Shmiffy

23,400 - Is that Kg's or Lb's?Let me know what the ZFW is that you were thinking about, and i'll do the same as Phil747Fan and run a couple of FOC Plots for you.CheersPaul

Bugger!Does anyone have an alternate link for this young man to Holger Seilz 747 Tutorial?CheersPaul

Peter:Is the Aircraft giving you any Altitude Alerts after overshooting the Assigned Altitude, and are you set to a Standard QNH, and what weather add-on (if any) do you use.Imperial is beyond me!CheersPaul

Hi Stefan:Usually, in the UK at least, a differing suffix is related to the departure runway. It may also be that some departures are used when certain radio aids (VOR, NDB, etc) are unavailable due to being offline, something we dont have to worry about in the sim. Normally there is a note on the chart detailing any specifics. I don't have the Gatwick Charts to hand at the moment so cannot confirm what the deal is with CLN8M and 8N. As for having questions about flying her, it's what the forums are for, ask away! CheersPaul

Hello noname:First, please sign your real name when using the forums here at PMDG, it makes things a bit more personal.Second, the 747 is a very complicated and extremely realistic aircraft that is great fun to learn and no doubt very different (in terms of the fact that it IS realistic) from the aircraft you are used to. i suggest you download and print the excellent tutorial from Holger Seilz, and also look up Craig Read and Smitty's Guide to the 744. http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=86332Cheers and good luckPaul

Thanks for the clarification Q. Shall check with our man in London ;)CheersPaul

Did you enter the winds aloft in the RTE DATA section of the LEGS Page?The 744 will calculate (very accurately) the fuel on arrival if you can enter the winds aloft. It helps if you have the SID and STAR in.To source the winds aloft data, either plan your flights using Flight Operations Centre with a WX Subscription, or run your flight plan through Active Sky and use the winds it gives you from there.CheersPaul

hehehe. :( Thou shalt not post before coffee first thing in the morning hehehe. Thanks for picking that up! :( CheersP

Q and Delcom:Great to see you on the forums. I had a bit of a sabattical from Avsim after the MD11 release. Too many questions about three engines and not 4 engine ops ;) but since the forum split, things are looking far more approachable.Anyway, i was wondering roughly when the Gear Lever to OFF checklist item was stopped. I'm working with some mid 90's BAW SOP's docs at the VA so would like to ensure that they are reasonably current for the guys at BAV that like to keep it real (a surprising amount of the 744 drivers actually). I shall get Steve Bell (G-CIVX) to check with his mate that flies the 744 for BAW, but would i be correct to assume in the meantime that the update would have applied to the Queen Drivers (ooer) at BAW as well as Qantas?CheersPaul

Hi Peter:Nothing looks too far out of whack with your FMC Setup. If you are an American i can understand why you would be using Lb's as your weight setting, but if you are European it might be easier for you to use Kg's. That's settable in the PMDG Options.200 is a very high cost index, that doesn't appear to make too much of a difference in speed. At BAV we use the same settings as BAW. 0 for the Climb, 90 for the Cruise and end up with about .84 as a standard cruise. For trips from the west coast US to UK we sometimes use 0 as a CI in the cruise as well. Also you could set your Step Climbs to 2000 when in RVSM Airspace rather than ICAO (which is 4000 If I recall Correctly).Fuel on arrival of 178.2 seems high. Real world, i beleive BAW are happy with about 10Tonnes (36000 Lb's ??) on arrival at LHR with Gatwick as an Alternate. That would help slow down your landing speeds a lot. I usually arrive with about 10-15000 Kg on board and see landing speeds with Flaps 25 of about 140 ish Knots.Specifics relating to your problem though, i can see nothing obvious. Everything appears to be set correctly, so provided your MCP and Autoflight Functions are setup correctly, theres no real reason to see the problems you are seeing.CheersPaulOh- One last thing, rather than setting the altimeters to standard pressure by turning the Altimeter Set knob, you can just press in the STD button. In Europe we use Milibars rather than Hpa too ;)Edit: Another item CRZ on the upper Eicas is merely the current Thrust Mode, Although that said, it does indeed activate in the cruise. For BAW in the real world, they default to CLB thrust in Cruise, and you may occasionally want to switch to CON thrust with particularly strong tail winds.

hehehe. I wish, i should have been clearer, i've been flying the PMDG 744 for years. I would love to have been flying the real ones.As for the real 744. I believe more than one 744 Captain has described her as a big Cessna. Very docile....CheersPaul

Off on a tangent a little but you could also do it by pressing the ABM POINTS Prompt (bottom right of LEGS) prior to hitting the EXECUTE button when creating a Direct To clearance in the LEGS Page.That will give you all of the ABM Points for the waypoints prior to the DIRECT intersection.CheersPaul

No Slight against you Stefan, but why is everyone so adamant that a re-install of the Sim, or worse, the OS, is the answer to all of their problems?I've just made the jump to Win7 64 Bit from XPSP3 32Bit, and opted to do a full clean install rather than an upgrade to ensure that everything was as i wanted it to be, I dont plan on doing another re-install for a few years. I just couldnt face it. It's taken four days to get FS9 and X installed back to a state that i am happy with, and i still have about 1 weeks worth of texture tweaking and scenery fixing to do. The Scenery Layer issue is a minor problem and a really easy fix. I could have talked you through it on skype or MSN in minutes....I mean no offence to you Stefan, but i see 're-install' pop up as the solution to every problem way too often. It should be the absolute last resort.For future reference though look for a bit of software called SCM2004. Point it to the FS9 exe in your FSX folder, and use the button 'renumber' and then 'save changes' Problem solved.Paul

