robertmpratt

Check out VTBS-VDSR. Arrival into Siem Reap, Cambodia over the giant lake of Tonle Sap isn't as interesting as in real life, but Martin Strong's freeware Siem Reap airport scenery makes up for it. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, Microsoft didn't model any of the ruins at Angkor Archaeological Park North of the field. You won't miss anything in a B737. Also, Bangkok Airways flys A319s and A320s on the route (cruising briefly at FL250), so a B737 is definitely not unrealistic.

Hello.I have the manuals, too, if you haven't got them somehow already. Let me know via PM or in this thread. I'm in need of the v1.5 update if anyone has that :)Cheers,Robert

Hello.In general, I'm with Jack C. However, strictly speaking, there's no way to know where to look from the scenario you describe. You say the CDI is to the left. Is it one or two dots to the left or full-scale? If it's only a couple dots left, then you can calculate your angle of deviation and from there get a rough idea of how far to crane your neck over your shoulder to spot the VOR. If it's full-scale, I'd twist the OBS to get a reading on the CDI (or tune another VOR station) before I'd even guess at the aircraft's position. Also, interpretation of position is vastly different if that CDI is on a plain-old VOR head or on a HSI.The way I understand it, TO/FROM only indicates which "side" of the VOR you're on relative to the selected radial. It indicates FROM if the selected radial is within 90 degrees left or right of the radial you're currently on. It indicates TO if the selected radial is more than 90 degrees from the current radial. Good puzzle!Regards,Rob Prattrpratt(at-sign)wordandsound.com

I'm not sure what happened other than there's been some server problem (obviously). However, VA management has established an interim forum for members to use until the problem is sorted out:http://unitedvirtual.8.forumer.com/Regards,Rob Pratt, UAL1313rpratt(at-sign)wordandsound.com

Hello.Search for ffx-dfmerge.zip in the Avsim file library. The file contains aircraft.cfg files to make the DF panel work with FFX/SGA 737-300s, -400s and -500s. For my system, I made a few modifications to these files to tweak the weight and balance and the static thrust. (The FFX/SGA models are way overpowered, and these merge aircraft.cfg files fix it by dropping the static thrust values. I think that the dropped static thrust values, however, are too low for weights at or near MTOW.) By the way, this is for FS2002 and not FS9. The merge files for FS9 are way more complicated. See the Dreamfleet forum about those.Sincerely,Rob Prattrpratt(at-sign)wordandsound.com

The LOC 27 at KSAN reminds me of the LOC/DME 28 at KMRY (Monterey) in my home region. Lots of step-downs on a steep glideslope. Compounding the tough approach is that ATC has to manually switch the localizer between the ILS 10 and the LOC/DME 28 frequencies, and controllers will sometimes forget and clear you for one approach when the beam is set for the other--which is another good reason always to check the identifier of any navaid you intend to use. Of course, that's not a problem in MSFS, but it's still a tough approach.For sheer complexity of procedure, however, I think the LOC/DME BC 16 at KRDD (Redding) has to be one of the toughest in California.Sincerely,Rob Prattrpratt(at-sign)wordandsound.com

The basic FMC implementation doesn't bother at all. I'm the sort of person who likes to fly aircraft in flight sim rather than having the autopilot do everything from 400 AGL to landing :-)I have both the CRJ-200 and the CRJ-700/-900 packages, and I think the handling on the ground and in the air is excellent. They're a pleasure to fly by hand, and there's nothing omitted in the FMC implementation that I miss all that much. (I'd be hard pressed to tell you what *is* missing. VNAV is the most notable omission, but that makes sense to me since most CRJ's don't have autothrottles.)I also think that Wilco is the worst part of the deal. However, the people of FeelThere are so helpful and good-spirited in their user formus that I can overlook any problems caused by Wilco.Sincerely,Rob Prattrpratt(at-sign)wordandsound.com

I think MS's move to an XML interface to the panel API has been a great thing since it was introduced in FS2002. I'd like to see the idea extended to an XML framework in the gauge/panel system that could be used to create flight management computers.Right now, as far as I can tell from my meager panel/gauge programming experience, anyone who wants to create an FMS for an aircraft must do extensive programming in C++. I can't imagine that the existing XML gauge framework would support an FMS gauge. However, with an extension to the existing panel/gauge framework, perhaps MS could support VNAV in autopilots, SID/STAR/airway databases, performance tables, etc. that a panel/gauge programmer could use as building blocks for an FMS.Just a thought.Sincerley,Rob Prattrpratt(at-sign)wordandsound.com

Hello.FS9 has a checkbox to toggle the two. FS2002 displays both on the same page. They should both come up under the aircraft/fuel menu item. Then, you can enter fuel amounts in gallons or pounds (or percentage of total tank capacity, of course).Sincerely,Rob [email protected]

