Jump to content

BenW

Frozen-Inactivity
  • Content Count

    119
  • Donations

    $0.00 
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by BenW

  1. Apologies for bringing back an old thread but after a long period of not using it, I've pressed PFE back into use and sadly a lot of the problems I reported last time are still present. I decided that an easy way to put altitude restraints in was to look at the vroute flight profile and see what levels it suggested for the various waypoints along the way. I did this and we got easily underway. The taxy instructions were a bit off as I needed to tune to tower myself to ask for departure as I wasn't automatically handed off. The biggest issue then for me is hoteys as I only run a single monitor set up and selection of different commands seems to have a mind of its own. An EGAA-EGGD flight had a TOC of FL280 and as I was held a little lower than I expected upon departure, I decided to ask PFE for a lower cleared altitude whilst still climbing to 280. It seems this confuses things as my PIC then asked for a higher altitude due to weather! I tried a couple of time to request a lower alt but everytime I was cleared higher and ended up cleared to FL440 for a flight with only 90MN left to run!PFE did nag me about climbing higher but I started a descent anyway and eventually even though the alt was screwed up I was handed off to approach when near the destination and cleared to a pilot's discretion approach and told to contact tower when established on the ILS. Despite getting established my PIC didn't contact the tower, so I have no idea what happened there.To be honest, I quite enjoy flying with charts these days and I find with PFE I spend the whole time concentrating on what it's doing and not thinking about the flying so in future I might just run it for ATIS, clearance, taxy out and the handy ACARS en route but do my own thing in terms of SIDs, STARs and en route FL as trying to achieve the desired results in PFE is just too damn hard!
  2. Well guys I've got it home and it's not quite a stellar performer. 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia Quattro 128MB and a mighty 2 GB of RAM. With the default 777 at EHAM, I get - wait for it - 7fps!Here are some pics of the inside of it. It's not a SFF and certainly from my novice eyes the GPU is easily replaceable - the motherboard I'm not so sure. Still wondering if it's viable to junk the mobo, GPU and CPU, slot in a bigger HDD and probably a new power supply, as this one is only rated up to 110W. Any thoughts, gents?
  3. Gents - I'm keen to get FS9 off my iMac (the wife is always moaning at me because she needs to get on it) and to be honest although the screen itself is lovely the performance of FS9 is not particularly great (2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 256k ATI Radeon) and it gets crazily hot in the corner where the GPU, much more than it ever does booted into OSX.Thankfully my workplace are replacing a load of XP hardware for Win 7 stuff so I've just become the proud owner of a couple of HP Pavillion Workstations, three HP LCD monitors and the peripherals. My plan is to use one of them to run ASE, Radar Contact, FSNav, Topcat, etc and gut the other to bring it up to spec to run FS9 nice and smoothly. I ideally only want to spend a few hundred pounds on this (c. 300-400 dollars if you're a dollars man) as ultimately I'd like to build a Core i7 super-rig that will chew FSX a new backside so this is a 'transitional' solution. I think the OEM spec is a 1.8 GHz Pentium, 128k graphics and 4GB of RAM so clearly apart from the RAM (and I don't know what spec that is either) then it's a pretty low end unit and will need some new hardware. I'll know the exact spec when I get it tomorrow but what would you say would be a good GPU/CPU/mobo combination for FS9 that should slot in to a HP chassis without too much hassle? I know that it might be easier just to junk the whole thing and build something from scratch but without spelling it out, it's easier to install the new hardware in the HP case so that not too many questions are asked, if you know what I mean by the lady of house... Thanks in advance guys.
  4. What's the story with women and leaving lights on? Is it just the one I'm married to?

  5. A wonderfully frank listener reply on the RR facebook page, when asked what they thought of Christine Bleakley vs. Holly Willoughby on Dancing on Ice.....''It's not about the presenters it's about the dancers/skaters bleakly can read an autocue just as well as holly but she has smaller **.''

