JSDavidson

I rode the jumpseat once on a 747-200 we chartered to the Middle East. Awesome flight crew - a very eclectic mix of a Kiwi First Officer, Icelandic Captain and British Flight Engineer. These guys had seen a few things in their time and dropped off a few interesting loads! Great to see the team dynamics between the three flight crew members for engine start and takeoff.

...but only if they'd just bought it but couldn't play it! :smile:

Hi Robert, Ryan, I am unfortunately affected by this despite the server migrations (I am unable to activate the 737 NGX within FSX). I've just raised a support ticket but wanted to let you know that it is still playing up. In the meantime, any workarounds to enable me to use the product would be much appreciated please!! Thanks, James Davidson

This is the US government RAIM prediction tool - useful for flight planning purposes:http://www.raimprediction.net/I suspect however that FSX will not model satellite reception according to location....James

Alex,You should check the gross weight of the aircraft as well (you might be really heavy, for instance). The optimum altitude to fly at will decrease with weight.The heavier the aircraft, the more lift the wing has to generate, and so the more drag you'll generate.James

John,The Gear Pins are physical pins that that stop the landing gear being accidentally retracted on the ground. If they have not been removed then you won't be able to retract the landing gear once airborne.Stowing the gear pins means making sure they've been pulled out of the landing gear and placed in the cockpit where you can check you've got them all (and they haven't been left in the landing gear!). There is no simulation of this.James

I've got the 5 version - I've never had any of the previous ones so can't compare - but it works beautifully with the J41 cockpit. I have to say that TrackIR does make the whole sim flying infinitely more realistic; I was very surprised.James

For me the hardest thing is remembering to hit 'Alt Sel' when changing altitude. I've become far too used to all those nice systems that do this by default in other aircraft as soon as you change the altitude target. I've lost count the number of times I've found the aircraft happily sailing through an altitude I had dialled in - I'm sure it would scare the hell out of you in real life with hilly terrain beneath you as you're head down reading an approach plate, for example!James

I was curious - I spotted Robert in the Captain's chair, but is it all the Beta testers in the back?James

I can only imagine what was going through the pilot's head after his right wingtip touched the ground!Great that they escaped - and a fantastic video example.James

Certainly in my mind one of the key reasons for keeping turns coordinated is the lower risk.If you stall the aircraft, and the aircraft is not coordinated, the risk of a spin is much higher. When you are in the traffic pattern, making turns before landing, you are going slowly (probably fairly close to the stall speed - 130% of it perhaps) and so do not have too much margin to play with before the aircraft does stall. If you start banking hard in order to correct an overshoot, for example, you're in even more trouble - the stall speed of the aircraft increases with the load factor (Gs you are pulling), and so your margin shrinks even more. You are also low and so have less altitude to recover should you stall the aircraft. A low altitude spin, which would be more likely to occur if your turns are uncoordinated, would I think be pretty undesirable and certainly a reason to hope for that ballistic parachute system!Anyway, that's my boring thoughts on the subject and why uncoordinated turns scare me!James

...and I'd add that you could, in my example above, fly along with a heading of 360 degrees and a ground track of 360 degrees if you really wanted to. You'd be banked slightly into the wind (to the right in this case) and would be applying left rudder to compensate for the turning effect of your right bank. However, it would feel pretty uncomfortable for you and your passengers as they would feel like they are falling out of their seats, and you would have more drag on the aircraft, and so would require more power and more fuel to compensate - clearly not desirable!This however is one of the techniques used in crosswind landings - making sure that both your nose is lined up down the runway centerline and your ground track also goes down the runway centerline.James

