The "yoke to the left" bug has happened a couple of times to me, and that was before I installed SU15. A restart has always solved the problem, but I agree that it needs to be investigated and resolved.

I regret to say that it all comes down to PMDG's sole focus on profit. 

Even though the product and customer service were great, their quality control and customer care didn't meet the standards for a significant amount of time. On top of that, their return and money-back policy is quite insulting. If you buy the product, activate it, and encounter issues or find that it doesn't meet your expectations with their support, you won't get a refund. You can only request a refund within 30 days of purchase if the product hasn't been activated. But what good is that if you haven't even tried it? 

It's hard to see how they can expect a high level of customer satisfaction when they keep denying or refusing to acknowledge issues (as is the case here) and hide behind the excuse that "we don't see it on our machines," despite user reports. I'm sorry, but there seems to be a serious problem with PMDG's approach.

2 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

The "yoke to the left" bug has happened a couple of times to me, and that was before I installed SU15. A restart has always solved the problem, but I agree that it needs to be investigated and resolved.

What's even more maddening is when you mention the issue, the first responses are "well, buy the airplane."

1 hour ago, fluffyflops said:

I've always said the standard of addons has slowly and steadily decreased over the last 10 years on all the platforms by all the developers.  

Well, Carenado actually improved somewhat IMHO and some of the developers that weren't around in the FSX era have produced great aircraft. But some have deteriorated which given the increased sales from MSFS products is inexcusable.

This happens on real aircraft too, and sometimes the only “fix” is restart the aircraft from cold and dark. I maintain 3 Dassault Falcon 900EX aircraft with the Honeywell Primus Epic “EASy” avionics system. Occasionally, when starting up the aircraft on GPU or APU electrical power, while the various displays and systems are initializing the yoke will start “twitching” while the autopilot servos are being tested, followed by an amber “AP1 FAIL” and “YD1 FAIL” CAS message.

This is not an actual autopilot failure. There are 4 modules in the avionics system called AIOPA, which drive the autopilot and autopilot servos and the yaw damper. Occasionally during power up, one or more AIOPA modules do not “boot up” properly and it leads to an apparent failure.

The “fix” is to power down the airplane completely and start over. If a mechanic is available, they can go into the maintenance subsystem and force a hardware reset of the 4 AIOPA modules, but usually it is simpler to just “reboot” the airplane.

Honeywell has been aware of the issue for 15 years, and there is simply no “fix” they can implement, because the root cause is a rare timing problem while all the many complex avionics modules are initializing during power up. And this is a system fully certified for use in aircraft under DO-178

The Bombardier CRJ has a 25-page section in the maintenance manual referencing how to “fix” various system problems by pulling and resetting certain circuit breakers.

The standing joke in the aviation maintenance community is that “Embraer” (especially the 135/145) stands for “Every Mechanical Breakdown Requires An Electrical Reset”, because those models are subject to various power up problems that can be fixed by rebooting the airplane.

 

30 minutes ago, StoneDoor said:

Never happened to me before. Since SU15 (yesterday) it happened three times. 

May well have got worse since SU15 - I had it happen only once, but others seem to have much more consistent issues with it (normally I only use the tablet to import the flightplan & performance calculations though - so may well be to do with that.

Normal Mathijs attitude though of "Must be something on your machine" despite multiple threads and multiple people posting about it.

 

G

27 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

This happens on real aircraft too, and sometimes the only “fix” is restart the aircraft from cold and dark. I maintain 3 Dassault Falcon 900EX aircraft with the Honeywell Primus Epic “EASy” avionics system. Occasionally, when starting up the aircraft on GPU or APU electrical power, while the various displays and systems are initializing the yoke will start “twitching” while the autopilot servos are being tested, followed by an amber “AP1 FAIL” and “YD1 FAIL” CAS message.

This is not an actual autopilot failure. There are 4 modules in the avionics system called AIOPA, which drive the autopilot and autopilot servos and the yaw damper. Occasionally during power up, one or more AIOPA modules do not “boot up” properly and it leads to an apparent failure.

The “fix” is to power down the airplane completely and start over. If a mechanic is available, they can go into the maintenance subsystem and force a hardware reset of the 4 AIOPA modules, but usually it is simpler to just “reboot” the airplane.

Honeywell has been aware of the issue for 15 years, and there is simply no “fix” they can implement, because the root cause is a rare timing problem while all the many complex avionics modules are initializing during power up. And this is a system fully certified for use in aircraft under DO-178

The Bombardier CRJ has a 25-page section in the maintenance manual referencing how to “fix” various system problems by pulling and resetting certain circuit breakers.

