iniBuilds A300-600 has been released! (reopened)

[bennyboy75 85]

One thing they definitely got right was the ground handling. It’s a nice solid bird to taxi on the ground and feels well coordinated through turns. The same can’t be said for other add-ons. 

[Cpt_Piett 4,706]

2 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

In terms of the weight and inertia do you feel it's better simulated in the A300 than the A310?

I think so, yes. The A300 certainly has that very heavy, sluggish feel to it, that the A310 somewhat lacks. And this goes for all aspects of handling, both on the ground and in the air. I don’t think it can be explained by the difference in weight - the A300 has an MTOW of 171 tonnes vs the A310’s 153.

IMO iniBuilds have done a fantastic job with this aircraft. It’s on a different level than the A310, although I guess that’s to be expected since the A310 is free. Too bad it seems ridden with so many bugs though.

[Fiorentoni 4,253]

1 hour ago, bennyboy75 said:

One thing they definitely got right was the ground handling. It’s a nice solid bird to taxi on the ground and feels well coordinated through turns. The same can’t be said for other add-ons. 

On the taxiway, yes. But during the takeoff roll it still veers left and right for me.

[Mace 1,929]

18 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

The biggest problem I found was that sometimes the autothrottle can't keep up, and the plane decelerates or accelerates too quickly. Not sure if this is true to the real aircraft or not.

I know that was true of the real-world DC-10, which has the same CF6 engines and is roughly the same vintage of autothrottle.  While the DC-10 /had/ autothrottle, it was a little slow to react.  I don't specifically know how A300-600's AT works in real life but it's possible it is similar.

18 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

After I had built up a bit of confidence, I decided to give the RWY 02R RNP B approach to SBRJ Santos Dumont a try. It's a beautiful approach, but certainly takes some skills to accomplish. 

Being fully configured with landing flaps and gear down at FAP (2000ft), with FINAL/APP mode armed in the MCDU, the plane started descending in P.DES mode towards MDA without any issues. At 900ft I disconnected the AP and attempted the difficult turn towards the runway, which was quite exhilarating, I might add. 

I did touch down within the touchdown zone, but even with max manual braking and spoilers, I wasn't able to stop in time. Hence I ended up in the water at the far end of the runway... I'd like to think I would have made it with working reverse thrust 🙂 The runway is 4341ft / 1323m, so in real life I doubt many A300s have been cleared to land there...

I was gonna say...you put that thing down at Santos-Dumont?  That's a pretty good piece of flying with something as large as an A300.  And I do think with reverse thrust you would have made it.

Reverse thrust in this aircraft is something I need to re-visit.  I'm not at home right now to look, but I think I have a reverse thrust toggle set with my Honeycomb using the airliner-style throttle attachments.  That doesn't seem to work well.  If I flick the levers forward, it doesn't kick on the reversers.  I have to flick them forward and back, and maybe forward again before it actually activates reverse thrust.   Either something is wrong with the way it's coded, or it doesn't play nice with the Honeycomb Bravo.  Or it could be that I'm using the wrong binding...not a toggle but something else is needed on my end.

[Mace 1,929]

7 hours ago, JYW said:

Thanks for doing the test flight and great to hear things went well!

I've now successfully managed to complete it without a CTD as well.  I avoided VS mode (and DTOs) and stuck to NAV and PROFILE mode.   Made it to HECA!

So the only difference between my 2 attempted flights on this route (and time duration) that resulted in CTDs, and the 3rd attempt that was successful, was that on the first 2 I used some VS and DTOs.

At this point then, I'm just going to live with the constraint of avoiding VS and DTOs in this plane.

It's a lovely, immersive plane to fly and a lot of fun.

Yes it was a fun flight.  I flew over the Aegean islands and across the Med, I can't say I've ever flown into HECA in the sim before.  I did a turn to final and guess what was in front of my windscreen in the turn?   The Pyramids.  The Giza ones.  I almost got caught gawking instead of flying.

I have successfully used a DTO with this plane.  I've only done it a few times though, but so far no CTD or fall-out-of-sky.

[rmeier 473]

Just completed a "test" flight with my FSHud and FSLTL sliders maxed...shorter flight today from KIAH to KSDF (really wanted to visit a couple of new sceneries!).  🙂

Flight completed with no issues...again...although in hindsight, from an AI traffic perspective, this may not have been a great test. I didn't have a single conflict on my TCAS during this flight!

