saltypete

No worries , thanks for the info Dan.RegardsPete Carlsen

G'day, Firstly congrats to PMDG on an outstanding aircraft. One question though, I have just completed a flight with the MD11 for FS9 and I noticed that on the progress page of the FMS the distance to the next waypoint is missing. I have flown quite a few sectors with the FSX version, and seem to recall that the distance to next waypoint was present (not all waypoints like with the Boeings) but only the current leg. Not a big deal as that info is also on the ND, but I wondered which version was correct.RegardsPete Carlsen

G'day, I have nearly the exact same spec system as you and I'm running the MD 11 really well. I've had one OOM issue and that was overflying New York (literally 37000 feet above Manhattan) with traffic enabled and the FSX sliders a little too high. Since adjusting my FSX settings, I have flown the MD11 out of JFK several times with no issues. I am seeing frame rates that are better than both the Level D 767 and Flight1 ATR. I was hesitant about forking out for this aircraft, but believe me it is worth it, in over 200 hours I'm yet to find a serious bug. The only problem you'll have is that after flying the MD11 you'll not want to fly anything else.Pete Carlsen

I don't know for sure , but I can guess that this is because these keys are used when inputing Latitude and Longitude into the MCDU (N51000.0/W02000.0 etc).Pete Carlsen

G'day again, I have made the purchase and I am stunned at both the complexity of the aircraft and systems, and also the performance in FSX. On my system (specs listed in first post) I am getting 20-30 fps in the 2d cockpit and 15-25 fps in spot view at VHHH with no autogen, traffic at 50% and vehicle traffic at low. It is smooth as well. I have let FS run for the last hour or so just to check that I don't get OOM errors. Tommorrow I will attempt the tutorial, this is gonna be great summer break learning the PMDG MD 11. Pete Carlsen

G'day and Thank you to everyone who replied. Given the advice I have been given I will be making the purchase later this morning, after I have been to town to pick up a toner cartridge and a box of copying paper to print out the documentation. Thanks again for helping me out.RegardsPete Carlsen

G'day, I have been awaiting the MD 11 from PMDG for a couple of years and the timing of its release is perfect. I finished my university exams today and now have until March to learn to fly this bird. I am looking at buying the FS9/FSX combo, as I still use fs9 predominantly, but FSX is the future. My question is how will it run on my system? I have a Q6600 Quad core 2.40 GHz with 2GB of RAM and a 8800 GT graphics card all running XP Pro 32 Bit. I can run the Level D 767 pretty well ,15-20 FPS at airports and 40+ in the air ,although it slows down at airports like JFK, with traffic.Since the FS9 version is some way off, I'd like to run the FSX version until then, but with 49 Euro cents to the Aussie dollar it is a big investment to make without being sure it will run on my system.Any advice would be appreciated.Pete Carlsen

G'day, Here is a direct quote from Captain Mike Ray's 'Unofficial 747 Checkride Manual', ' Mr Boeing failed to include that obnoxious reverse sensing doo-dad that made us able to fly that goofy backcourse procedure.....so this particular airplane CANNOT FLY A BACKCOURSE approach" (p.245). Hope that clears it up for you.RegardsPete Carlsen

This is just a thought, but did you cycle the flight director(s) off and then on again? I remember something similar coming up on the forum a while back. Hope this helpsPeter

Hi there, after much consideration i finally bought a copy of FS2Crew for my 767. Install was a breeze and i found that the tutorial was a great help. Thanks in part to having 600 odd hours in the Level D 767 it was not hard to use the tutorial on a line flight for my VA instead of the route used in the tute. One thing i noticed and have seen mentioned here is that when flying from the UK, there is an issue with the captain not releasing the ground crew before departure. Is there a fix for this? It may be my warped sense of humour but i have visons of this poor crew chief being dragged by his headset along runway 9R at Heathrow on takeoff and dangling outside the aircraft on a 3hr 45min cruise down to Athens and then enduring a landing. I must say having been through all that he was suprisingly calm when he asked me could he disconnect on the runway at Athens!Seriously though, this is a fantastic product for anyone wanting to make simming as real as it gets, and i congratulate the developersRegardsPete

Hi Jay, I'm running the X 52 pro with the Queen and had a problem with it last week. The button i programmed to disconnect the autothrottle mysteriously changed its assignment to the mouse button. I solved this by downloading a fresh profile from saitek and reassigning all the buttons. If you haven't already done so, give it a go it might just solve your problem. Also have you tried the Saitek support forum, they seem pretty switched on.Hope this helps!RegardsPete

Problem solved!!! although i don't know why this happened i found resetting the flight entirely eg: running the load manager again and starting from scratch solved this mysterious problem. Annoying, but i guess the tradeoff for running such realistic add ons is that from time to time little problems happen. Its worth it when one considers the alternative of going back to the default 747. My love affair with this aircraft is rekindled!!! Happy landingsCheersPete Carlsen