The standing joke in the aviation maintenance community is that “Embraer” (especially the 135/145) stands for “Every Mechanical Breakdown Requires An Electrical Reset”, because those models are subject to various power up problems that can be fixed by rebooting the airplane.

 

Yes, that's true, but only a few airplanes exhibit this kind of behavior, and those are rare occurrences rather than the norm. 

During a long period flying on Boeing and Airbus, I witnessed this "complete power down" reset maybe 4 times.  I suppose certain airplanes are superior to others.

 

With all due respect, this is not the case we are discussing, imho it has nothing to do with the reported issue.

Also happening to me since the Betas. Only way to fix is to delete files in the aircraft package folder. 

1 hour ago, Fiorentoni said:

You should change the title to "SU 15 and the typical Kok customer service". These kind of statements I've seen hundreds of from Kok over the years. The more I think about the more I assume they hired Kok to scare people away and decrease the number of support requests.

dont blame the player you blame the system.  Kok knows the system. 

54 minutes ago, LRBS said:

I regret to say that it all comes down to PMDG's sole focus on profit. 

Even though the product and customer service were great, their quality control and customer care didn't meet the standards for a significant amount of time. On top of that, their return and money-back policy is quite insulting. If you buy the product, activate it, and encounter issues or find that it doesn't meet your expectations with their support, you won't get a refund. You can only request a refund within 30 days of purchase if the product hasn't been activated. But what good is that if you haven't even tried it? 

It's hard to see how they can expect a high level of customer satisfaction when they keep denying or refusing to acknowledge issues (as is the case here) and hide behind the excuse that "we don't see it on our machines," despite user reports. I'm sorry, but there seems to be a serious problem with PMDG's approach.

Also where they say it seems to be your system you need to fix it. Like most tell them they have done nothing to the system. Always our fault not theirs.

1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

I complained about the DC6 and it's erratic tracking of GPS, almost since the day, as have many others on the PMDG/DC6 forum.  Always the same answer, they don't see any problem. yeah, right. I just stopped flying it altogether. Problem solved. 😉

I have read lots of comments about the GPS in the DC-6 not tracking but that's not my experience.  I have found that careful flight planning, excluding most SIDS and STARS usually guarantees a good track.  I've just completed a multiple leg track down the west coast of the Americas without issue.  Prior the that, I completed a round the world flight with the same results.

Maybe I'm lucky but there are a couple of pre-flight steps that I find necessary before I actually lift off.  I start the sim from scratch, I load the flight plan built with Navigraph Charts and ensure that MSFS doesn't screw around with it.  I once found that my flight plan from KMWH to KSEA had been modified by MSFS to include a STAR that didn't apply.   I ensure that NAV 1 is set to a random frequency and i formally code the first few waypoints of any SID into the flight plan.  I'm also wary of using STARS and usually code the STARs waypoints into the flight plan.

I have seem some issues with the ALT Hold switch lately.  Sometimes when I turn it off, I can't start to descend unless I cycle the switch.  Then it works.  On a recent final, the needles started to deviate from center, so I cycled the ALT HOLD switch and the plane centered itself again.  I don't know why but since the DC-6 technology is some 70 years old, maybe PMDG built in some gremlins into the system :o)!

Jim Driskell

Chief Pilot

Nocturnal Aviation

36 minutes ago, carlanthony24 said:

Also where they say it seems to be your system you need to fix it. Like most tell them they have done nothing to the system. Always our fault not theirs.

thats the standard line for a lot of devs to be fair. 

3 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

Release it now ,patch it later" 

Which happens with all software over its lifetime.  

1 hour ago, GCBraun said:

Also happening to me since the Betas. Only way to fix is to delete files in the aircraft package folder. 

I'm open to any suggestions. I performed an uninstall and deleted all files related to this product to ensure a clean install.

At this point I'll do it again, please clarify which files are you talking about. I did it in the community folder, msfs, and drive c (in my case). 

1 hour ago, LRBS said:

I'm open to any suggestions. I performed an uninstall and deleted all files related to this product to ensure a clean install.

At this point I'll do it again, please clarify which files are you talking about. I did it in the community folder, msfs, and drive c (in my case). 

Not at home, but I believe the files are before the work folder of each aircraft variant inside the packages folder of MSFS (not on community folder). I’ll be at home tomorrow and could confirm where exactly if needed.