The sliders definitely made a difference in my sim...increase chatter on FSHud as well as slightly higher load/temps on my GPU...no stutters thankfully.

Looking at flight followings on Flightaware just now, it might be a better test to select NE US or perhaps that same "problematic" EDDP-HECA...that one looks to be a busy traffic corridor based on Flightaware activity. I'll probably repeat the test tomorrow on a more dense traffic route.

Every flight on this add-on just keeps getting better!

[ndflieger 55]

 I just completed a flight LTBA - EHAM with v1.08. Overall, things went pretty smoothly. Here is the flight plan (Simbrief): LTBA/05 TUDBU3A TUDBU Q26 UPAMA DCT GIKUN DCT DIDIX DCT INVED DCT MAVIR DCT ARSIN DCT DEXIT DCT MAPOX L604 RELBI L602 RKN RKN2A EHAM/36R.

The only glitches, were that entire STAR did not load into the FMC, I had to do some quick modifying at the last minute during the approach (I know, should have caught that during pre-flight).

The other fairly major glitch - absolutely no thrust reversers upon landing (using the F2 key). This wasn't an issue with previous versions.

On the positive side, I was able to utilize DTO and VS changes without any problems. The flight time was 3.2 hours.

Regards,

Scott

[Cpt_Piett 4,706]

12 hours ago, Mace said:

I know that was true of the real-world DC-10, which has the same CF6 engines and is roughly the same vintage of autothrottle.  While the DC-10 /had/ autothrottle, it was a little slow to react.  I don't specifically know how A300-600's AT works in real life but it's possible it is similar.

I was gonna say...you put that thing down at Santos-Dumont?  That's a pretty good piece of flying with something as large as an A300.  And I do think with reverse thrust you would have made it.

Reverse thrust in this aircraft is something I need to re-visit.  I'm not at home right now to look, but I think I have a reverse thrust toggle set with my Honeycomb using the airliner-style throttle attachments.  That doesn't seem to work well.  If I flick the levers forward, it doesn't kick on the reversers.  I have to flick them forward and back, and maybe forward again before it actually activates reverse thrust.   Either something is wrong with the way it's coded, or it doesn't play nice with the Honeycomb Bravo.  Or it could be that I'm using the wrong binding...not a toggle but something else is needed on my end.

I think 320 Sim Pilot commented on autothrottle inadequacy in the A310. If so, this would be the case in the A300 too, most likely.

I’ve calibrated my TCA Airbus throttle quadrant with the A300. In SU15 beta thrust reverse doesn’t work on any aircraft, AFAIK. The reverse thrust levers move corresponding to the TCA thrust levers though, it’s just that it doesn’t produce reverse thrust.

[Cpt_Piett 4,706]

I’m afraid I might be missing the obvious here, but what is DTO?

Another thing: does it use default MSFS navdata? Even though I’ve updated it with Navigraph, all RNP approaches were missing from SBGL Rio Intl…

[btacon 1,808]

1 minute ago, Cpt_Piett said:

 

I’m afraid I might be missing the obvious here, but what is DTO?

 

DTO=Direct To I believe

-B

[Cpt_Piett 4,706]

59 minutes ago, btacon said:

DTO=Direct To I believe

-B

Thanks! In that case it did work for me on numerous attempts.

What I’m unsure of though, is the correct procedure for setting a new approach after a missed approach. What worked for me was to set a new from/to in the INIT page e.g, SBGL/SBGL. Then select approach in the FLT PLN page.

[Fiorentoni 4,253]

48 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Thanks! In that case it did work for me on numerous attempts.

What I’m unsure of though, is the correct procedure for setting a new approach after a missed approach. What worked for me was to set a new from/to in the INIT page e.g, SBGL/SBGL. Then select approach in the FLT PLN page.

That's the only way. Not sure if that's a shortcoming of the product or true to real life, though.

[rmeier 473]

Today, I intended to complete another AI Traffic "stress test"...with FSLTL/FSHud sliders maxed out over a high traffic route to see if I could create a CTD or "fall out of the sky" issue. Route selected for today was EDDK-HECA with an auto generated Simbrief flight plan.

