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Arthur42417

Ultimate 787 Update - Version 1.1.3 Released

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The LNAV and VNAV lights seem to take ages to activate when I press them after completing the rest of the setup. I have posted a message about this on the Quality Wings forum, but I just wanted to know if anyone else has this issue, or whether I am doing something wrong? I do not recall it happening with version 1.1.2a, although I only conducted a handful of short test flights before updating to version 1.1.3

I think that I have solved this minor issue. The take off flaps setting is automatically set to 5 degrees during the setup, but it seems that the FMS wants me to insert this value again. When I tried that, the LNAV and VNAV buttons activated as soon as I clicked on them.


Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

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It seems that there is a minor issue with the setup routine at times. I encountered the same issue today regarding the LNAV and VNAV lights. I added the "flaps 5" setting on the FMS several times without success, and after trying one or two other things, the LNAV and VNAV lights eventually activated when I retracted the flaps, and then extended them again. This seems to be an intermittent problem that does not happen every time.....

The only other issue that I have is that the thrust reversers appear to be rather ineffective. I do not get anything like the kind of deceleration that I am expecting (compared to my PMDG planes) without manual braking.

On the positive side, this aircraft is really nice :smile:

Edited by Christopher Low

Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

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So we're in the end of June are there still issues or it's a pretty good plane?


Running i5-9600K @ 4.8ghz - 32GB DDR4 3200mhz - GTX 3070.

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I thought I'd chime on in this one. I finally took the plunge and got it after months of eyeing it.

Disclaimer: unlike some people in this thread, I fly by default ATC's directions. This means no VNAV on descent, rather FLCH or V/S, and no flying SIDs or STARs. As such I cannot comment on whether the aircraft behaves well during these particular procedures. I'm also not a pilot, so if say something works well, it's only from the experience of an amateur...

My first test was to simply sit standing still at EHAM at the gate, to test performance. For me it was a few FPS lower than that of the PMDG 747 or 777 - so not too  bad, and quite frnakly probably expected given the multitude of displays on this thing. The modeling inside and out is beautiful in my opinion, though the texturing in the cockpit does create some pretty stark contrasts in certain areas that I do think appear a little unrealistic now and again. I also really miss the option to dim displays. Depending on the sun I sometimes cannot read the displays, which is sort of annoying. Or, it's possible of course that there is some master setting somewhere that I simply haven't found yet... After all, I've only had this plane for five days. Another thing I noticed is that the plane really wants to move. During taxi I can keep the engines at idle and it'll start to move all by itself once I release the brakes. Is that normal?

My first actual flight was GMMN-GOBD  (Prealsoft/FSDG) with the default Royal Air Maroc livery. These are both new sceneries in my stable, and so I wanted to give them a whirl. I do really like both these sceneries - but that's not the object of this post. Setting up the plane proved to be a breeze, even if some of the functions needed some getting used to. It's clear that this is another widebody Boeing, as the switch positions are quite similar to the T7, with some exceptions. I will say that I got PMDG's T7 very recently as well, and did one flight with it. That proved harder than I thought, as I had expected the T7 and 747 to be more similar than they actually were. Thus the jump from the 747 to the 787 would have surely complicated things. But, sicne I had done a flight with the T7 a few days before my flight with the 787, this didn't prove to difficult eventually. I do love those MFDs with the various submenus, clicking around on everything, filling in figures and having the plane calculate everything for me. To me it makes for such a lovely and seamless workflow that I can't imagine not having it.

As I had GSX board passengers onto the plane, I was going through preflight and checklists. Everything was incredibly smooth - performance and workflow. I didn't read any manual before getting into this plane. Instead I decided to rely purely on my knowledge from other Boeing planes, and to some extent the workflow in the Embrear 170-190 family, which have a very similar sort of display setup, in the sense there are all kinds of submenus on the MFDs that are controlled by software buttons rather than physical ones. Like in the 787 now, this is probably also my favorite feature of the EMB family. I'll also add I love the takeoff caluclation in the EFB. You can ask it to calculate the optimal flaps setting, which it told me should be 5 degrees. And so I did. Though not with my FSUIPC-controlled hardware, as for some reason moving the lever didn't do much... I'll have to figure out why that happened. So I simply controlled it with the keyboard.

Closing the doors, one thing I always liked about QW is their cabin announcements and cockpit voices. I do like that the pilots don't actually go through their entire checklist by voice, rather calling it at the appropriate moment and then letting me check everything off. Neat feature. Subsequently I was on the way to runway 35R. Like I said before, this plane wants to go! Just releasing the parking brake made the plane move at idle thrust. Though I admit the plane was not particularly heavy either... I'm planning EGLL-KEWR with the 787-9 tonight, and I'll load her up heavier to see how she fares with bigger loads. Once at the runway and cleared for takeoff, I switched on the strobes... but I'm not too big a fan of how those look. I'd preferred to have a somewhat brighter, stronger effect. The strobe on the QW787 is more like a small white dot blinking on and off. Is this normal or am I missing some effect file?

