On 7/30/2017 at 7:58 AM, kevinh said:

I don't know why this option is available because it doesn't work in the way it seems it should. Far better to tell people to use a panel state save and ignore the CDU option. Better still remove it as it is the panel state which determines the TA and TL. 

It absolutely does work exactly as designed. I loaded the KLM livery with no state saved and it loaded the default TA/TL just fine. And I did just tell people to use the panel state save...pretty much for an entire page. Literally my first post said that the panel state overrides the default.

And no...just because you don't understand it or don't like it doesn't mean that we should remove an option.

I have to open up the case again, because it is not solved for me:

1.) Changed in FMS Settings DEFAULT TRANS ALT to 10000FT

2.) Saved Panel State as MYPANEL and defined MYPANEL as Startup Panel State.

3.) Restarted Prepar3Dv4 ---> FMC still shows 18000FT

And yes, I started Prepar3Dv4 as Administrator.

2 minutes ago, Rene Billiani said:

2.) Saved Panel State as MYPANEL and defined MYPANEL as Startup Panel State.

Sorry for the doubt on this one, but this is the one step that isn't confirmed by a screenshot, and it actually one of the most important ones here...

EDIT: To be clear, you MUST set the altitude on the PERF INIT page and the DES FORECAST page as well before saving the panel state.

To clarify:

1. Absent any other value (from a panel state, etc), the aircraft will load the default.
2. If there is a panel state, it will load the value in the panel state.
3. If you save a panel state, it will save the value previously loaded in the panel state (not the default value, even if you've updated it), unless you have changed it on the PERF INIT or DES FORECAST page.
4. In order for that saved value to be present on load, the panel state must be set as the default.

So:

1. Load the plane.
2. Update the value on the PERF INIT and DES FORECAST pages.
3. Save the panel state.
4. Set that state as default.

Unless you are going to set the plane to load without a panel state, the default value will not do anything.

PANEL STATE: MYPANEL



PERF INIT

5 minutes ago, Rene Billiani said:

PANEL STATE: MYPANEL

Please follow the steps listed above.

Thanks, Kyle,
I assumed, that PAGE 2/11 – FMS DEFAULT TRANS ALT does the trick alone. Now I know, how the system works.

7 minutes ago, Rene Billiani said:

Thanks, Kyle,
I assumed, that PAGE 2/11 – FMS DEFAULT TRANS ALT does the trick alone. Now I know, how the system works.

Welcome. I'll admit that it's a bit confusing, but if you look into the whole thing, it might start to make some sense. 

On 31/07/2017 at 1:08 PM, scandinavian13 said:

It absolutely does work exactly as designed. I loaded the KLM livery with no state saved and it loaded the default TA/TL just fine. And I did just tell people to use the panel state save...pretty much for an entire page. Literally my first post said that the panel state overrides the default.

And no...just because you don't understand it or don't like it doesn't mean that we should remove an option.

When I said "you" I didn't mean you personally but PMDG generally. The Intro Manual says panel state will override these settings because of the way these FMC altitudes are initialised. It's the only CDU option which is affected like this and it could be explained a lot better. It just sounds like it couldn't be made to work so it has to be like this.

You are partially correct in that I didn't fully understand things as documented. You've talked about loading the aircraft without a saved state. The original 737 Intro Manual used similar words, IIRC. Loading without a panel state didn't make sense to me as I couldn't see how you could load the aircraft without one, so I couldn't see how it could ever work. Now I realise it meant a user panel state. If you load with a PMDG panel state the option works, as you said.

Apologies for my original comment, but if the Intro Manual was clearer I would not have misunderstood it.