Prior to starting, I did download/install the latest freeware HECA scenery from Flightsim.to (together with the 6 recommended/dependancy files and a GSX profile for HECA).

A little unusual today: As I started up my sim, all was normal up to the welcome screen. As I selected my departure (EDDK) airport, I had an immediate MSFS CTD. My first thought was a conflict with the scenery files I had just installed.

A quick check of Event Viewer actually listed the MSFS application fault with an IniBuild A300 faulting module:

...\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\packages\inibuilds-aircraft-a300-600 1.0.8\m85d634e734043603_0.dll

Now what???  My initial reaction was to remove the most recent Community Folder additions (the 7 scenery folders for HECA I had just added). However, I left them "as-is" just to see if my MSFS would reboot on a second attempt.

Restarted MSFS (in normal mode), from the welcome screen I again selected EDDK as my departure location. This second time, no issues restarting the sim.

Upon entering the virtual cockpit, it was apparent that some of my MSFS settings had changed from the CTD as I now had "Instrument Hud" visible where those displays weren't there before. A scan of my MSFS settings revealed that under Assistance Options, what had before been set to "True to Life"/Custom was now reading "All Assists". Reset my MSFS settings to where I had them before the CTD and proceeded with the pre-flight set-up for the A300.

Similar to the test flight yesterday, there was nothing to see on the TCAS during the flight (I suppose that's a good thing!). About half of the flight was in high, cirrus cloud (FL330-350) so I really couldn't judge AI Traffic by visible contrails. Flightaware was still showing relatively high traffic in this corridor at the time of my flight, with FSHud supposedly injecting "real world traffic".

Had a nice tailwind (about 70 knots) with some occasional "gusts" which caught my attention on the gauges...no adverse reactions to the flight or aircraft though.

Other than some initial start-up issues today (a CTD that I haven't seen before), this 4-1/4 hr flight was seemingly uneventful...again. I'm wondering if it's possible that some others may be seeing a resultant conflict with these (HECA) community dependancy scenery add-ons and the A300? (Although I was able to complete my flight as planned with these add-ons.) I did experience some sort of iniBuilds module fault today that I haven't seen before. That initial anomoly may be worth investigating for anyone with repeat issues, as the shared community files possibly could impact from many different freeware airports. I'm going to rule out my payware EDDK scenery (and GSX profile add-on) as a potential cause for this CTD as I have departed from this location a few times already without issue...including a previous departure from this location with this same aircraft (EDDK-CYHZ).

Once again, other than the (abnormal) start-up CTD, I do not have a negative (AI Traffic conflict) report for this add-on for this flight. This completes either flight 15 or 16 for me with this add-on without any (major) in flight issues.

On a side note, after three and half decades of simming, this was a first visit to Cairo (and a nicely done scenery!)...one of the many beauties of flight simming!

[Cpt_Piett 4,706]

30 minutes ago, rmeier said:

Once again, other than the (abnormal) start-up CTD, I do not have a negative (AI Traffic conflict) report for this add-on for this flight. This completes either flight 15 or 16 for me with this add-on without any (major) in flight issues.

That’s promising, but it’s still very strange why the various bugs differ so much between users. Ive only had this plane for 2 days now, perhaps 5 hrs flight time, and had no serious issues.

On another note, I wonder if someone can help me with GSX settings for this plane. Do I use progressive fueling? Any other relevant settings?

I always start with boarding and let GSX do its thing. However when it’s time for refueling, I’m confused as to what the correct procedure is. Do I wait until the fuel truck has connected to the plane to load the aircraft with the EFB? I really think I’m missing something here, either in the settings or the sequence of which I’m doing things.

[pmplayer 9,497]

6 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

That’s promising, but it’s still very strange why the various bugs differ so much between users. Ive only had this plane for 2 days now, perhaps 5 hrs flight time, and had no serious issues.

On another note, I wonder if someone can help me with GSX settings for this plane. Do I use progressive fueling? Any other relevant settings?

I always start with boarding and let GSX do its thing. However when it’s time for refueling, I’m confused as to what the correct procedure is. Do I wait until the fuel truck has connected to the plane to load the aircraft with the EFB? I really think I’m missing something here, either in the settings or the sequence of which I’m doing things.

I belive ( but not 100% shure ) that GSX refuling does not work with the ini A300 because they have a own task for fueling.

cheers 😉