Now here's where not reading the manual came back to bite me: I had no idea where the TO/GA button was supposed to be. Looked for on it on the throttles but didn't see it... So eventually just decided to bring it takeoff thrust manually and see what would happen. I was sort of expecting that hitting the A/T button would engage TO/GA like it did on the PMDG T7, but it didn't... It just flipped off again. At any rate, after lift-off LNAV and VNAV did automatically engage (I suppose because I had armed the A/T). The sounds on takeoff were very nice. I have to say I've grown accustomed to the intense growl of the PMDG 747, or even the 737NGX and Aerosoft Airbus, and so both the T7 and 787 sound distinctly modern. There's this low, angry hum, especially on the T7. It's beautiful.

With LNAV and VNAN engaged, I found that the FD steers me on path just fine, even if LNAV was a little finicky now and then. I do blieve the PMDG T7 has a smoother LNAV, but I'm being a nitpick now... QW787's LNAV did the job well. Once on course I turned on the A/P and let it take it from there with Casablanca departure telling me to climb to ever greater heights until finally getting to my cruise at FL380, going through checklists meanwhile and just enjoying the view and the operation of this aircraft.

Now, one feature I'd read surprisingly little about was the 787's "jump ahead" feature. This is of huge interest to me because I just don't have the time for long haul flights. I can spend about 2-3 hours total, start to shutdown, and GMMN-GOBD is too long for that, let alone EGLL-KEWR, and don't get me started on LFPG-VHHH. So "jump ahead" seemed like an awesome thing. I decided to try it out on my flight now. One thing that worried me was the interation with default ATC - I was pretty sure it would get messed up and confused by it. So this would prove an interesting test case. Accessing the feature was easy enough. I checked my flight plan and chose to jump to about 30 minutes out of GOBD, not too long before descent would start, as calculated by Little Navmap.

The sim reloaded. I held my breath.

Suddenly I was... somewhere else. The plane moved just so, to get back on the appropriate course (it was a little off when the sim reloaded). I check ATC: it wanted me to contact... well, I think it was Dakar center or something of the kind, and choose to file "a new IFR flight plan". I forgot that when ATC gets confused, it tends to just let you re-file your original flightplan. I did that, and so everything was fine again. Soon after the plane started telling me to reset MCP altitude for descent, which I didn't do because I was waiting for ATC to tell me to descend instead. When ATC did that, I initiated the descent though FLCH. Descent went fine. The checklists were called automatically as we came into approach, gradually dropping the speed as per usual. One flap. 5 flap. 15 flap. Gear down. 20 - 25 - 30 flap. I had done the landing calculations in the EFB beforehand, though didn't actually use them.

Landing was manual as GOBD 19 doesn't have an ILS. Flying the plane felt very nice. It controlled easily but it still felt decidedly big, a really nice feeling. Weather was also very calm, even if a little hazy. Admittedly, my landing wasn't the best since I was also focusing on other things going on in the cockpit, mostly looking at other screens and buttons out of curiosity. I did not use the HUD as I find it makes everything to easy, but it's nice that it's there. Leaving the runway and cleaning her up, taxiing to gate 5, I put her to bed.

I come away form this plane with a very good feeling. The plane essentially did everything I told it to do, and it did so well without any erratic behavior. A major kudos to QW for building such a nice plane! My only problem is that I'm now decidedly torn between what plane to fly on my long haul routes: the QW787, T7 or 747. They are beautiful addons, they are all different in their own right, and thus all enjoyable for different reasons. I'm pretty set on doing EGLL-KEWR today with the QW787, but I'll probably take the 747 out of her hangar again soon. I recently realized that she an auto-time compression feature (that's what you get when you hardly ever read the manual - you miss out on features!), and so I thought I'd do EHAM-KJFK with the KLM 747-400M over the weekend.

Well, i hope this long monologue is useful to somebody. Just my two cents. Or maybe three, given the length of it...

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Benjamin van Soldt

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Nice overview Benjamin. I enjoy this aircraft as well. I sometimes feel it gets overly nitpicked on a few issues and the all the things QW did well get ignored.


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This is a very nice aircraft to fly, and it behaves almost as well as my PMDG planes. The issue that I have with the LNAV and VNAV lights not activating at times is easily solved by changing the speed setting on the MCP just a few knots until they light up. I still have an issue with the thrust reversers not being quite as powerful as I think they should be, but that may be a slight conflict between the QW787 software and my CH Flightstick Pro joystick.....


Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

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That's a good review, Benjamin. I come away from flying the plane with the same feelings. Also, I recently switched to Pilot2ATC which does have you descend via STARS, etc, and VNAV works just fine for me, or at least it has the last 5 times I've flown it.

As to the rolling at idle thrust, apparently the real plane does that as well.

Edited by eslader

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There is an option to change the brightness on all displays. I think it’s under the info tab. 

Also by all accounts the 787 does just want to go when light. Actual 787 pilots say they need to brake frequently. It probably has something to do with those huge high bypass ratio engines it has.

When doing a long, heavy flight it may need a little extra thrust to get it to start moving.

If you want an auto time compression tool for all planes on long flights, LorbySI has a nice application.

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Thanks for the review, Benjamin!

I've been sitting on the fence for a long as to whether or not to purchase this aircraft. Your review is definitely pushing me towards "purchase". 

Regards,

Scott


"...now let's get this thing on the hump - we've got some flyin' to do!" ~ Major Kong from "Dr. Stranglove"

Scott Cebula

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