Hey everyone,

First post on the forum, even though I've been following PMDG for quite some time now/watching the forum here.  Before I get to the nitty gritty, just want to thank everyone on the forums and everyone at PMDG for putting out by far the best products/support in the FSX/P3D/Xplane community, I have lots of addons, but nothing really compares to the level of fidelity in PMDG aircraft, and the community is just as great.  Thanks to everyone.

So, I have had the PMDG 747v3 since release, and love it, haven't really had any problems outside of user error, until the flight I just completed tonight.  After looking for other posts and digging through the FCOM, I couldn't really find an answer, so I figured I'd ask.

My flight was KSAN to EGLL on British, no problems with departure, cruise, or descent, the approach and landing is when things got a little weird.

1.  On the downwind leg in LNAV with the autopilot on for the ILS runway 09R at EGLL, the localizer diamond was present on my PFD, so I armed the LOC mode to capture when the aircraft turned base to final.  Instead, around abeam the approach end of the runway, LOC mode engaged and the plane attempted to capture the LOC from that point by turning directly toward the runway, the diamond was fully deflected and not filled in on the PFD, so I have no idea why this happened.  So I disengaged LOC mode, and used heading select to get back on course, waited until turning base to engage again, no problems, captured the LOC halfway through the turn as expected.

2.  On landing, speed brakes armed, auto brake armed, everything set up fine, disengaged the autopilot around 1000ft AGL and hand flew it down, still not great at it, but the gear didn't collapse, so I guess I did alright, haha.  Anyways, on rollout after coming out of reverse I looked down to the throttles and noticed the speed brake lever was only at the flight detent position.  Either it never went to the full UP position, or I did something, not sure.  Having looked through the FCOM,  I know that when thrust levers 1 or 3 are advanced from idle on the ground, if the speed brakes are in the UP position, the lever is driven to the DN position, and the speed brakes retracted, but I hadn't moved the levers out of idle, just came out of reverse.  Not sure why the lever was in the flight detent and not in the UP position, and if I had moved the thrust out of idle, they lever should've been driven back all the way to the DN position correct?

That's all I got, great aircraft, thanks again for the excellent work!

Adam Merrill

Tucson, AZ

I've had it happen twice where on touchdown, it would only go into flight detent. Never did figure out why it did that.

Hi,

5 hours ago, jetlag87 said:

1.  On the downwind leg in LNAV with the autopilot on for the ILS runway 09R at EGLL, the localizer diamond was present on my PFD

Both the ILS 09R and ILS 27L have the same frequency. Did you confirm the ILS identifier (IBB for ILS 09R, either on the PFD or by the morse code)? Chances are that in downwind before passing abean the mid length of the runway the LOC locked onto the 27L instead of the 09R.

You don't want to press the LOC button until you have pretty much completed the turn to final approach. As a matter of fact if you are on profile per the indicator of the ND, you could press the APP button skipping the LOC button altogether.

4 hours ago, Budbud said:

Hi,

Both the ILS 09R and ILS 27L have the same frequency. Did you confirm the ILS identifier (IBB for ILS 09R, either on the PFD or by the morse code)?

I do recall IBB being on the PFD when I engaged LOC mode, but my approach was set up kind of funny, flying through the departure end of 09R to get on the downwind.  Didn't realize they had the same freqs, might explain the weird behavior.  Thanks for the reply!

 

1 hour ago, pcubine said:

You don't want to press the LOC button until you have pretty much completed the turn to final approach. As a matter of fact if you are on profile per the indicator of the ND, you could press the APP button skipping the LOC button altogether.

Yeah, that's what I usually do, but I figured since the LOC diamond was present, may as well activate it to get the aircraft ready to capture, guess I'll just wait a little bit from now on.  Thanks for the reply!

Adam Merrill

So I just did another flight and on landing the speed brakes did go into the full UP position, so all is well.  Not sure what happened before.

Adam Merrill

With regards to the speed brake issue, I flew two flights earlier today. First flight, descent was shallow enough that I didn't need to touch the speed brakes, so all I did was arm them prior to landing. They deployed fine. Second flight, I needed to use the speed brakes during the descent. Armed them prior to landing, but on landing, they only went to the flight detent position and stayed there until I manually retracted them. Not sure if that has anything to do with it. I'll have to do some more investigative....investigating....when I have time.

That's an interesting finding.  I think the flight I had where they didn't fully deploy on landing was when I was playing around with them a little bit in flight, like you did.  The last flight I did, where they worked, I didn't touch them until I armed them for landing.  Hmm, I will try some more flights as well, and see what happens.

Adam Merrill