Hi all, i am getting really depressed about using the queen these days , after 400 trouble free hours it now seems that every time i load the aircraft something goes wrong. I can only assume it's my setup or error as a search of the forum yields no similar problems. Today i loaded up the 747F for a flight from OMDB to EGCC i calculated i needed about 102000kgs of fuel. My weights are as follows: ZFW:280642kgs Fuel:102387kgs GW:383840kgs. I ran the load manager and when i loaded the aircraft i opened the PMDG options tab and set the fuel load to the required amount. But as soon as i set the fuel load it changes to 164000kgs. I observed the fuel synoptic in the lower EICAS change in a couple of seconds. No matter how many times i click on the fuel window it always goes back to 164000kgs which is more fuel than the load manager says i can hold at the weight i'm at. This has never happened before. I hope someone can help i really don't want to retire this great aircraft just yet, but if it won't let me set the fuel properly what else can i do?RegrardsPete Carlsen

Hi Ryan, i use the website Amadeus.net for finding real world flights for the VA i fly for. Go to www.amadeus.net select flight availability and enter your deparutre and arrival locations ( you don't have to use ICAO or IATA codes) and you will be given all flights for that route and also aircraft types that are used. I believe you can also specify a preferred airline. It's a magic site and i use it often.Merry ChristmasRegardsPete Carlsen

Hi Dan, exactly what i was thinking about doing should this problem resurface. I have read that V Nav can cause problems both in the sim and real world. Captain Mike Rays' simulator checkride manual mentions that V Nav can cause behaviour that is strange and seems to work on a logic all of its own. I am hoping that this won't happen again however as i did a complete reinstall of FS9 and all my addons. A hassle i know , but i have been meaning to put FS on a separate harddrive for ages and finally i had the perfect excuse to do so. A blessing in disguise perhaps? Thanks again for your patience and advice Dan, and have a very merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year.Kind regardsPete Carlsen

Hi Dan Thanks for the reply. I have tried what you suggested and tried reloading the flight at different weights. When i noticed the problem i was loaded to the gills for a flight across the Pacific. I tried again with a light load for a 400 mile trip and got the same behaviour. I also tried Flaps 20 and flaps 10 takeoffs with V2 speeds ranging from 137 to approx 170 knots ( dependant on fuel load) and still no dice. Finally i hand flew to 10 000 feet and tried engaging the autopilot and it still seemed to follow some other logic , besides what was in the FMC. As the plane was not following what the flight director was indicating it should do. Even by hand flying to cruise Altitude and then engaging the Autopilot the aircraft descended below the Alt set in the MCP and then climbed above the set altitude and repeated this process until all my airspeed bled off and a stall occurred.I know you said reinstall as a last resort, but i tried uninstalling the 747 package and tried reinstalling just the base Package. Again the aircraft exhibited the same behaviour described above. Really running short of ideas i then uninstalled all my add ons and FS9 also and did a complete reinstall. ( i was meaning to do this at some point as i have a new harddrive added to my system). It took me 4 hours but after extensive tests all seems to be fine. I tried test flights after installing the base package, then the freighter add on and the aircraft performed perfectly. I am happy that the 747 seems to be working properly but am none the wiser to what caused the fault in the first place. I apologise if i was too verbose in this reply but i wanted to make sure that i included as much information on the characteristics of the problem as possible.Regards Pete Carlsen

Hi all, i had this exact problem 2 weeks ago and i attributed it to running a trial version of Ultimate defrag. However it has happened again, this time i have not run the defrag or installed anything. In fact my computers settings are the same as when i solved this a fortnight ago. The flight is setup ( it does not matter where or how much fuel/load etc) When i take off i get to 500 feet and engage the autopilot and instead of following the flight director bars the aircraft pitches up to about 17 degrees then down again and then back up until i stall and crash. I don't know what the autopilot following its not the FMC as it's out of coordination with the Flight director. I solved this problem a few weeks ago by uninstalling the 747 the freighter add on and the sound patch then restoring the system to pre defrag and reinstalling the entire 747 package. I got 2 weeks of good flying and then today i get this problem again. I have restored my computer to the last day that i flew and it's still not responding. The only thing i can think of to do is to uninstall and reinstall everything again. I am desperate for any help i can get.I have had over 300 hours of trouble free flying and now this problem twice in 2 weeks......infuriating.RegardsPete Carlsen

Hi again, i managed to solve this issue by restoring my system to the settings i had prior to running the trial version of ultimate defrag and reinstalling the entire 747 set up (400, 400F & sound update). I am assuming the defrag had something to do with the problem, so other users beware that it may cause problems. It has taken about 5 hours of stress to solve this problem, but at least i can go flying in the Queen tommorrow!! Good night allRegardsPete Carlsen YBUD

