lensman

>Are you on an intercept course when you try to get the Lnav>and Vnav to work?. Hmmm. Very good question. Most often I'm not for LNAV. Shouldn'tVNAV be independent of the entered course? I've read that sectionof the manual multiple times and it still is not clear to me howand/or when LNAV & VNAV are interrelated.>You have to create your own flight plan in the FMC, then save>it for future use. The IFLY flight plans are a different>format than standard FSX flightplan.Ooops. I will double-check this. I have so many differentverisons of an FMC (iFly, PMDG, FriendlyPanels, Abacus) thatI don't remember what I did with the iFly FMC. >Try this one. Attached is is my plight plan for IFLY from Los>Angeles to Las Vegas. Unzip it and put it in your Flight>Simulator XiFly747-400navdataFLTPLAN directory. Type in>KLAXKLAS in the CO ROUTE in the FMC to load it. Thank you *very* much. I'll give it a try now, if the cat willlet me have the chair & the AV8R joystick. (Paw on toggles,head on paw, back of head against joystick. It's warm theresince he's on top of the power supply)More in a bit -dan "lensman" davison

I'll reverse the axes and give that a try. I became interested when I worked for a company that had multiple locations and transported staff between sites via helicopters.The copters were SH-22 or something like that, and one of themwas configured so passengers could sit behind the pilots. (Therewere always two, and wow, they were busy!). Some of the flightstook us over the terminal buildings at Newark, which was scary.One morning I got to the FBO very early while the pilots werepracticing touch-and-go and autorotations from about 50 feet. Iguess the skids are designed as shock absorbers? Whatever kindit was, it seems that it was much more stable and still aninteresting challenge. FSX makes it clear that the petals arereally necessary, sigh. It'll be a long time before I can affordthose, if ever. I'm going to do a net search for HVR diagrams. Thanks for the tips!dan davison

Dave,Thanks very, very much. You explained much more in your note than the tutorials do in FSX. First thing I will do is try reversing the stick as that seems much more logical for trying to control a heli. I'll follow your collective settings and suspect that they will help greatly, since they are almost the reverse of what I do now. At the risk of repeating myself, right now my "normal" flight is up and forward to 1000 ft, then down and forward to pick up airspeed, up again if the airspeed or altitude drops too low. I usually arrive at my destination with too much forward airspeed - but you've explained why. Have you found that the Bell 305 is much easier to control than the Robinson? It may largely be my severe lack of technique, but either the Robinson has much tighter tolerances on control than the Bell, or it is much lighter perhaps.I've done all the 'beginner' helicopter missions using both the Bell and the Robinson, and the Bell seems to be much more stable, at least in my hands. I'll give it a shot and let you know how it all goes. Thanks very much for the advice and happy holidays!dan davison

Hi all,I still get CTDs if I have a "senior moment" and change views from the menu bar. However, I have found two ways to change views with aminimum of CTDs:1) Use the keyboard and only the keyboard. - I haven't figured out how to do Options|Simulation Rate| from the keyboard - "R" is listed but apparently doesn't cycle through the sim rates2) A new utility, freeware (thanks TweakFS!) appeared in the AVSIM library two or three days ago. It's called "Menu Mate for FSX" by the folks at TweakFS (specifically Fermin Fernandez). If I had the faintest idea how to get the link, I'd paste it in, but sign into the library, search "FSX Utilities" with the word "Menu" or "Menu Mate", and the utility will appear in the first few hits. It lets you go directly to the menu item you want without using the menu. Sorry, the documentation explains it much better. I've had about 50% less CTDs since I started using it. 3) Don't upgrade to the very latest and greatest driver (forceware or catalyst). For my card, a 7300, the last two driver updates have halved the frame rate and drastically increased the the CTDs. I apologize for not having the version number handy, but if you constantly update your video driver you may want to wait. The exception is if you have installed the Deceleration Pack from Microsoft - nVidia is constantly tweaking their drivers to make it work better with the pack. Given the discussions in other threads about the growing pains for video drivers + Acceleration Pack, it's your call...best of luck with it. I'm going to wait a few more months before installing it. lensman aka Dan DavisonDell Dimension 8400 P4 HT 3GHz, 2GB Ram, 1TB disk, nVidia 7300, Saitek AV8R; usually running Autosave for FSX and FS2Crew.

