Randh

Ah, whoops. Sorry about that, my bad. I misread the name of this forum. Nevermind.

I've had the Wilco Airbus for a few years now, and something has bothered me about its TCAS system, but I'm not sure if it reflects the real thing or not. If I'm correct, if the pilots and ATC are following the correct procedures with adequate traffic advisories, the audible "TRAFFIC! TRAFFIC!" alerts should really never happen in flight. They should be for threats that require immediate attention, which should never even happen anyway because you should have already done whatever needed to be done well ahead of time. On the Wilco Airbus, I'm often getting these audible alerts when both me and the other aircraft are in level flight, with a vertical separation of, say, 5K feet, but with a lateral separation of under 5 miles. I feel as though these alerts are unnecessary and would only serve to be like the boy who cried wolf in the sense that a pilot would just become accustomed to the sound. Is this normal? When I'm in especially congested areas on approach in, say, the NYC area, I'm often getting alerts for aircraft at 8,000 feet when I'm at 4,000 feet, and not at all in a collision course.

Thanks for your replies. Sorry for the delay. I usually just do things the lazy way and have the CDU "calculate" the zero-fuel weight by clicking the button twice. When I was testing things out to see what I might have done wrong, I didn't even program anything into the CDU, but the speed tape still showed the red bar at around 120 knots. In retrospect, you're right that 120 knots is a very slow speed for any airliner. Even regional jets with full flaps aren't at 120 knots. At the time I figured the 747 had such different flight dynamics compared to any other airliner a 120 knot approach might have been feasible. I should also note that in the PMDG 747, I've never seen the yellow bar at the minimum section of the speed tape. It's always been there for the max speed, but never the minimum. I'm not sure if that's due to my having an old version of the PMDG or my doing something wrong in the CDU.

Hi, all, First off, I'm a huge fan of the PMDG 747. I really wish all payware addons are this well made, and having also bought the 737 with equal satisfaction, I know PMDG is a fantastic company who puts a lot of thought and effort into making a quality product. On two separate occasions, I found myself stalling into terrain on approach to my destination. The first time was enroute to JFK. I was doing the Belmont Visual and it happened when I was on the final left turn before 22L. When that happened, I figured I must have been at a speed that was safe for level flight, but got into a dangerous angle of attack when banking left, and slapped myself on the wrist for such a terrible and "deadly" mistake. That was a year ago, and just now, I stalled upon approach again. This time, however, was a little different. I was enroute to LAX and found myself having to maintain separation with a landing aircraft ahead. So, with flaps on 25, I slowed to about 120 IAS. According to the tape, this was about 10 knots above the minimum. Once I reached about 123 knots or so, I stalled and entered an uncontrollable dive into terrain. On this approach, my wings were level, I was at a normal pitch for approach, and winds were calm. I figure I must've had too much trust in the speed tape, and should have maintained a greater margin above the red bar. That said, is there something else that might have happened? Perhaps I had entered an incorrect gross weight into the CDU or there was something that wasn't calibrated correctly which made the aircraft provide inaccurate information? Or was my mistake just that I should have given myself a little more margin? I would think that when it comes to instruments, it would try to "overestimate" such that it would have a red bar 10 knots ABOVE the absolute minimum. I was able to reproduce the same scenario a few times in a controlled test, and each time it seemed to be the same: The tape said my minimum speed was 110 knots, but once I reached just above 120 knots, it entered a stall and uncontrolled dive. The angle of attack didn't seem to make much difference, whether my pitch was level, up, or down, the same thing seemed to happen. I'll appreciate any advice. Thanks! Randall Huck

Hmm... well, I did do a quick scan, which prompted a reboot (although all it found were some questionable cookies which I highly doubt would cause a DLL to get corrupted) and after rebooting the PMDG started working again... so perhaps there was some weirdness going on with whatever validates DLLs that was fixed by resetting everything. In any case, thanks for the help. At least I can run my 747 again.

Sorry, it looks like I can't edit the OP with my name, but it is Randall Huck (I could have registered it with my nickname, Rand Huck though). KingOfLienster, I haven't ever run FSX with admin privileges and I've been using the same user since I got this computer. Nevertheless, I tried running as admin, but I got the same problem. One thing that might have also changed things is I believe my computer performed updates on Windows 7 in the last week. I suppose it's possible one of those updates changed the way DLLs load?

