mburkhard

Sad to see that the crowd-funding is going so slowly. But if I may be perfectly honest, it is to be expected with a device that has this one key feature missing, being the TO/GA and/or AT disconnect buttons. PFC (one of the device's competitors) managed to do that decades ago, and that product is by no means high fidelity from a technical point of view. I know those buttons have been mentioned in a campaign update and will cost extra, that is fine, but no one is going to see that hidden away in a comment section. The Kickstarter page needs an urgent re-work, showing what kind of levers will be available after the initial release, accompanied by a time estimate as to when those will be available. Without that, I guess the funding will never go on as wished by Fulcrum. It should have been part of the initial announcement, but oh well, let's hope this is made public soon. Having said that, I do love the throttle console concept/prototype, it IS in a class of its own. Competitors are either made of cheap plastic using word not allowed sensors, or they cost twice the money of the Fulcrum device. I love my Fulcrum yoke, can't wait to get this throttle added to my setup.

I do own one, but mine is 6 years old already so I guess there had been a revision or two in between. Anyway, no issues with mine, works perfectly fine with all PMDG birds. Cheers, Markus

Check whether your Windows speaker settings match your physical speaker setup. If you were to select 5.1 speakers in Windows but you only have say 2.1, then you might miss the engines on rear speakers. Cheers, Markus

Geoff, must be something wrong with the nav data your MD-11 uses. Do you use any add-on nav data updates such as Lufthansa or Navigraph? Cheers, Markus Ah disregard, just saw that you use indeed Navigraph. To be honest I have no idea why you don't have any SIDs and RWYs displayed then. Does it work at other airports?

Morten, as I understand it, this function is not / was not widely used by MD-11 pilots. Personally I've heard of only one pilot telling me he would do that from time to time when being on final approach in turbulent weather. I guess it's a matter of personal taste and not something an airline would write into their SOPs... Cheers, Markus

Yes and no, they do increase drag but at the same time create LOTS of lift. And how do you kill lift? Indeed, by lowering the nose, but what happens usually if you lower the nose... yes, speed rises. So there you go... Might be ok in level flight, but then you wouldn't have trouble decelerating in level flight would you. So yeah flaps are indeed not meant to be used to decelerate Why don't you just remember the N1 or EPR setting before you switch ATS off? That way you can re-adjust the engines quickly to whatever it was. Yes it is not quite as easy as on the real aircraft, but still it works and it is always a good idea to know your thrust setting required for that 3° descent with Vapp. And if ATS is struggling to keep the setting while you do switch off, then you'll have to do same anyway and it won't really matter where your hardware throttles are set. If you want to disable LSAS during approach do NOT use the override switches or the LSAS buttons on the overhead. Use ONLY the yoke's AP disconnect button and keep it pressed. That is the only way it is meant to be and is perfectly safe to do. As soon as you release the button LSAS will work again. Cheers, Markus

Sam, open a support ticket with PMDG, they will be able to help you. http://support.precisionmanuals.com Cheers, Markus

Most airlines didn't have any data link option for en-route wind import when they operated the MD-11. It was a manual thing and yes it was always done on long haul flights. You don't have to do this during cockpit preparation, it is fully sufficient to do it during climb. Now you might say why do this, the average wind component gets me to the destination too. Yes it does, and fuel might be pretty accurate too. BUT - What about the other component: TIME. If you want accurate time predictions (remember: airlines usually have to keep a flight plan and have connecting passengers) you will want to have the specific en-route wind entered. - Something goes wrong: In case of a malfunction or more serious emergency en-route it might become extremely handy to have accurate fuel and time predictions too. So yes entering the average wind component might be fine for your simulation. But the real operations want to have more. And on the real MD-11 this was done manually for a very long time. Regards, Markus

Robin, just so that you know, wind input for individual cruise waypoints should work just fine, it is not something that is "not finished". Also it doesn't matter whether you put the wind into the FMC on ground or on climbout. Maybe post again your exact steps trying to enter individual wind and temperature. Cheers, Markus

What you see here is not the external view, you're in VC view but with the viewpoint shifted outside of the aircraft. You need to set EzDok in a way for it to go to the FSX external view for this camera position. Cheers, Markus

PUSH the knob first, this is the safest option and will give you present heading - or track. Then rotate and pull. Cheers, Markus

Edin, did you fill in the wind information for the descent forecast? Energy management on heavy aircraft can be quite tricky and needs the pilots to plan well ahead. The FMS is not always perfect on its calculations. The engines do have a flight idle setting so yes, that higher idle setting you see is perfectly normal. Cheers, Markus

