PittsS2B

I almost weakened and bought their base 757 when they had their last sale, thinking that I could at least merge it with the Level D, but now I'm glad I didn't. Thanks to you guys who bought Block F in order to give us the straight story on it. John G.

Thanks for that tip, Ryan; I didn't realize that about the 174.74's. I was finally able to get AA to work with Nhancer by deleting the Program Data/Nvidia folder manually on my last driver reinstall, which apparently included a bunch of old modified profiles that were gumming up the works. Now, to fly instead of the endless tweaking!John G.

I don't know if Vista is the ultimate source of my problem, but if your XP setup is working for you, my advice is....don't change it!Actually, I've had very few problems running FS9 in Vista, after tweaking it heavily to reduce some of the overhead and security "features".....until now.John G.

Thanks for the tip; I've been waiting for WOAI to release Air Canada for about (aboot?) a year now. Great news!John G.

I'm about ready to bin my two-month-old 8800GT card in favor of something from ATI, but I'd thought I'd ask for ideas here first. I've had reasonable success over the last year using Nhancer 2.3.2 to enable AA in FS9 with my old 7600GT and the new 8800GT, but after experimenting with a few settings in Nvidia control panel, my AA and AF are gone, and they aren't coming back. I've done the usual procedure of reinstalling Nhancer, copying the stock profile to disable it, and setting up a new profile pointed at the FS9 exe, but after 8 hours of tweaking, changing drivers, reinstalling profiles, and even going to the new beta version of Nhancer, I'm out of ideas. Any help appreciated.Currently running Vista 32 and the 169.44 drivers in FS9 only.John G.

It's a very systems-intensive add-on, but comes with an excellent tutorial flight. A member of the community has come up with a utility to translate PMDG navdata to the Maddog format, which seems to work pretty well. I've really enjoyed flying it.John G.

Yep, Abacus never fails to disappoint, even with lowered expectations and deep discounts going in. Even a relatively well-reviewed product like Flight Deck 4 included enough stutters and graphical anomalies that I haven't installed it on my new Dell PC, and probably won't.John G.

Thanks for the response, Clutch. It's not really a big deal - I'm just grateful that it's a known issue and that I don't have to go through the install process again! :DJohn G.

But then again, perhaps it's not, as in this case.Anyone else seeing a bright green, 50-yard wide line wherever 9D terrain meets default terrain?

First of all, many thanks to the development team that created this gem. It's mind-boggling to think of the detail that's included here.One question, though - I've got some pretty noticeable wide, low-res, bright-green rectangular bands where the 9 Dragons terrain textures meet the surrounding textures. I'm using BEV for terrain, and a 7600 GT card. Sorry I can't include a picture at the moment. Something wrong with my install?John G.

Well, add-ons for FS seem to be a cottage industry of sorts, so I've learned to adjust my expectations with regard to customer service where they're concerned, and certainly never buy based on promises. That said, I now avoid Captain Sim's planes on general principle, given their track record of failing to deliver complete products. Too bad, as I love the look of their 707 and 757, and really enjoyed their military add-ons for FS2002.John G.KTUS

Thanks for the early Christmas present, Bob! I'll look forward to sneaking away from the family at some point tomorrow, and logging some 'Mouse time to try out the new gauge. And good luck with the move back to CONUS. There's definitely bargains to be found in houses these days.John G.KTUS

Yes, Merry Christmas & thanks to Bob, Gustavo, & the rest of the crew that brought us the amazing Tinmouse II! John G.KTUS

I'm very glad that you're planning on continuing the systems work on the Tinmouse, Bob. VC or no, it's among my absolute favorite aircraft to fly in FS, and any improvements at this point would be greatly appreciated. John G.KTUS

Thanks for posting this - I had no idea that this was in the works, and for FS9 too! Looks like my excellent 182Q is about to have company in the hangar.John G.

Alex - I found that the VC in the RFP 742 was a real frame-eater on my modest system, but it's better after merging with the Posky 742 V4, which has no VC. It's a much smoother experience for me overall after the merge. You might give that a try before shelving it completely.John G.KTUS

Glad I was of some help, Tim, although I'm stumped as to why you're missing just those two flap settings. It's possible, as alstiff suggests, that you have a key assignment conflict of some kind. Does using F6 and F7 on the keyboard also cause the flaps to miss settings 1 and 10?John G.

Hi Tim,Have you configured your FSUIPC "Buttons and Switches" tab in accordance with pages 2 and 6 of the Version 1.2 Readme? Your problem sounds exactly like mine before I set up the flap switch on my CH yoke using this method. Note that page 2 of the readme gives you the offset codes and parameters for the flaps, while page 6 shows how to enter them into FSUIPC, using the throttle trim setting as an example.Hope this helps.John G.

Don't forget Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden....I'd say he cleans up pretty well!http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...%2Fnbruce07.xmlJohn G.

Mine does that too - no idea why. It only happens when the Tinmouse is on the ground, so I don't worry about it. Once the airplane no longer has weight-on-wheels, left joystick deflection affects the ailerons, and nothing else, so I choose to look at it as a way to speed up the preflight checklist by testing two control surfaces at once. :DJohn G.

Sounds like you've got some pretty innovative procedures there, Bruce. As for me, I usually just crank the FS9 weather down to minimums at my home 'drome (Ryan Field in Tucson, KRYN) and fly a typical comp check scenario using the ILS 6R approach, from takeoff to shutdown. The ILS 6R at Ryan includes a holding pattern at the IAF, so you can kill two birds with one stone. I often do this at night, to heighten the general sense of disorientation.I know Jeffco Airport well, as I learned to fly at KAPA, and the VOR approach into BJC was one we used for training. Guess it's grown quite a bit lately....John G.

I've been using the Tinmouse II since it was released, and I agree that it's one of the deepest simulations of an airliner yet conceived for MSFS, payware or otherwise. By following the instructions in the readme (and in the dedicated Avsim forum), I've been able to successfully map the thrust reversers, speed brakes, spoilers, and flaps to my CH Yoke, with no ill consequences for my other add-ons. If one is willing to spend some time setting it up, the payoff is more than worth the effort. John G.

I've been using MSFS to practice for IFR comp checks since FS98, and it's proven to be terrifically useful in this role. I'm up to four instructors and counting who can't believe that I stay reasonably current using only a PC "game" as a practice aid. I usually fly the exact approaches I'll be doing on the actual ride, and try to recreate the equipment failures that my instructor has thrown my way in the past. Using FS in conjunction with repeated studying of the FAR's, AIM, and charts helps keep the rust away, although I'd likely get some additional practice / dual in the real airplane before I attempted an actual IFR cross-country, just to be on the safe side.John G.

Glad to hear of this decision, Bob. I have no intention of buying FSX for the time being, but I'm definitely looking forward to the further evolution of the Tinmouse II in FS9. John G.

Any way you slice it, changing the functional currency your product is sold in, while keeping the absolute amount of the price the same, is a deceptive business practice, whether they intended it that way or not. If PMDG were smart, they'd post a very contrite mea culpa on every flight sim forum in the land, and explain why they felt the need to raise their prices so steeply in one go. Shutting down any discussion of this topic on their forum, as they seem to have done, is just going to make it worse. I'm not to the "boycott" stage yet, as I'd like to see how this plays out, but they've definitely squandered a lot of hard-won goodwill with this ill-conceived action, and their response to it.John G.