Hi, all, I have been flying the PMDG 747-400 for quite a while, and the last time I had flown it fine was just 2-3 days ago. When I chose the PMDG 747 to fly today, I got the following error: ================================================================================ Windows has found a problem with this file: PMDG_747400_Main.DLL Publisher: Unknown Publisher This file was blocked because it does not have a valid digital signature that verifies its publisher. ================================================================================ The only addons I have installed recently was KEWR scenery from Drzewiecki Design and the E190 engines from Turbine Sound Solutions. The file itself doesn't show a recent modified date. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm a bit perplexed at how something that worked just two days ago suddenly got this error. Thanks in advance to anyone who figures this one out. -Rand Huck

Hi, all, I have been flying the PMDG 747-400 for quite a while, and the last time I had flown it fine was just 2-3 days ago. When I chose the PMDG 747 to fly today, I got the following error: ================================================================================ Windows has found a problem with this file: PMDG_747400_Main.DLL Publisher: Unknown Publisher This file was blocked because it does not have a valid digital signature that verifies its publisher. ================================================================================ The only addons I have installed recently was KEWR scenery from Drzewiecki Design and the E190 engines from Turbine Sound Solutions. The file itself doesn't show a recent modified date. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm a bit perplexed at how something that worked just two days ago suddenly got this error. Thanks in advance to anyone who figures this one out.

I had very similar problem during my approach to Washington-National into RW1. Just before base leg, the jet banked to the left, and my speed increased rapidly (with engines idle) to 280 IAS. Strangely enough even on final, I felt like I had tail winds of about 40kts, which made my landing quite challenging. It should be noted that RW1 was, in fact, the active runway which makes this whole thing a bit confusing.Before installing AS2012 I had some issues with extremely rough headwinds on approach that almost looked like the exact opposite of what I observed here. I've never had a this exact "tailwind" behavior before I installed AS2012. I did, however, also install the new FSUIPC version (in an attempt to fix the crazy headwinds) so I can't be positive that it's actually AS2012's problem yet.

So, I take it this will fix the problems I've been having where I'm on approach and I'm getting headwinds of 116kts effectively making my airplane hover in midair? ;)

I think I found the problem. It turned out to be TrafficX after all. When I looked in the TrafficX directory, I saw a number of airports had two versions: an AFX_[id] version and an AF2 version. After doing some googling I saw that, in fact, the AF2 versions should only be used with FS9. I'm not sure what they were doing there, but after I removed them, all the airports which previously looked odd are now fixed.Now, I think what RC might have been confused about was, while the correct version of KPHL was being displayed, RC must have had the old AF2 version in its database, which as you said could be off by even a few hundred feet. I haven't tested KPHL in RC yet, but I think I won't have this issue repeated again.Thanks for the help!

Nope. When I look at KPHL and KCLT using AFX, I see two airports, the "Modified" version and the "Stock" version which I assume is the original. When I look at the modified version, it looks very much like the ones I'm seeing in FSX right now, while the stock version looks more "accurate" in terms of gate locations and such. I know for a fact KCLT looked much better, just after I installed TrafficX, so there must have been some other addon which overwrote TrafficX's... I don't have any Charlotte-specific scenery packs and the only global scenery enhancements I have are UTX and GEX, and while I can't know for sure, I can't imagine they would overwrite existing airports. Is there any surefire way to know who created what airport file? Yeah, I noticed. ;) I have 8Gb of RAM, which I'm sure FSX doesn't even use being 32-bit. I'm not sure how low computer performance would actually overwrite a scenery file in such a bizarre way, anyways. 'Yes, and it has worked pretty well. As mentioned just now, though, I don't think it's actually TrafficX that's the culprit. I think something is overwriting some of TrafficX's airports, and I just don't have a clue what that could be. Yeah, I use flightaware quite religiously to see what kinds of STARs and DPs the airlines use. Especially for the busy northeastern airspace.In any case, I think what I'm seeing here is probably not actually related to RC, but like you said is something else. It's a very odd problem because besides the issues I'm reporting, the airport itself works fine with AI. The AI know where the runways are, there are takeoffs and landings, but it seems FSX is telling RC I'm on top of the runway regardless. Very odd... but your brainstorming at least steered me towards where the problem lies.Thanks again.