Hi All, i have had 300 trouble free hours in the 747 until today. I am not sure if this is related but i downloaded the trial version of ultimate defrag and ran it last night. Today i set up a flight in the queen fromm EGLL to KSFO and got airborne and at 1000 feet engaged the left CMD and the trouble began. The autopilot did not follow the flight director and the airspeed went up and down past the limit that V Nav set, when 10000 feet came the speed rocketed up and fell down. As i mentioned the aircraft was out of coordination with the flight director in a nose up attitude that bled off speed. I eventually got to cruise level at 30000 feet and the plane kept climbing through the altitude set in the MCP/FMC and then diving below it, no matter what mode i used (V Nav, FL/ch, Alt HOLD) it would not stay at FL300. The FMC told me that OPT cruise was 30900 and max was 34800. I have searched the forum and have not found any answers. i am going to reinstall the Queen , the freighter pacakge and the sound update and see what happens. I really don't know what else to doBest RegardsPete Carlsen

G'day Jon, you are in a very similar situation to the one i was in. I too bought my 747 in a CD "hard" copy from a store here in Australia and i was also looking for the F version on a disk. I looked around the forum and am pretty sure that PMDG or their partners have not released a CD copy of the freighter. Whether they intend to, I don't know. I bit the bullet and bought the downlaod version from the PMDG website a week ago. It was hassle free and in my humble opinion well worth the money, even though monopoly money is worth more than the Aussie dollar lately! I also bought the option for Extended download service for another 4 bucks US. Probably worth it if you're gonna be reinstalling every now and then. In terms of going to PMDG for a redownload, i understand it to be a simple E mail to get up and running again, and from hanging on this forum, the PMDG guys are switched on and will be easy to deal with. Any way hope that helps, good to see another Aussie on the forum. Best RegardsPete YBUD

Hi, remeber to sign your posts as per forum regs.As for the autoflight system it could possibly be that without the IRS the position reference comes from the GPS. By this i mean the GPS built into the FMC and not the default GPS included with MS flight sim which is not supported. If you look at the ND in small letters at the bottom there is normally ( with IRS aligned ) in green IRS3 and above it GPS. As i understand it the queen will take position reference from the GPS firstly and from any IRS that is functioning. I could be wrong but i believe this is done for accuracy and redundancy of systems. I'm sure i will be corrected if i have this wrong.Happy flyingRegardsPete (YBUD)

Not sure about the tailwind , i was flying using the clear skies weather conditions and the winds aloft are never more than about 25 knots. i will try and replicate this behavior again today, it may just be a one off (touch wood!!)RegardsPete (YBBN)

Hi everyone, just encountered a wierd situation on approach to VHHH. I took the simulator off pause at the TOD and for about 5000 feet the descent went fine, then all of a sudden the plane levelled out above the descent path and the airspeed rocketed up and would have overspeeded if i hadn't intervened. I took it off V nav and used V/S , speed select and speedbrakes until the aircraft got back on track, when i reconnected V Nav. This proceeded to happen again and i lost the autothrottle ( no thrust annucniation on the left top the PFD) i rearmed the autothrottle but to no avail. I had to use manual throttle control all the way to the runway. I had no constraints entered into the FMC. this has never happened to me before i have usually been able to use V nav all the way down a descent to final. has anyone else encountered this problem? i did a search but was presented with 51 pages of results.RegardsPete

Thanks Steve, for both the advice and the quick reply. I have the same joystick setup as you, and will attempt small corrections using the rudder, as i'm only ever less than half a dot off the centreline, i guess i have to get my brain moving at the same rate as the plane!! Cheers again, it is great to have a 747 pilot that makes himself available to help novices like me enjoy this fantastic hobby. I'd say you are the luckiest man alive to have your job, but i'm sure that hard work and dedication had more to do with you getting into the right hand seat of arguably the greatest aircraft ever made. Kindest RegardsPete

Hi, I have been flying the queen for 2 months and have about 140hours up. I have only been flight simming for eleven months and am completely addicted. I admit to using autoflight from 2000AGL on takeoff all the way to an autoland. Recently i have been inspired to geta bit "hands on" so i have tried getting established on the ILS and disconnecting the autopilot at 500 feet to land manually. But contrary to the cardinal rule of flying, the airplane gets ahead of me. i have got the glideslope down pat but i seem to drift off the localizer and am unsure of how to correct ( aileron or rudder, or both). This has resulted in some dodgy landings and my passengers winding up in the foetal position. From looking at the forum there are many of you who have vast skill and knoweldge of this amazing aircraft and i hope a few of you could share your tips on landing by hand ( i am not at the point where i'm using any weather but clear skies). I feel a great sense of achievment in the fact that i can use PMDG's queen after less than a year in the virtual skies, but being a perfectionist i would like to keep improving to the point where sometime in the distant future i can master this aircraft.Thanks Pete YBBN