jon b

Regarding the Channel Islands UFO , there’s a copy of the primary RADAR tape knocking about, one of the Jersey zone controllers had it in his shed. It’s played on a documentary I’ve watched , can’t remember which one though.

Yes. Stop and look long enough, you’ll be amazed at what you might see.

@abrams_tank Many thanks for your comprehensive explanation 👍 I’ll check out the beta as soon as I get a chance.

A couple of elementary questions please… How do you go about joining the beta, and where would you post feedback ? And if I wait for the actual release would there still be the opportunity to offer feedback, will it be periodically updated? I’m a little cautious about beta stuff messing things up. I’ve only recently rejoined the MSFS camp in December, I was about to delete it but thought I’d give it one last try and was left stunned by how good it is now. I’ve got real world time on both the 787 and 747 (although the 400 series) and have previous experience on testing and tech advising for study level sims, so maybe able to give some constructive feedback to help. cheers

Yes looking completely realistic, I just hope they’ve included the TOGA reference line, it’s a very important feature which was sadly missing from the QW 787.

Spend a few weeks away from flight simulation and then this happens, completely missed this announcement. As the young people say I’m “super excited “ by this announcement. From the screenshots I’ve seen the fonts and appearance of those 787 screens look spot on to real life, the HUD in particular looks great. The real test of course is how fluid they are in movement, a screen shot is one thing but I’d love to see them in action and moving, but I strongly suspect they’ll be perfect. This was one area where the QW 787 was let down, it’s PFD and HUD were just too squirrely I’m also hoping they do indeed get the time to incorporate the EFB performance computer and the ability to send the output across to the FMC, that would be amazing as that’s how it’s done in real life operations. It looks like everything will be in place for realistic day to day line operations, and again it would be great if a third party could expand on the systems and non normals so that those non normal checklist buttons weren’t greyed out. If as they’ve said they’ve tweaked the flight model to represent real aircraft performance you can expect a massive decrease in aircraft performance to the way the default aircraft currently flies. The current external and flightdeck visual modelling look superb in my view it’s just a shame the avionics appearance and flight modelling let the default aircraft down so badly, it deserves better. Hopefully this update will finally free the 787 to where it should be. I’m really looking forward to looking through that new HUD onto the sublime MSFS world , a match made in heaven if they can pull it off.

As the weather improves in spring my attentions turn more towards launching my fleet of BMW motorcycles. Once Winter starts closing in the bikes will be put away and I’ll fire up the flight sim once again, only to find the state of the art computer I left in spring is now sadly out of date and has become a previous generation model.

Unless it’s groom lake, I’m sure you would yes. An old PPL friend of mine tells a story of when he got lost in his 152 in lowering clouds the RAF gave him a talkdown into RAF finningley which was an active nuclear bomber base at the time. However.. an ex RAF colleague told me that when he was participating in the red flag exercises out of Nellis he was briefed that no matter what level of emergency he might experience over the ranges he was not to try and land at groom lake or he would be stopped with force ! Anywhere else in the world I think you’d be fine.

Great stuff ! In an incap scenario they'd be making all these decisions for you on the ground anyway and just telling you what to do. However, for the exercise... you'd have to weigh up , what's the biggest danger to you ?, staying in the air any longer than necessary with no qualified and possibly dying pilots, or landing at an airport with less RFF than you officially need? Remember as captain you have complete authority in an emergency, it's up to you, if you want to land somewhere below your RFF you can, you can put it down " off airport" on a road or field if needed. At the same time would you want to be putting all the other passengers at serious risk to get a single person to hospital? That will all be up to you as commander, but what ever your decision you have to be able to justify it. For example what good is an airport 150nm away with the required RFF going to be if you're on fire and the aircraft wont survive the flight and there's an airport with very little RFF right off your nose. In any emergency scenario there'll be many ways to skin that particular cat and different pilots may chose different answers to problems, there's seldom a black and white , wrong or right, as long as the decision is sensible , thought out . and can be justified, and above all safe. Going back to the pilot incap with a simmer in charge scenario, one of the first things we'll do when managing an emergency or any scenario is to establish the time factor, have you got a big T,meaning lots of time, or a little t that requires rapid action. If you have the automatics in, the aircraft is under control and there's still transatlantic fuel on board then I'd say you have a big T, plenty of time to sort things out. Yes the pilots maybe seriously ill and in need of urgent medical attention however with an unqualified person flying the bigger risk would be rushing things and loosing the whole aircraft, so once the guys on the ground established things were under a reasonable level of control and you were at least familiar with the flight deck and autopilot they start planning. Things I'd be thinking about if I was on the ground would be pointing you towards the longest runway , in the best weather , that has an ILS for an autoland. Get the autobrakes set and let the aircraft do all the work under no circumstances do you want to take the autopilot out at any stage. Again the best suitable runway may not be certified for autoland, it doesn't matter any ILS will do in these circumstances if that's the best fit. It's good that you've thought about losing weight by flying to a further away airport, so along those lines ....do you dump fuel? if so how much to you want to retain in the tanks? If you're above max landing weight do you need to dump fuel to get below MLW before attempting to land in such a scenario ? ( no !)