Thanks for your replies. I confirmed that I was using "Jet" as my aircraft definition. As for the afd, I'm using a sort of "modified" version of the default airport created by Traffic X by Just Flight. As far as I know, TrafficX only adds information mapping each carrier to its assigned gate such that, in the case of KPHL, US Airways have their dedicated terminals (C-F, I believe) while the rest of the carriers have gates in the others. Now, I've had some very odd issues in the past where for some unexplainable reason all of the airports start out OK, but after a certain period of time some airports randomly change. This actually happened to me recently for Charlotte-Douglas, where the entire ramp/apron configuration changes, jetways are missing from the entire airport, and airplanes aren't even parking at the terminal gates, much less at the right terminal gates. I fixed this about a year ago by reinstalling Traffic X, but it very recently started on me again. I really have no idea what's going on, as I haven't installed any addons in many months. Although TrafficX is commercial and proprietary, I doubt they'd come after me if I gave you that one airport scenery file for debugging purposes. Let me know if you agree and if so, the best way to send it to you. Yeah, the runway is 5,000 feet, so it's capable of handling at least regional jets. I was flying a 737 with minimal fuel (a hop to Hartford) so I guess it could theoretically take off from 26. I'm not sure how much FSX takes into consideration my aircraft's actual net weight when determining which runway is best for me, though. Yep, that's what I figured, looking at the maps.Thanks.

Hey, guys,I was doing a routine flight from Philly to Bradley, and as soon as I got taxi instructions to RW 26, I was asked to monitor tower. This confused me, as I hadn't even started leaving the ramp yet, and I was actually a little miffed because I wanted to request a longer runway, which you can only do while you're with ground. As soon as I contacted tower, I yelled at for being on the runway. I was clearly still on the apron.However, I was definitely on the line of path of 26. If you look at a map, you'll see that 26 is actually directly to the east of the terminals. I'm not sure how much real-life use this very short runway gets, as it's not very easily accessible from the ramp, it's short, and it doesn't look safe being aligned in such a way that it's lined up towards the terminal and control tower. It almost looks like it's supposed to be a GA runway or a runway at least for very small turboprops.In any case, my questions are as follows:1.) The other active runways were 27R and 27L, so I guess it makes sense that FSX considers 26 to be a valid active runway as well, since it's parallel. What I don't understand is the runway threshold was the farthest from my position compared to the other valid thresholds (27R/L), and by far more suitable. I haven't had this problem before at other airports with similar configurations where there's one very long runway paralleled by a much shorter runway.2.) While I was in a position where I was lined up to the runway, I was about 3000 feet from the runway's end. Does RC only take in consideration how my airplane is positioned in relation to the alignment of the runway instead of the bounds of the runway?My mkrunways.exe is all up to date, I've flown out of Philly before and haven't had this problem; every time I had to take off towards the west, it always assigned me either 27R or 27L and never gave me any grief over my ground movements.Has anyone had this problem before in KPHL and other similar airports?Thanks

Add one more for the team.I have a very interesting background to this whole thing, though...I've had my computer for about 2.5 years now with little more than adding memory for upgrades. It's got a nVidia GTX 280, Intel Q6700, Vista 64, and 8Gb RAM. FSX had been running reasonably well for me up until recently. I had the occasional BSOD (attributed to overheating issues due to a dusty intake which I had fixed), and on occasion a hiccup here and there.Now, a few weeks ago, while I thought I was updating my Vista this whole time, I discovered that somehow, despite me updating Vista regularly (by shutting down a few times a month with the big "update" icon in the start menu) I learned that there were tons of updates that hadn't been installed yet, some years old. I spent a whole day updating Vista to the latest and greatest, full knowing I was taking a risk by updating straight from an old version to a new version. I really have no idea how so many critical updates went AWOL, but shortly after that I noticed the freezing. The freezing seem to be all similar to everybody else's: random, but at high altitudes, some flights are fine, others freeze, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with CPU load or graphic settings.So, what really irks me is I'm pretty sure something in this OS update made things go awry, but obviously I can't narrow it down to any one of the dozens of updates I made. There were driver updates, security updates, performance updates, the whole nine yards. Any one, or any combination of those updates could have been to blame for the freezing issues I'm having now.I should also note that I had recently installed backup software. However, I had this software shut down and it still froze.Now, about the sound theory... that might have some merit, because another thing I did recently was enable cockpit sounds when previously cockpit sounds were turned off (once I turned them on I realized why I had turned them off long ago in the first place: for some reason using Traffic X I hear the light switch sounds in all the aircraft surrounding me and it was driving me nuts. I'll see if despite all the OS updates I made recently that turns out to be the culprit.It kind of stinks figuring it out because it's so random and happens so intermittently (probably once a week for me, which is likely far more frequent than the every 50-60 hours you guys are reporting. For me it's probably more like every 10 hours or so) and it especially annoys me that this just started happening after years of it working mostly fine.I'll keep you updated.