With this sentence you just tell us that you have no clue what you're talking about, sorry. The Coolsky DC-9 uses the DEFAULT autopilot from Microsoft, therefore AP and FD are linked together, making the product totally unrealistic regarding to anything that has to do with automatic flight and FD guided manual flight. AP and FD in those days were NOT linked together, but the developer didn't want to code his own autopilot and FD, a fact that Flight1 marketing managed to hide very well. So this product could never be on a level with PMDG aircraft, or FSLabs or VRS, or Majestic. Programming a custom autopilot when doing an airliner add-on is one area that sets a developer apart from the rest, we need to be frank about this and name the ones who didn't but claim their add-on to be super realistic. Cheers, Markus

This was done to be consistent with the real aircraft. You can't release the parking brake by using the parking brake lever, you need to depress the brake pedals. Not quite correct. Pressing this button during take-off roll will cancel your flex thrust setting and give you full T/O thrust. Regards, Markus

Craig, quote from my MD-11 manual: So I suggest you do not interrupt the test Cheers, Markus

Paul, no, gear and flaps have no influence on whether the AP captures the G/S or not. Unless of course you'd try to do that at 340kts What does the FMA say once you're on the glide but the AP does not descend? Maybe post a screenshot of exactly that moment? Markus

Paul, extending the gear at 1800ft RH is fine if you fly in CATI or better with a manual landing to follow the ILS. Just be careful to be at Vapp, gear down and landing flaps when reaching 1000ft RH. But if you're doing a low visibility approach CAT II or III then you should slow down earlier, not just because of the AFS and its 1500ft limit for an autoland. This will also help to have more time for the important monitoring required for such an approach. Cheers, Markus

Ken, Paul, a common mistake to cause autopilot disengagement shortly before touchdown is that the LAND mode did not engage. You will then see a APPR ONLY on the FMA. The main cause for this with the PMDG pilots in the past was they were not at landing configuration when passing 1500ft RH. It is at THAT point where LAND mode is armed, and if you are not at landing flaps (35 or 50) at that point, you will get APPR ONLY, and this will cause the AP to disconnect later on. Hope this helps! Markus

Johann, just to set this straight, the MD-11 only ever had and has this one female voice you hear in the PMDG software (speaking of altitude callouts and stab. motion now), there has never been a different voice. Problem is the video you linked on youtube. That aircraft is actually an MD-10, the title is obviously wrong. And the MD-10 does have a different voice for these callouts than the MD-11 has. So no, no different voices for the MD-11, it only ever had one. Cheers, Markus

Maurice, the most realistic way is to load an earlier panel state, these have a fuel amount with them that corresponds to what you'd have when arriving at the gate. With this you would then use the refuelling menu in the MCDU, which would then initiate refuelling in the real sequence and the real time it takes. You can then watch the fuel being distributed on the SD FUEL page. Very neat Cheers, Markus

Yes it was me, I hate to spoil the party. But indeed, these TSS sounds for the MD-11 are NOT realistic at all regarding the flight deck sounds. The outside view sound is very good, but what you hear in the flight deck is really bad. Their sounds were not recorded on the flight deck, ours were. So theirs can't possibly be realistic. Armen and I spent hundreds of hours to make the sounds as close to the real aircraft as possible, we went down to the level of adjusting the pack flow volume depending on how many of the three are running. The MD11 cockpit sounds of TSS may be what you think sounds cool, that's fine, but they are NOT real. I don't want to judge other aircraft types TSS did, but their MD-11 package is not at all worth the money if you bought the PMDG MD-11, as you already have a perfect sound package. If you want to get the maximum out of your speaker system or subwoofer, go buy the Spitfire from A2A / AccuSim, now THAT is a powerful and beautiful engine sound to stress your audio system! Try the engine start with the old explosive cartridge starter Cheers, Markus

Billy, no I have not, sorry. Don't remember this coming up during the MD-11 development. Which airline is/was using this option? Anyway, since our MD-11 does NOT have an automatic anti-ice system, you shouldn't tell people to do nothing when they get an "ICE DETECTED" alert Cheers, Markus

Paul, to check if your rudder pedals are at fault, try another autoland but this time unplug the rudder pedals physically from the computer. If all is well with autobrake that way, then something is indeed wrong with the pedals. Cheers, Markus

Sir, I'm afraid you're wrong on this one. The "ICE DETECTED" is an alert, and it is activated whenever ice BUILD UP is detected, so you'd be well advised to act on this alert... and you must, as stated within the normal operation procedures. It is required to activate both engine and airfoil anti-ice whenever this message is displayed, if airborne. Again, anti-ice activation is NOT automatic! Markus

It's perfectly fine to use engine anti-ice on take-off, but you do need to calculate this into your take-off numbers. Cheers, Markus