Alexander,I thought I'd give you my perspective on rudder usage. These principles should apply to whatever aircraft you fly - beit a Cessna 172 or an A380.Almost all the time you fly (with the exception of a crosswind landing and side/forward slips) you are aiming to be in coordinated flight. Simply put, this means that the forces you feel as a pilot during turns always go straight down through the seat of your pants, so if you were in a left hand turn, and banked to the left, you would not feel like you are falling into the turn (or out of the turn) - the resulting forces are going in a vertical direction in relation to the aircraft. In order to achieve this coordinated turn you must use the rudder of the aircraft, so in a left turn you would be using some left rudder (unless it is a really steep turn). In shallow turns some aircraft will not require the pilot to physically make any rudder input, but nonetheless there is still some process occurring (be it a yaw damper/control rigging/aerodynamic configuration) that achieves the same effect.Most aircraft (and certainly those flying under IFR) will have a turn coordinator (or turn and slip indicator) that allows you to confirm whether your turns are indeed coordinated. The MD11, for example, shows this on the PFD (check out the manual). Pilots are taught to 'step on the ball', so in the MD11, if the bottom part of the turn coordinator is displaced to the right, you would step on the right rudder pedal until it is central again underneath the triangle.In your original post you mentioned wind, and applying rudder to counteract the wind. Ignoring takeoffs and landings, you would never be using the rudder to combat the wind. You would simply be flying the aircraft in a straight line, on a particular heading, and the wind ends up giving you some drift to the left or right, resulting in a ground track different to your heading (where the nose is pointing). It's exactly the same as swimming across a fast moving river - if you have a current coming from your right, then you end up reaching the far bank further to the left than the point you were originally pointed at. You'd soon realise that in order to actually reach the point on the bank where you want to climb out of the river, you'd actually have to aim for a point further to the right.Pilots simply compensate for the wind by calculating what heading they need to fly on in order to achieve the ground track they desire to reach their next waypoint, so with a crosswind from the right (which would cause a drift to the left) you would be flying on a heading that is greater than your desired ground track. As an example, let's say you were flying along at 250 knots (true airspeed). You want to achieve a ground track of 360 degrees in order to reach your next waypoint. The wind is coming from 045 degrees (the northeast) and is blowing at 30 knots. If you think about this, the wind is coming from 45 degrees to your right, so is going to blow you to the left and also slow down your groundspeed. To compensate for this, you'll have to fly on a heading greater than 360 degrees in order that you compensate for this drift. If you plugged the numbers into a flight computer, you'd discover that you actually have to fly on a heading of 005 degrees in order to achieve a track across the ground of 360 degrees. Your groundspeed would be less than your true airspeed, in this case 228 knots.I hope this makes sense!James

I thought folks might be interested in today's issue of Flight International which publishes their World Airliner Census.Here is the BAE Jetstream 41 extract:-Africa 15Airlink 13MEX-Mocambique Express 1Mocambigue Expresso 1Asia/Australasia/Middle East 12Agni Air 2Brindabella Airlines 2Eastern Skyjets 1Royal Star Aviation 1Yeti Airlines 6Europe 26Eastern Airways 22Highland Airways 2Sky Express 2North/South America 19Corporate Flight Management 4EasyFly 9Servicios Aereos Panamericanos 1Venezolana 5The plane also has the feature picture for this particular set of double pages - in this case an Eastern Airways aircraft about to land somewhere rather grey looking.James

A number of simulators for smaller general aviation aircraft use Microsoft ESP, XPlane or their own proprietary system (Elite for example) for generating the visual display. Many simulator manufacturers take the view that visuals are not too important as the simulator (or 'Flight Training Device') will generally be used for instrument training, and so all you would see out the window is a grey sky in any case! Not sure I agree with this, but there is an argument there if you can make significant cost savings by not having to develop an elaborate display system.Higher-end sims have a collimated display, which means that the angles you see out of the window look correct. Let's say you had a fairly simple display consisting of a bunch of wrap-around LCD monitors. You're looking at the far end of the runway whilst flaring to land. If you move your head to the right, it will look like the end of the runway has moved to the left i.e. the angle between your eyes and the end of the runway has changed significantly.If you were in the real aircraft then moving your head to the right will have minimal effect on the view out the window for further away objects - it's like looking out of your car window at a radio mast on the horizon - it hardly moves. The higher end systems, with a collimated display, mirror what you'd get in reality.James