Even before being vectored, I like to get out a notch or two of flaps (or extend the slats, depending on the aircraft) so that I'm not nose-high while at about 210KIAS. On the intercept to final, though, I'd slow to 180KIAS. By the time I reach the FAF, I like to have my landing configuration in (gear down, flaps to landing position, etc.) and be in a stable glide. I try to plan my approach so that I don't have to change speed or configuration inside of the FAF. (In a jet, that is. See below.)For me, I like to think of three phases: "in range," "approach" and "final," and I setup my aircraft configuration accordingly. "In range" is when I'm at the end of a STAR and getting ready for the approach controller to connect the dots by vectoring me to the final approach course. (Often a STAR has speed requirements that take care of my planning for this phase.) "Approach" covers vectors to final approach intercept. "Final" is, obviously, from FAF to landing.Depending on the situation, however, I plan for different transition points. If there's no STAR, I might judge the "in range" phase to begin once I've reached a feeder facility and the "approach" phase to begin once I've reached the IAF. Or, if I can see that the approach controller's going to slam me onto final right on top of the outer marker, I'd get setup for the "final" phase early.All of this planning has to take into consideration the aircraft I'm flying. Jets take a lot more planning and require more step-downs to get to landing speed/configuration. In a Cessna 172, however, I might wait until I'm inside the FAF before making a speed/configuration change to make a safe landing.Sincerely,Rob [email protected]

I'm also frustrated by the unrealistic crosswinds in FS9 (and the two previous versions I've used).First of all, a 6kt wind 30 degrees off the nose is no biggie, really, even in a Piper J-3 Cub. But in FS9--and it seems worse to me in FS9 than previously--such a wind requires a great deal of crosswind correction.Second, I haven't found any FS9 aircraft--freeware or payware--that does a good job of simulating real life aircraft response using the wing-low method of crosswind correction. I'm a private pilot (just a handful of weeks from my commercial flight test, actually), and I can safely land in a direct crosswind (90 degrees off of the nose) up to about 15kt gusting to 20kt in tricycle gear aircraft, and I can make safe wheel landings up to about 15kt (on the nose, maybe a few knots less direct crosswind) in conventional gear aircraft. In FS9, I can't manage to null out drift at all, so I just crab all the way down and kick rudder at the last instant before touchdown. Like you, I've noticed that there's almost no penalty for having drift on touchdown.FS9 manages to do a good job of simulating the weathervaning tendency of aircraft on the ground, but the influence of weathervaning, p-factor, prop precession and torque during the takeoff run in conventional gear aircraft in FS9 is way out of whack--much too forceful, IMO.Maybe it's a settings thing (I'm using FSMeteo, and my realism settings are "hard" with all the real things like gyrodrift and nonautorudder). I dunno. Maybe someone can post here if they have some good settings tweaks to make crosswinds more realistic.BTW, your note that "when the wheels touch they want to travel in the direction they are pointed" isn't realistic for all aircraft. Conventional gear aircraft will try very hard to swing into the wind on touchdown unless you completely null out drift on touchdown.Rob [email protected]

>Weather en-route, active runway, approach, Qnh, frequencies,>etc...When I studied for my instrument rating, I started out writing down everything the controller said--until my instructor told me very forcefully to stop it immediately. She taught me to put things like altitudes, headings, frequencies, etc., onto gauge bugs or into radios immediately instead of writing them down.If the controller says to fly heading 110, then put your heading bug on 110 and check it by reading back to the controller the heading your bug is set to. If a controller tells you to expect an approach, you pull it out of your chartbook--you've already preset all the likely approaches ATC might give you--and put it on the yoke clip or on your kneeboard, then confirm it by reading back the approach you've pulled out. Et cetera.The only two things she expected me to write down were clearances (including holds) and weather/ATIS information. She's a former major airline 737-800 pilot who now flys G-Vs as the head of the flight department for a Silicon Valley company, so she teaches the airline/corporate aviation method whereever it's applicable to my lowly piston-single experience.When watching airliner videos, I have always figured that the pilots (first officers, most likely) are logging company-required data and not really ATC-related directions/info. Onboard FMS, no doubt, handles logging of navigation and performance data.BTW, I'm right now reading Ernest Gann's Fate Is the Hunter--an excellent book on commercial aviation of the 1930s and '40s by a pilot who worked flying along airmail and passenger routes and as part of the World War II Air Transport Command during the early years of the airliner industry. He talks a lot about all the logging a first officer has to do.Rob [email protected]

>but in>real life you cant do this, so what chart or whatever do you>r/w pilots use to look up to know who to contact next?>thanksThe Airport/Facility Directory (published by the FAA) works for me. Usually I try to find the correct sector freq on the VFR sectional chart first, then turn to the A/FD if I can't figure it out from the chart. The A/FD lists all approach/center freqs for each airport, but it's a little hard to figure out sometimes. A lot of VFR pilots swear by the "Pilot's Guide" books, but I'm too cheap/lazy to buy one--easier just to get Sporty's to mail me an A/FD with my IFR charts and procedures every time the FAA updates them. They're cheap, too--around $5.Anyway, the A/FD, for me, is a second resort when I'm in the air. Usually I try to do a little better flight planning on the ground so I don't have to fumble around for freqs. If, for instance, I know I'm going to want VFR flight following and I don't know the correct freq to use when tower releases me, I make a call to Flight Service before I take off and ask them what freq to use. If I didn't mind that the tower controller might think I'm a sketchy pilot, I'd just ask him or her if I hadn't figured out the correct freq by then. Of course, neither of those techniques works in MSFS COF ... but that's what I do in the real world.Rob Pratt

I fly the San Francisco Bay Area, and sometimes on a flight from KWVI (my home base) north across the East Bay, I get handed off every few miles, it seems. A few times, I've been handed off, called up the next controller and then immediately been handed off again. That's during the day. On one very early morning flight, I went from KLVK to KWVI with the same controller. Ever since the regional approach controls consolidated into Norcal Approach this past year, the situation seems a little more extreme--way more handoffs during the day and way less handoffs at night.Rob Pratt