Hi There:I've been flying the 744 for years, and yes i do see this a lot. The PMDG 744 is a little sensitive to temperature and wind shifts (moreso than the real one) and so it does occasionally have issues. The best thing to do is jump into FLChg or V/S Mode and help the Aircraft intercept the path. Once that's done, you can re-enable VNav. I know a couple of real world 777 pilots that do a similar thing on the T7 more to make sure the Pax are comfortable than any deficiency of the aircraft. Basically they start the descent early, and use V/S to intercept the path giving a shallower angle of descent (initially) and reducing rapid pressure changes.The trick is to use the tools available to you. You are the PIC. You have HDG, SPD, THR, VNAV, LNAV, VS, FLCHG - All of those are tools that will acheive similar outcomes, and when used properly, the aircraft is a beauty to fly. There are things that she does a little incorrectly, but on the whole, sometimes the real ones screw up some times...CheersPaul

Hi Peter:Reading your post i think i know what you are trying to achieve, but i may be wrong so please correct me if i am heading off on a tangent.My understanding is that in your PERF page you have set a Cruise Altitude, (lets assume FL310) and after departure you want the MCP to constrain that climb to FL120 or some such height?To achieve this there are two methods. I will walk you through the method i would use, which is loosly based on the real world BAW SOP's.Having set the route up and the FMC up correctly (you seem to know what you are doing with that so i wont teach you to suck eggs) you can ARM LNAV, VNAV, and AutoThrottle prior to push, you may get an UNABLE NEXT ALTITUDE annunciate on the FMC, it's basically the aircraft deciding that you are facing the wrong way and not moving fast enough to climb 4000 feet in the next 30 miles. Ignore it.Once you have completed your checks, pushed, taxied, and so on. You can line up, increase power and set TOGA so that you see THR REF annunciate in the PFD. Above 400' AGL, you can engage the AP, and LNAV & VNAV Shall annunciate their roll mode. At this stage, the aircraft will climb based on the calculated VNav Path. If you have any hard or soft restrictions on your legs pages ( /2000A or /2000B or /2000 or /1000A3000B for example) the aircraft will adhere to those where it can. Likewise, with an altitude restriction on the MCP, it should respect that, and climb no higher than the restriction in the MCP ALT Window.When you want to climb higher, or are cleared higher, you can push in the MCP Altitude Adjust Knob, and the Aircraft will continue its climb to the new level set.If it is not performing as expected when carrying out the above, then you have an installation or PC Problem i would suspect.CheersPaulEdit: If the aircraft does appear to want to continue climbing past the limiting altitude that you have set in the MCP, double check that you are not in V/S Mode, and just hit the VNav button again. You should see VNav Path or VNav Alt annunciate on the PFD.

Hi Nathan.I should have been clearer. I am aware of the workaround to override them in the Thrus Lim page, i was curious as to wether it could be hard coded into the FMC's Operating System.CheersPaul

In this instance though PMDG stands for Pointless, with Mostly Default Gauges. :(

Bump :( Really, genuinely, quite curious. Sorry to bumpCheersPaul

hehehe. If you want something done properly.... :( Thanks for the update RyanRegardsPaul

Glad it's not just me then ;)CheersPaul

Hello Craig:In the words of Mike Ray, author of the real world 744 Simulator Check Ride Guide, Continuing from there.... Please note that the Bold, Caps, and Underlinings are all as per the book. I haven't added anything ;)As you can see, the 744 is very realistic in that respect ;)CheersPaul

Hello Guys:Is there an issue with Forum Permissions?I tried replying to Dan Downs thread to thank him for his latest SID/STAR Package, and when hitting the reply button the Forum tells me i do not have permission, likewise to create a new topic in the general forum, same issue. Cheers;Paul

Hi Guys:I suspect the answer will be no, but if you don't ask you don't get, so i have a question for the PMDG 744 team;Currently, the Climb Derate washout in the Boeing 747 from PMDG is approx 15,000 ft. The BAW -436's (which i fly for BAV) have their climb washout at FL250 (in the real-world). Is it possible to change that at home through a CFG file, or is that the sort of thing that's deeply embedded in a .air file somewhere and beyond the capabilities of the average user?Likewise, when in cruise, the BAW 747-436's are defaulted to CLB Thrust Mode, rather than CRZ as the PMDG currently goes to, again, is it possible to change this?As i mentioned, i suspect that the information is deeply hidden, and rightly so, but it would be nice to be able to change this if it is possible. Many thanks in advancePaul Smith

I think the way you do it is that you will need to assign a keyboard combination in the PMDG Keyboard Commands, and then assign the Saitek Button Push to the same keyboard command you have assigned in the PMDG Key Com options. Hope it helpsCheersPaul

Ryan & Vangelis:Many thanks for your response. Is there any chance that that info could be stickied? I have not yet tried it but shall give it a go on my next PMDG Outing, and if if it does work, then I am sure it is something that might require revisiting from time to time by many of us. Kudos also to Vangelis for offering his assistance to HiFi. Hopefully he will find the time soon.CheersPaul