silly question. Is your pitch issue related to the speed and do you use the trim?

I could understand that with the speed increasing the aircraft tends to pitch up and from a certain speed, if you don't trim to balance the force, you wouldn't be able to pitch down anymore use the yoke.


Romain Roux

204800.pngACH1179.jpg

 

Avec l'avion, nous avons inventé la ligne droite.

St Exupéry, Terre des hommes.

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The good news is that there is nothing wrong with the pitch model in PMDG's 747, it has been on the market for many years and has a lot very very fussy users (including a few who fly or claim to fly the real thing) and they would have spotted and reported such problems a long time ago.

 

If this is your first high fidelity after market add on for FSX then congratulations and welcome to the club. You have a steep learning curve in front of you but I can promise you it is worhthwhile and very, very rewarding! I cant stress how important it is to follow the tutorial. What I would suggest is that you print out the tutorial and follow it two or three times, using the pause button to catch up on what will happen next. A lot of the time, the tutorial will tell you to do X and then do Y and wont explain why those steps are necessary in detail. Just put a question mark in the margins and you can come back to it later but for the moment, just trust that it is right. When you are happy that you can complete the tutorial flight, you are ready to start opening the manuals (and there are lots of them). Pick the question mark that annoyed you the most from your tutorial and try to look it up. Don't be affraid to ask question's here but remember that you will get a lot more help and support if you have tried to make an effort then if you just say "how does this work" or "how do I do that".

 

Pretty soon, you will be able to design and fly your own routes around the world and then you can start playing with the failures scenarios (if that interests you).    

 

The only problem with learning to fly the PMDG's 747 is that it makes it very hard to take the default FSX aircraft seriously anymore.

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The good news is that there is nothing wrong with the pitch model in PMDG's 747, it has been on the market for many years and has a lot very very fussy users (including a few who fly or claim to fly the real thing) and they would have spotted and reported such problems a long time ago.

 

If this is your first high fidelity after market add on for FSX then congratulations and welcome to the club. You have a steep learning curve in front of you but I can promise you it is worhthwhile and very, very rewarding! I cant stress how important it is to follow the tutorial. What I would suggest is that you print out the tutorial and follow it two or three times, using the pause button to catch up on what will happen next. A lot of the time, the tutorial will tell you to do X and then do Y and wont explain why those steps are necessary in detail. Just put a question mark in the margins and you can come back to it later but for the moment, just trust that it is right. When you are happy that you can complete the tutorial flight, you are ready to start opening the manuals (and there are lots of them). Pick the question mark that annoyed you the most from your tutorial and try to look it up. Don't be affraid to ask question's here but remember that you will get a lot more help and support if you have tried to make an effort then if you just say "how does this work" or "how do I do that".

 

Pretty soon, you will be able to design and fly your own routes around the world and then you can start playing with the failures scenarios (if that interests you).    

 

The only problem with learning to fly the PMDG's 747 is that it makes it very hard to take the default FSX aircraft seriously anymore.

+100 this.  Default aircraft are what the kids who got picked last at dodgeball get to fly.

 

-Jim


Engage, research, inform and make your posts count! -Jim Morvay

Origin EON-17SLX - Under the hood: Intel Core i7 7700K at 4.2GHz (Base) 4.6GHz (overclock), nVidia GeForce GTX-1080 Pascal w/8gb vram, 32gb (2x16) Crucial 2400mhz RAM, 3840 x 2160 17.3" IPS w/G-SYNC, Samsung 950 EVO 256GB PCIe m.2 SSD (Primary), Samsung 850 EVO 500gb M.2 (Sim Drive), MS Windows 10 Professional 64-Bit

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The wording in your post suggests you are technically minded and probably involved in the industry, that said... I'll assume you're doing everything correctly.

