el_kab0ng

I've been doing a bunch of KEGE -> KDEN flights lately and noticed that in some cases, RC wants me to be at an altitude that would most certainly kill me and everyone on board due to terrain. I've had to slow my descent (and sometimes bust the 30nm restrictions) to avoid mountains. Does RC take any of this into account when giving descent instructions?

This looks like Elite Dangerous on steroids.

The dry operating mass (DOM) of the Q400 in the CPAN has to be populated to get the correct ZFW in the FMC. Take a look at the dry weight in the FSX fuel and payload section. (DOM should be 37438)

Bluedrake42 has a good rant about this on Youtube worth a look-see.

Found out from some of my friends this is also happening in Orlando and LaGuardia (all within the last couple of weeks). I read where the TSA failed a red team exercise in June, so I'm wondering if this is testing of an alternative.

It might just be the placebo effect of riding in a different airframe, but I could SWEAR there is a marked difference in the amount of 'felt turbulence' in the A319 compared to the B738. Is this all in my head or is some of the turbulence dampening tech found in the A380 on their smaller line of AC?

I departed Atlanta last Friday at a time when I've never seen it so busy. Lines were 200-300Y long from the initial screening point. As a result of the influx of pax, (maybe they do this during peak times and this was just the first time I've seen it happen), they shut down the north terminal checkpoint to anyone who was not pre-check and moved everyone to the main checkpoint area. Once you exited the holding line, they put everyone through about 8 rows of serpentine ropes. In the middle of this area they had a corral where two DHS agents with K9s were orbiting, sniffing each pax and their luggage at least twice. From there, TSA agents checked tickets and moved people into the x-ray area. This is where things got interesting as they had every single body scanner shut down and were only moving pax through the metal detectors. Shoes were left on, laptops were left in bags. The only thing I noticed was the tighter scrutiny over IDs/tickets and lots of plain clothes agents watching the results from the dogs. What would have been a complete nightmare took ATL airport about 15 minutes to move over 1000 people through security without having to assault passengers with pat downs or violate privacy with body scanners (and probably with more accuracy using dogs). I'm not sure if this was a beta test being performed at major airports, a red team exercise to see if dogs are more accurate or just a method for moving high volume during peak times, but I really hope this becomes a trend. I'd much rather be sniffed by a dog who could care less about who you are than some low wage pervert getting off on groping passengers every time someone wants to opt out of the body scanners. Have you guys ever experienced this?

Baronvongamez got me hooked well before Froogle started reviewing it, but I agree.. it's very addictive until you realize some folks are still using lead/aimbots. =(

If it matters any, I should point out that Project Reality and World of Warships are both free to play games. Apparently having micro transactions in games (WoWs has premium style ships you can purchase) seems to be the trend for PC games these days. PR is based on the old BF2 engine which is no longer supported by the vendor, so it's also free to play (most likely will be overtaken by Squad once it's released.)

World of Warships, Project Reality, GTA V (on ps4), Farming Simulator 15

MZBZ (Philip Goldson International Airport)! They extended the runway recently to handle Euro airlines, so the existing AFCADs are all out of date.

I've personally never seen a 'donation' site with a board of directors, either. With that sort of formality, there should be a much more reliable environment than is present today.

Carenado has their own support model: https://carenado.zendesk.com/hc/en-us. Whether they actually fix what people find is another matter, but the point is, they DO have a support system.

Impressive, but I don't think I'd want to be in the air that long. Before QF7/8, 14 hours from SF to Auckland (with another 3 hour hop to Brisbane) was long enough!

Pretty interesting how the nose was obliterated, but the fan blades look in decent shape. I wonder what sort of engine damage occurred (if any).

And therein lies the problem with Dodosim: the VC/graphics are dated. It ruins the experience if the fidelity isn't there for me. I blame PMDG for alot of that perception, really. In any event, you guys pretty much validated what's on the market for us at this time and there's nothing new that might have been missed. I appreciate the feedback.

I personally hate these types of subjective questions, but figured I'd solicit community opinion on what the best helo might be for FSX. The sort of attributes I look for are high fidelity, proper flight dynamics, complexity of systems, etc. So far, the best helos I've found in these categories are Cerasim AC, but I was wondering if there's anything else? I've looked into dodosim, but compared to Cerasim, the fidelity just wasn't there. Milviz has a decent 407, but it seems quite buggy and the flight characteristics a little unrealistic. Thoughts?

You might also want to youtube search for Frooglesim. Froogle does a great job of explaining the PMDG 737 and 777 on various flights. I've learned quite a few tips and tricks from watching his videos.

I'll put a video together tonight and link it to explain what I mean if that would help. I don't use P3D, but I'd like to think the .pln format is compatible. Can anyone here confirm?

I use FSBuild2 for most of my flight planning, but only after copying what is present on Flightaware if I'm doing commercial ops. FSBuild2 exports out to a .pln format (which is what FSX uses, but I don't have p3d, so I'm not sure what format it uses). I then load the pln file into RC4 and by hand into an FMC if I'm flying PMDG/Aerosoft or via the flight planner in FSX if I'm using something that has the standard GPS. If you don't want to use FSbuild2, you can sign up for a free account on Simbrief.com and it'll export your flight plans from there with better fuel planning options. I use SimBrief for fuel planning instead of flight planning since it uses an AIRAC from 2014 unless you buy an online serial to get the latest navdata. In most cases, it won't understand the current SID/STARs, but it does know most if not all way points, so it's 'close enough' for fuel planning.

You might want to consider RC4 then. It's simple, reliable and loads in flight plans that you can create externally (Fs2Build, Flightaware, Simbrief, etc). The Carenado Hawker has an FMC that you program by hand, so whatever flight plan you come up with, you'd want to make sure you load in manually. If you're flying something without an FMC (like the C404 for example), you can just load the flight plan into FSX when you set up the flight and GPS will follow it accordingly. The only thing GPS won't do is SID/STARs (it follows the waypoints within the SID/STARs, but doesn't load them by the SID/STAR names like an FMC would.

I'm not trying to pooh pooh on RC4, so please don't read any insult into my request. As I mentioned, RC4 has been my go-to app for quite some time now and for the most part, I've been happy with it. I was simply asking if there was anything else on the horizon that is in development as an alternative to RC4 which might be better. Some examples of improvements would include taxi routing, ATC assigned SID/STARs (you can do this in RC4, but ATC does not actually assign anything.. you have to leave out the SID in your flight plan and choose 'alt restrictions' to get ATC to honor the SID YOU assign). Flexible responses for times when ATC barks at you but only because of the situation and not due to failing to follow instructions. (Some of this is getting close to the realm of Vatsim, I know.) Again, not bashing RC4, just looking for something a little more feature rich.

Radar Contact 4 has been my go-to application for ATC control, but it's showing it's age and hasn't been updated in quite some time. Is there anything on the horizon as a replacement which is as good if not better? (I'm not a fan of vatsim, so that's not an option for me at this time.)

I think therein lies the problem. We're ALL spoiled by the likes of PMDG (which has come up through the years and wasn't always top notch. re. B1900D), but when you look at their development cycle of YEARS before they produce a single plane, Carenado has done more releases for people to enjoy. Carenado is like documentation: when it's good, it's really good, when it's not, it's better than nothing.

A typical pond crossing in my mind is LGA/JFK/BOS to EGKK or EGSS. I think it's doable from KBOS, but just.