pilotwannabe

Potential bug: Cold and dark airplane can be powered up with primary external power with the BATTERY switch OFF The manual explicitly states that the BATTERY switch must be ON to establish electrical power using the external power. Starting from cold and dark with primary external power available in the sim, if you keep the BATTERY switch OFF and press the PRI EXT PWR switch, the plane appears to power up normally. Am I missing something or is this modeled incorrectly? Rushad E.

Related to FLCH, I find the during an IDLE descent, with each mouse-click to change the MCP speed, the AT mode momentarily jumps to THR and then right back to IDLE. This repeats with each mouse-click. Do others also experience this odd behavior or is it somehow related to my PC? It does not impact the aircraft behavior in any way, but is just odd watching the mode jump around like that.Rushad

Thanks Rob!Rushad

Pierre,Thanks for the reply. If the answer is in there, then it has evaded me. But I'll look again.Rushad

Upon loading up a cold & dark situation and moving the flap handle out of the up position, the leading edge devices start to deploy (slowly) and there is a slight movement in the trailing edge flaps as well (you have to view this from the outside as the displays are obviously dark). What is providing power for the flaps to move? When you establish electrical power (several minutes after moving the flap handle) and the EICAS display comes alive, it shows that the flaps have moved almost to the FLAPS 5 position.Rushad

Thank you all very much for your responses.Somehow, I think the intent of my post has been lost in translation, so let me try to clarify. It was flying into LAX (as Steve mentions) above the glideslope that I first noticed that the AFDS engaged the GS mode while I was at least a couple of dots above (but still far enough out to get to the glideslope by the OM). While I have no RW knowledge, I did recall from a few years of experience flying virtual 744s with PS1, that the GS mode did not engage (it remained armed) until you had descended a lot closer to the glideslope (using perhaps another pitch mode). Since the PMDG 744 behaved differently, I decided to experiment. The intent of the experiments was to determine just how far above the glideslope the AFDS as modeled in the PMDG aircraft, would engage GS as the pitch mode.After flying progressively higher approaches (to the point of the ridiculous one in my earlier post) and finding that each time the GS mode immediately engaged and potentially put the A/C in harms way, I was curious as the what the real A/C was programmed to do in situations of intercepting the glideslope from above.So, I was hoping that one of our many knowledgeable posters with real world experience in 744's would be able to provide the criteria for engagement of the GS mode when the glideslope is intercepted from above.Rushad

How far above the glideslope (either in terms of dots of deviation on the GS scale or linear dist.) will the real aircraft engage the GS pitch mode?I was experimenting with GS capture on my favorite virtual 744 and discovered that while GS capture from below the glideslope was reasonable and uneventful, GS capture from above can produce a wild ride. I set up the aircraft in landing config (flaps 30, gear DOWN, Vref30+5) and maintained 5,000ft (LOC is the engaged roll mode, LOC button illuminated on the MCP, ALT is the pitch mode) until about 5 miles from the threshold (way, way above the glideslope). At this point, I pushed the APP button and GS engaged as the pitch mode (green GS on FMA) right away. The A/C proceeded to pitch down about 10-12 deg. with no regard for airspeed. As the IAS increased, FLAPS RELIEF kicked in, and closer to the ground, the ground prox. warnings went off. The pic below shows the situation at approx 500ft. AGL.Of course, nobody would fly this approach in real life, but I'm pretty sure the real A/C would also act differently (most probably by not engaging the GS mode that far off from the glideslope). So what are the rules of AFDS GS engagement in a situation like this?Thanks!Rushad

>Hi Rushad. Same with me here.>TOMTom,Thanks for the reply. I wonder if this is something PMDG had intended to fix, but the fix never quite made it in. Hopefully, somebody in the know will clue us in.Rushad

In the list of features for the 400F on the PMDG website, it states:"48) New Autopilot disconnect behavior. If A/P is disconnected with both Flight Directors off, then all MCP lights will go out. Subsequently no pitch/roll mode can be engaged. Autothrottle in this case, if active, will revert to SPD mode."I find that if I disconnect the A/P with both FDs off, then the MCP lights still remain illuminated, just like they used to do before the 400F. Also, the A/T does not revert to the SPD mode, with the SPD button illuminated.I'm not sure if this anomaly is somehow specific to my system only and works fine for most others, or if I am missing something. Any help will be much appreciated.Thanks!Rushad

Hoping for some feedback...TIA,Rushad

PMDG Team, Captains,During my travels through the virtual skies, I've noticed some AFDS behavior that does not seem quite right to my untrained eye. I'd appreciate some guidance on whether I'm goofing up, or if these situations are specific to my machine, or if they warrant being added to the 'to be fixed' list. All of these situations are completely reproducible on my machine, and I've tried to provide a reasonable amount of detail to recreate them.Start with aircraft in cruise (also holds for climb and descent phases of flight); FD (only Captain