Thanks very much for the fast replies.I've been through PMDG tutorials 1, 2, and 4I will try to get a screenshot and post it later today.Thanks for pointing out that "flight level and speed are wrong". By this I mean that if my assigned FL is 260, andaccording to the FMC the next ICAO "step" is FL300, on allof the legs the FL will be 300 not 260. I'll get a screenshot of this.At some points I turn the AP (not A/T) off, but that's toregain control. As soon as things seem to be back what theyshould be, I turn the AP on, and the flight goes well untilthe next ATC-commanded turn, when the whole mess starts again.thanks all,dan davison

Hi all,At the end of a flight, when ATC is providing vectors, the first turn ("WT1123 Turn left heading 340, descend and maintain 9000 ft" I make the change(s) on the MCP, and everything goes to heck in a handbasket.First, the commanded bank angle is exceeded. I'm pretty surea bank angle of greater than 90 degrees is not permitted ina 747. Second, the altitude control goes away. The plane will beginto descend, then start climbing back to CRZ altitude. Third, the FMC will not allow me to delete the end of the flight plan,nor will it allow me to change the speed or altitude. When I attempt to delete a flight plan leg, I get the message "INVALIDDELETE". When I try to change a flight plan leg, I get the message "INVALID ENTRY".I do not know if this is related, but the flight leveland speed calculated for legs are wrong. The flight levelis always too high, and rarely the speed is too high. The hand-entered data is correct. It's as though it has done onemore "step" in the flight level from the hand-enteredCRZ level.To summarize - is there a way to shut off the FMC navigationfunctions? I've read through the FMU manual, and tried toread the "manual approach" section of the manual. I've alsofollowed the checklists. Any pointers would be welcome - thanks!dan davison

Rob,quick question - does "road traffic" also include "airport vehicles"?I'll give the wiki page a careful going-over, although I thought I had gone through all the Ops material. Obviously not. thanks,dan

Hi all,Sorry for the long delay in getting back to all y'all. I've beenhospitalized a couple times, which really slowed me down. Somewhere around the end of August I received a "get-well-soon"present of a nVidia 7300 that wasthe maximum my Dell Dimension 8400 power supply could handle.Amazingly enough, the CTD on resolution change still happens, andcontinues to happen. However, the CTDs are very specific. Theyseem to happen only if simconnect is in use. CTDs do not appearto happen if FSIUPC is in use (e.g. FS2Crew). Another kind persongave me FSX Deluxe, which has multiple different simconnects, soI need to keep looking at that.With one exception, the CTDs have decreased greatly after themost recent nVidia forceware update. I don't have the numberhandy, I'm on a Mac at the moment.Thanks all,dan "lensman" davison>I just installed ATI7.5 driver package. Now I also can join>the club on Crash To Desktop. My previous driver set was 6.9>with no issues. Will try 7.1 which I never installed first and>then, if necessary, regress to 6.9 . I noticed that 7.5 does>absolutely nothing for my lowly 9800SE card anyhow.>>Dick Boley near 5G8>>>>>>>Good news (for now), I found out that the Catalyst 7.1 are>>stable. Every driver newer than version 7.1 gives problems.>>How to do this:>>>>Go to the control panel/add/remove software. Remove the ATI>>software using the Express uninstall function. After that go>>to the control panel/system/device manager and manually>remove>>the display driver.>>Download the Catalyst 7.1 driver from ati.amd.com and>install>>it. Now you should have a stable system again using FSX.>Note>>that other application can have problems (Second Life won't>>start at all for instance). The real solutions of course has>>to come from ATI, which I already sent an email about this.>>Hopefully version 7.5 does not have these problems anymore.>>>>Regards and good luck,>>>>Rob>>>Regards,>Dick Boley>>A PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

Hi!Regarding the flight plans:I make a flight plan using FSX Deluxe's built-in flight planner. I then print the "Navigation Log", and enter the jetways and VOR/wpts by hand into the FMU Route. There are usually a few jetways unrecognized by the 747 FMU so I just "direct" over the unknown ones. I tried looking at the flight plans in Microsoft FSX/PMDG/Flightplans with a hexadecimal editor but didn't spend much time with it.Regarding the freezing:FSX freezes pretty much after 20 minutes from clicking on "Free Flight" when I pick any of the 747-400X or 747-400XF versions. If I'm *not* in flight by 20 minutes, clicking on pretty much anything will cause a freeze. Then I go get a cup of tea and when I'm back the "FSX has suffered a serious error" dialog box finally shows up and I usually click "Send". If I've been entering a flight plan, it always dies in the same thread and the same DLL (but I don't remember what it is...sorry.Alternately, if I click on the menu bar (or press "alt" to bring up the menu bar) FSX will immediately freeze. I've had some experience debugging the Windows kernel so last night I downloaded the latest windows debugger and symbol server link and made sure it all works. So, the next time I get a hang I will go looking carefully at where it is hanging.Out of the 20 to 25 hangs, when I look at the "what information is being sent to Microsoft", the hang is most often in ntosknl.dll (may not have the spelling right, sorry, I'm on a Mac at the moment). 60% of the time the other hangs are in either FSX dlls or (apparently) PMDG dlls. On one occasion the hang was in the graphics card driver. I fixed that one (5 or so days ago) by downloading and installing the latest nVidia driver. ----------------So - I'd still like to know if there is a way to build PMDG "flightplan" files or the PMDG file format (unless proprietary) andI'll write a Perl or Windows script to convert FSXflight plans into PMDG's format(*). For the freezing problem, I *suspect* it's a FSX-based error, not a PMDG based error, but that's why I updated the debugger and symbols. As I accumulate *useful* information, I'll send that to you separately. If you have a chance, let me know what level of infoyou want - the full corefile, the full dll trace, the debuggeroutput around where FSX froze, or only that info for PMDG dlls. Or,of course, if you do not want any of that. Perhaps something funky is happening with simconnect.dll - I'll check version numbers. I recently upgraded from FSX to FSX Deluxe. I did a full remove, cleaned the registry (with a utility and by hand), defragged thedisk, did several rounds of chkdsk, then installed FSX Deluxe and the SDK (*).Thanks very much for your help,dan "very grey lensman" davison(*) Can you tell I've been debugging Un*x kernels for more than 25 years?