Paul,Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you are flying a DME Arc based upon the LAS Vortac. You're flying an arc around some friends having a BBQ next to the station and thought you'd show off your new paint scheme.It will be a 5 DME arc, and you'll fly between the 190 Radial and the 020 Radial (going round clockwise). Note that the 190 Radial is at 190 degrees FROM the station i.e. the inbound course from that point to the station would be 010 degrees.To program into the FMC, the first waypoint would be entered as: LAS/190/5The final one would be: LAS/020/5There is no way to automatically draw an arc on this FMC, so you would enter a number of intermediate waypoints. How frequently you do these is up to you, and clearly the spacing you choose will depend upon how near you are to the station. Generally I find that about 10 degree intervals work pretty well, but as we're close in here I'll just use 15 degrees.LAS/190/5LAS/205/5LAS/220/5LAS/235/5LAS/250/5LAS/265/5LAS/280/5LAS/295/5LAS/310/5LAS/325/5LAS/340/5LAS/355/5LAS/010/5LAS/020/5This set should define the arc accurately enough for you to fly it (and is probably more than you really need). If you were flying an arc on an instrument approach you are allowed some latitude from the actual arc i.e. the procedure is designed so that you can be a little bit off and not crash into a hill. This distance is 1nm from the desired arc on each side from memory i.e. in this instance you could be anywhere between 4 DME and 6 DME and be OK.Hope this helps.James

This approach has flashing lead-in lights which I guess make the approach safer to conduct at night. There's a note at the bottom of my Jeppesen plate that says to confirm with the tower that these are operational before trying!I once scared myself circling to land at Key West off the NDB approach, at night, and so really enjoy practising these approaches in the safety of my house. I believe that some airlines even prohibit their aircrew from conducting circling approaches as they're so hazardous.James

For anybody fancying a challenging approach in the MD11 then try Moroni in the Comoros (at night, with a gusting wind, requiring a circle-to-land from the ILS approach). In my mind this is a fine lesson for why such approaches are best avoided like the plague, and certainly at night.Here are the charts:-Vicinity:http://www.ais-asecna.org/pdf/atlas/comore...f/moroni-00.pdfPrescribed track for circle-to-land:http://www.ais-asecna.org/pdf/atlas/comore...f/moroni-06.pdfILS Rwy 02:http://www.ais-asecna.org/pdf/atlas/comore...f/moroni-03.pdfIt's always fun trying a different style of approach plate, so hopefully you can make sense of these!James

Jacek,Why don't you try a slip? This will allow you to descend at a higher rate than normal without gaining excessive airspeed.James

Andrei,I thought I'd add a comment about Departure Procedures in the United States.When you file your IFR flight plan you can either include a DP you think might be suitable or just enter the first fix along your proposed route. When you receive your IFR clearance, at busy airports, ATC will either allocate you a DP (amending your filed flight plan) or run with what you proposed originally.You have to be in possession of the DP description before you can legally accept a DP as part of your route (a text description as a minimum). If you definitely do not want to be allocated a DP then you can file the comment 'No DP' in the comments section of the flight plan, in which case ATC will not allocate one for you.My experience (albeit in smaller planes than those modelled by PMDG) is that, even when allocated a DP by ATC, you invariably end up being vectored once in contact with departure control after takeoff. The only time I've actually ended up flying a full DP is leaving Teterboro on the notorious TEB 5 DP - notorious for pilots busting the tight altitude restrictions on the first two fixes and then conflicting with traffic landing at Newark (which tends to excite the controllers). Check out the NASA aviation safety reporting system for a few reports on this (http://akama.arc.nasa.gov/ASRSDBOnline/QueryWizard_Filter.aspx).James