Maybe one of the 777 rated guys would know I'm not overly familiar with it despite my licence actually saying I'm rated on it, JFK/LHR isn't that far so you'd probably be below max landing weight so as a rough guess somewhere around 8000ft with max auto brake and full reverse. Strangely, I've found the 787 takes longer to land than the 747 at it's typical landing weight , I'm putting it down to the amount of wheels therefore brakes the 747 has, despite being much heavier. I guess the 777 has 6 brakes on each main gear so would be between the 747 and 787. If we're still running the pilot incap scenario would you be influenced by the RFF being under 9 ?? I guess in this scenario for real someone on the ground would be making the decisions like that for you they wouldn't expect you to act as an experienced aircraft commander, but an interesting forum discussion.

From the current real world notams … Gander is currently operating with reduced RFF ( rescue & fire fighting cover) category 5 is available with 30 minutes notice, category 7 is available with 3 hours notice, on a normal flight you’d need a minimum of category 7. Would this have any influence in your choice of going to Gander ? Hopefully people are finding this of interest in demonstrating the sorts of considerations and thought processes we go through in diversions and emergencies, I don’t mean to be a nuisance and if I am being tell me and I’ll stop with the interjections.I just thought it might be interesting for the guys who do the serious simming to follow this scenario through to a conclusion.

@Antipodeslonghaul Very Good indeed ! The important one you’ve got there is to TX 7700 that’ll set the alarms off in the ATCC and you’ll be the focus of their attention and they’ll “make a hole in the sky “ for you as they put it, and get everyone else out of your way. So no urgent need to go to a 500ft level in a radar environment but a good idea if oceanic. Ideally when diverting oceanic you’d descend below FL285 to a 500ft level and then fly direct, but I wouldn’t worry about anything like that in this situation that’s advanced procedural stuff, just keep it simple the rules go out the window.

Don’t ask me, I’m incapacitated remember 🙂….so the question is where would YOU go and why ? 🤔 You’re in command now, like it or not , we’re all counting on you !

Without a doubt no , they’d want you on the ground as quickly and safely as possible, they certainly wouldn’t want it let lose on the North Atlantic track structure that’s for sure. Trust me, being 7 miles over the ocean at night 1000 miles from the nearest runway is not for the faint hearted, it still gives me the shivers sometimes when I stop and think about it. You’d want to “land at the nearest suitable airfield “ as the manuals calmly phrase it ,to describe a situation where it’s hit the fan big time. In addition to all the other reasons you’d still have lots of gas to play with that way. Because if the bean counters have had their way on the flight planning you’d be landing in Europe with the bare minimum of fuel reserves and that’s not for the feint hearted either !

I’d be more worried if the cabin became incapacitated on one of my flights at work I wouldn’t have a clue how to cook my dinner, they don’t teach you that galley stuff. I think an experienced flight simmer familiar with the aircraft in question and using maximum use of the automatics to an autoland would stand a fair chance, if they could stop their hands from shaking. Make no mistake the amount of fear and adrenaline of actually being in that situation would be immense. When I was a young man I was a second officer or cruise pilot on the 747-400, I’d got a couple of thousand hours flying other airliners elsewhere, plus time flying GA , Barons, citations etc. Come the day to do the upgrade to first officer we had to go and shoot visual circuits in the 747. By that time I’d been flying it for 2 years in the cruise above 20,000ft and had simulator training every 3 months for those 2 years. I still remember vividly flying that thing around the circuit and landing it for the first time having not flown a real aircraft for 2 years. Despite all my previous flying experience and full motion simulator training , and my years as a flight sim enthusiast it was bloody hard work ! Indeed sadly not everyone on that course made the upgrade. Id just say don’t underestimate how an actual large jet feels on a manual landing.