Hi all,I saved the mission on the approach to the runway. When I resume and "fly the gauntlet" the runway is missing. Time of day doesn't matter,but I do not want to restart from Narita if it is avoidable. ****Yet Another SPOILER******** SCROLL DOWN ************When I land in the cave, I wind up smasking into the back wall.That runway has to be there somewhere. Any help would be welcome.Thanks,dan

Hi helicopter people,After using FSX for 1 year, I finally decided to try the helicoptermissions. I can do pretty much everything except land the sucker ona *specific spot*.Specifically, I cannot kill forward speed to hover over a specific spot. I have a Saitek AV8R joystick - throttle and stick. I've beena passenget in helis enough to know that having foot pedals wouldhelp, but that's not in the budget. My trick now is to rise several hundred feet above the landing area from several miles away, drop the nose, and speed up. I gradually bringthe nose up to slow down as I near the "H". This makes my flight profile look like a roller coaster. Any suggestions would be very welcome.Thanks all,dan "lensman" davison

Hi all,I *really* like the PMDG747X, but I cannot get a flight plan loaded into the FMU before MS FSX freezes. Strangely, the defaultB747w/FS2Crew doesn't have the same freeze.So, is there a simple way to load a MS FSX-generate flight plan into the PMDG FMU in less than geologic time?Thanks,dan davison

Ryan,That did it - entering the GPS coordinates into the "SET IRS POSITION"twice did indeed make the appropriate data show up in the Captain andFirst Officer's displays. Trying to land at Moses Lake in a complete white-out is quite a challenge. On to TRC lessons 2, 3, and 4.Thanks very much for the quick help and the outstanding product.dan

Ryan,>[...] Those are symptoms of the IRS not being aligned. Sometimes>you have to enter the current position into the FMC two times>in a row to get it to actually align. [...]Thanks for the fast reply! Now that you mention it, I alwaysget the "Enter IRS position" message after I enter it the firsttime. Alas, I've never entered the position again. I misinterpretedthe TRC 1. "...Why? The airplane is insisting that you double-checkyour position datum and re-send it to the IRS ..."I was assuming the empty boxes would appear if it wanted thecoordinates entered again. Since the numbers were still on thedisplay, I was clicking on the "CLR" button. >Make sure this isn't what's happening and then post back and>we'll go from there..Will do. thanks!dan davisonp.s. I'm recovering from a (thankfully) very mild heart attackand except for small type being invisible (probably from the painkillers) this is a great way to keep the mind going, andthe television off! I'm probably the only flightsimmer with a magnifying glass so I can read the PFD tapes :=( Thanks again!

Hi all,I recently found the type rating courses, and they are great. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to finish TRC 1 successfully. If I carefully follow the checklist, at the end, I have no nav data display, just a yellow box "MAP". Similarly, in the PFD, the tapes, heading, and annuciators (sorry about the spelling) are all fine, there's just no horizon display - no blue on top, brown on bottom. It's just black. The "targeting" bars are present.I've repeated this more than 10 times, starting cold & dark, after removing and re-installing the plane, I've removed 3d party scenery (just AFCAD fixes from AVSIM), no payware. In doing searches of this forum, I've found one reference to a similar problem, except in that case the user's displays were blank (i.e. as before the power is turned on). The fix for that was something to do with registration. That's not relevant here because I can use the plane for flights in Free Flight.Does the FSX flight planner have to have the same route as is in the "company route" file? I've tried loading whatever FSX calcuates as a flight plan, but the PFD/ND (oops, forgot to mention the GPS) displays are still lacking flight plan data.Thanks for any help,dan davison