 

Others, including myself, used to suffer this problem with my 744x. Intermittently, my 744x would trim the aircraft incorrectly/strangely whilst the Autopilot was engaged and in CMD, creating the problem you might be experiencing - excessive nose up trim with the elevators deflecting nose down excessively with autopilot engaged to CMD requiring autopilot to be disengaged and the aircraft to be manually trimmed out again. More often than not, the result would be to restart my computer, and even then, this was not a guaranteed fix.

 

This problem is very well documented in the 747 forum.

 

I'm conversant enough in airline operations (real world) to know if i've mis-set something. I would go over the numbers again and again. They weren't wrong... There was/is something wrong with the 744x.

 

Again, trim problems are well documented in the 744x forum. Search there. Just to make sure, you are setting and adjusting trim as appropriate for takeoff and climb?


Brian Nellis

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There was/is something wrong with the 744x.

 

These is nothing wrong with the 747X pitch. However, the CG can get messed up if you use an external program like TOPCAT to load the aircraft, causing trim issues. If you always use the PMDG load editor this doesn't happen. As the OP has only just stared using the 747 it's not likely to be the issue.

 

The OP is clearly knowledgeable, but is used to flying FSX default aircraft. Trim isn't such an issue there and speed is always controlled by thrust. Switching to more realistic operation takes some getiting used to. In the 747X during climb speed is controlled by pitch and climb thrust can cause quite a significant nose up pitching moment if not trimmed out. Flap retraction will also affect trim and need to be trimmed out.


ki9cAAb.jpg

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There actually was something wrong. It got extremely annoying to the point I don't fly it anymore except for a joy flight. I'm not going into all the testing I did here. Suffice to say, loading of fuel and payload was entirely done using pmdg stuff and I still had the intermittent trim issue. The pictures, the anecdotes, the tests... They're all in that forum.

 

It is a very real problem with not only the 744, but apparently also the MD11


Brian Nellis

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I'm with Brian on this: there is definitely a problem of some description.

 

I've only had it happen once and I never really figured out what it was that caused it. My best guess was/is that it was something to do with the panel state not loading correctly: if I recall correctly, on the flight where it happened some of the switches and controls loaded in a different configuration to the way they normally do.

 

You may already be doing this: but my recommendation would be to ensure that your default flight in FSX (the aircraft etc that loads when you first open FS) is a default aircraft (i.e. the Cessna or the Trike). I also avoid ever loading the PMDG 747 (or any other complex third-party addon) from a saved situation: I always open FS, wait for the "Free Flight" screen to load up with the default Cessna, then select the PMDG 747, location etc and thus start every flight "fresh" from there.

 

With that one exception, that routine has kept me pretty well out of trouble over the years.

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There actually was something wrong. It got extremely annoying to the point I don't fly it anymore except for a joy flight. I'm not going into all the testing I did here. Suffice to say, loading of fuel and payload was entirely done using pmdg stuff and I still had the intermittent trim issue. The pictures, the anecdotes, the tests... They're all in that forum.

 

It is a very real problem with not only the 744, but apparently also the MD11

I've been flying the PMDG 747 since it was released ten years ago, first in FS9 now FSX. I've probably flown it more than any other PMDG sim. I've never had a pitch issue like this. I hadn't heard about anyone having pitch problems until reading this thread. Nor with the MD11, which I also fly regularly.

 

If it was as common as you say surely it would be more widely talked about?

 

I always load complex sims like the 747 in the way Simon mentioned. Maybe that's why I never had a problem. But it's only good sense to do so and something PMDG always recommend.


ki9cAAb.jpg

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Guys, when is the last time you had to worry about CoG, take off trim or flap retraction speeds when flying a default aircraft? Give the OP a break and try to help him with advice he can use.

 

@JimJam - three things. 1) Fly the tutorials and post any problems you encounter with as much detail as you can  (eg When I did this step from the tutorial the plane did this when that manual said it should do that) and 2) sign your posts with your real name (its a forum rule) and 3) Enjoy yourself.

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