After years of flying piston ac, mostly DC3 addons, I am transitioning to TP and jet aircraft. Reactivated long (5 years) dormant VATSIM account, joined a VA that will allow me to fly my DC3 while progressing my pilot career, bought some GoFlight panels to go with my CH setup and am enjoying the H out of it all as I near retirement. Looked a Pilot Edge but have decided to pause that for the time being.

Using P3DV4.1, AS and more ORBX scenery than my wife should know about.

After a few months of cogitating and indecision last night I purchased the Q400. It came down to it or waiting for the new J41. I’m not big fan of GPS click spots, although they are getting easier, I still find them a major PITA for these old tired eyes. The plan is to further my career with both the narrow and wide body Mr. Boeing planes, so it just seems right to get some serious hours in a TP before going there, just like real pilots do. FMC over GPS just made sense, for me.

Have transferred training docs to my Surface and am starting the curves upward path. Spent considerable time reading much of the posts put here over the past few years. I believe that effort will pay off “bigtime” over the next few months.

So… now that you have my flightsim life story (BTW, I’m a real pilot too), to the question. Wanted to make a pseudo intro as the chances are high I will make at least one additional post here during my Q400 experience.

Question for those who know these things. Do I start out buying FSCrew and install it from the get go or do I learn flow and checklists “cold turkey”, then decide to have the addon help get through the flows and lists? Is it a crutch, or is it a beneficial learning tool? Don’t mid sticking with it for future AC if it’s the later. Will of course hold off if it’s the former.

Thanks for any opinions!

 

Hi R9,

There's also an alternative to FSCrew - it's Multi Crew Experience (MCE) that many people seem to like - the advantage being is you get multiple planes and a package you can easily modify to suit your needs... I haven't used either but it may be worth a look...

To help your eyes - I've recently found that Chase Plane truly helps and adds a whole new level of immersion to aircraft... You can create custom views zoomed in as close as you need which can then be accessed via a press of a joystick button - on a complex aircraft - I don't know how you could get by without it...

Best of luck and a fine introduction...

Regards,
Scorr

18 minutes ago, Radial9 said:

Question for those who know these things. Do I start out buying FSCrew and install it from the get go or do I learn flow and checklists “cold turkey”, then decide to have the addon help get through the flows and lists? Is it a crutch, or is it a beneficial learning tool? Don’t mid sticking with it for future AC if it’s the later. Will of course hold off if it’s the former.

Thanks for any opinions!

 

As Scott points out, you could go for MCE too, which is a bit more customisable and works for every aeroplane you have. FS2Crew can become expensive if you end up having a lot of aeroplane add-ons you fly, whilst MCE is a one shot deal of course.

Although I reviewed MCE for Avsim and rated it highly, I did some of the voices for FS2Crew (the 737 NG FO with the English accent), so I'm not biased either way, they are both decent and useful. I wouldn't say it was a crutch, I'd go with saying it's a beneficial learning tool. As you know from being a pilot in the real world, we have our little acronyms for various checks and stuff, so you can of course use those too, but if you are flying with Vatsim and want a realistic experience, stuff like Bombardiers and Boeings are not operated by a single person, so MCE and FS2Crew can be a big plus point, and since they are sequenced, they do teach you the flows by dint of repetition.

Whilst it is true that most commercial pilots 'hit the books' in the real world before getting to be on a crew for real, they are of course then mentored for a while by their skipper, so it's not unrealistic to be helped a little bit by such add-ons.

1 hour ago, Radial9 said:

Question for those who know these things. Do I start out buying FSCrew and install it from the get go or do I learn flow and checklists “cold turkey”, then decide to have the addon help get through the flows and lists? Is it a crutch, or is it a beneficial learning tool? Don’t mid sticking with it for future AC if it’s the later. Will of course hold off if it’s the former.

Thanks for any opinions!

 

I am a casual simmer, so I don't necessarily get every add on for a flight sim platform.  I have had the Q400 in FSX, P3D v3 and now in P3D v4.  I do not have MCE or FS2Crew installed for any aircraft.  I work off the checklist that Majestic has for the plane, and it works fine for me.

IMHO, I would start with the checklists, then if you find the workload too much or want to automate some of the functions, consider one of those add-ons.

I find the thing I occasionally miss is setting the bleeds, but I am getting better at that.  

2 hours ago, Radial9 said:

Do I start out buying FSCrew and install it from the get go or do I learn flow and checklists “cold turkey”, then decide to have the addon help get through the flows and lists?

I have FS2Crew and am in the process of using it with the Q400 after flying solo with flows and checklists.  As much as I love having FS2Crew for the iFly 737 I find it almost unnecessary for the Q400.   

I don't have MCE so I can't express an opinion on it, but my feelings are to just learn the flow and checklist sans a FO addon at this time.

Ernie

I have FS2Crew for a couple of birds and I would say you should learn the aircraft and flows first before adding FS2Crew to the mix; especially if you've never used FS2Crew before, the learning curve is quite steep so it helps if you are already familiar with the aircraft.