Hi,OK, will use my real name (I thought my email address showed, and it has my full name). Thank you for the info about the liveries.Best,dan davison

Hi all,I installed and have more or less been flying the sim. No flights finished yet, all CTD'd just at or after TOD (sorry, Crashed To Desktop, Top of Descent). I'll get those figured out. However, my real question is, where are the other liveries for the 747X? All that installed were the PMDG house livery. Yes, "show all variations" is checked.Any hints would be very appreciated.thanks,lensman

Hi all,Is there a forum somewhere to post questions about using the iFly 747 for FSX? I have a number of consistent problems with the aitcraft. I have completely uninsralled, cleaned the registry, and reinstalled, multiple times. The problems are always consistent. No LNAV, no VNAV, MCP is froxen (no way to change alt, heading, and so on.. Finally, it never picks up the FSX flightplan into the FMC.So, does anyone know where I can post iFly questions?Thanks,lensmanp.s. yes, I do follow the checklists...

Hi all,I have been running FSX for about a year. Over the last 2 months, I've noticed that the heading set in the MCP of any default jet (CRJ, 747, 737, to name a few) is drifting from the heading shown in the FSX default GPS. Right now, I have to add 2 degrees to the MCP heading to stay on the GPS flight plan. This occurs with the autopilot on or off. Is this a known bug, or is there any fix for it?Thanks!Dell Dimension 8400, P4 3GHz, 2GB RAM, ATI 7950 w/256MB, 1TB disk, Saitek AV8R, FSX w/SP1

Hi all,I have a random problem with the secret shuttle mission. More than half the time I never get the "descend to 6000 ft" message. I also will get the message "we're too far north" after I've received "the gear down, flaps set, on short final" and clearance. The parts that fail, in no particular order, are:1) after the turn up Immigrant Valley (heading 010), nothing more except the radio EMI.2)on heading 010, at FL140, after clearance to land and "just keep on heading 010 for now"...and nothing further3) on heading 010, FL140, cleared to land, gear locked and flaps, ... no descent, no turnI can strong-arm the thing into landing, taxi to the parking spot, but never get a "mission completed" or the wry comment from the stewardess.I've run this mission dozens of times, but I can't figure out what trigger(s) I'm missing. Thanks for any help!p.s. Anyone know if the designer worked for the US Dept. of Energy late in the cold war>? That landing comment is pretty close to one I used to hear often. I could not stop laughing the first time I heard it coming from my PC. Talk about deja vu!

Ah, that triggers a memory. The problem started about the time Microsoft pushed out an automatic update that included the ATI drivers. That messed up a lot of things, and I rolled back the driver. It still didn't work, so I downloaded the latest driver set from ATI and installed that. The number of CTDs went down, but did not stop. Thanks for the insight that it's a change of resolution on crashes. I'm going to go back to my November through January monthly driver backups and see if one of those will help the system become stable. When I do I'll report the driver version here.danDell Dimension 8400, 1GB, 3GHz P4 "HT" (looks like 2 processors)700 GB disk, ATI Radeon X300/X550 series 3/2/2007, version 8.351.0.0, digitally signed: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher

Hi all,I have a new problem with FSX. Everything worked fine for the first three or four months. Then, for no obvious reason, on view changes via the menu bar I randomly have CTD. There is no time dependence - it may crash while setting up free flight, or after 3 or 4 hours of missions or free flight. I removed Documents and Settings/.../FSX folder, did a "repair install" on the program, but the CTDs continue. Again, they only happen, when changing views off the menu bar.Is there any known fix for this?Thanks very much!

Hi,Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it, but when I click on "Fly!"- the voice over saying "If you want to see Haleakala now..." proceeds- the mission compass still points towards Hana (even if I'm over the Caspian Sea)- I did create a free flight and make it the default, but no joy - when the default flight ends, the "end of mission" page comes up and tells me I didn't land at Hana.Is this a FSX bug?>You might have a saved mission set as your default Free>Flight.>>Select an aircraft, location, weather and season. Save this,>and check the box at the bottom of the Save Flight screen to>make this your default fight. This new setup will become your>default free flight.>>Gunner

Hi all,I'm new to simming, and I have a FSX problem. I've done a "repair install" but this keeps happening:-start the program-the program opens on the "missions" page (not the home page)-click on "free flight" - the Hawaii Checkout mission is loaded (aircraft, origin and destination, voice-over, mission compass)-laboriously set up aircraft, origin, etc-at end of flight, the "end of mission, press esc"-after I press esc, I get the "no reward" mission end pageDuring the flight, I constantly have to remove the mission compass (which does give the correct distance to Hana!!!)Is there any way to prevent the program from starting up in the Hawaii Checkout mission, or even better, not open on the missions page by default?Thanks,dan "grey lensman"