  6. I know this is an old thread guys but I've just got into the MD-11 and after flying almost exclusively the iFly 737 for a long time, it's a nice change. I didn't bother with it at the time it came out because I wasn't interested in learning a whole new set of systems and was very happy with the 747, LDS 767 and PMDG 737NG. I'm glad I gave it a go now.I really didn't know just how much automation is in the MD11 compared to, say, the 737 and it's actually a bit more like an Airbus to fly. For example, when starting the engines the packs automatically shut off and come back on line when you've done, there is a massively more comprehensive crew alerting system than in a 737 and the auto flight system is way more advanced. Plus for me the biggest surprise was how the MD manages speed control for you all the way down the descent to final, something you'd not trust VNAV in a 737 to do for you. The flight model is really good and it's surprisingly easy to hand fly, even given the fairly high Vref speeds on final. I fly it in Fedex colours and the other pleasant change is seeing the cargo areas of airports I've never really bothered with until now. If you've not given this bird some space in your FS9 hangar, you should give it a go.
  7. The Tourette's society accept David ###### ###### Cameron's apology and say he'd better not ###### bollocks ###### do it again.

  8. Ta for the reply Coltrane. I am reasonably up on what each product does, but more specifically I was after knowing a little more about how they interact with one another. I'll ditch FE in that case and stick with REX, Active Sky v6.5 (I'm old school) and GE for now. I also have UT Europe. Anyone know how I stop Active Sky overwriting the REX textures?
  9. Gents,I've recently installed Rex for FS9 and am very pleased with it. I am however a little confused as to what is doing what for my sim as many of these programs have overlapping functions. At the moment first off I'm calling up an airport in the weather section of Rex and it is installing textures based on that weather. Then I fire up Active Sky and then ask Ground Environment to install ground textures based on the weather it is given by Active Sky. Is this right?What about poor old Flight Enviroment? Shall I just uninstall or does it do anything that Rex, GE and Active Sky doesn't?Cheers guys.
  10. My parents got an iPhone for Xmas so my brother and I could both talk to them on FaceTime. Sadly they never seem to have the phone anywhere nearby so I have to ring the house phone to tell them to find the iPhone to answer the FaceTime call. Dear departed Steve Jobs, I'm doing my best here. It's not easy.

  11. At a wedding where the DJ is a MacBook plugged into some big speakers. Even wedding DJs are being automated out of a job!

  12. Jedward are the biggest bell ends ever. Just sayin'

  13. Once again, chocolate orange for breakfast. Only on Christmas Day!

  14. Bedtime for those of us playing records whilst everyone else is seeing why Santa brought and eating chocolate oranges for breakfast. Nighty night and Merry Christmas all!

  15. iTunes Match would be great if it didn't make my iMac crash all the time. #likehavingwindowsagain

  16. I really should go to sleep rather than farting around watching iTunes match try to make sense of Deuce 'Call It Love'. It's not in the store, move on.

  17. 'Get some sleep Pam. You look tired.' Bourne on ITV1 HD, worth a late night!

  18. Saab has gone bankrupt. Architects and graphic designers the world over cry into their black polo necks...

  19. Is Kim Jong ill? Sorry...

  20. It all looks like too much work to me, kudos to the OP for giving it a go. I'm more of a vroute->export to FMC->execute and hit LNAV kind of guy. I did try a couple of flights in the DF 727 but the combination of no autothrottle, crappy autopilot and VOR to VOR navigation defeated me... :(
  21. Seems I'm not alone in being a short-haul simmer! Keep them coming guys, some great suggestions.
  22. Sibbers makes the Telegraph live X Factor coverage: '20.50 That guy who pants himself pink and wanders round the streets exhorting people to vote for Amelia Lily - they really don't feel the cold up there, do they?'

  23. Yes but I find it much more immersive to do a whole flight myself. With a 200nm sector by the time you reach TOC there's just time to sort out the arrival, get the FMC set up and have a look through the charts and then you're into the descent. I do have a short attention span though!
  24. Okay so I don't have time to sit in front of the screen in the cruise for hours these days, so I tend to only do flights of around 200nm in length, which mean sectors of around an hour in total block to block.I'm looking to try some new routes, but the stipulations are:- AES at the departure end at least (I find it adds so much immersion to the sim)- Decent sceneries at both ends- Big enough for the iFly 737Here are some that I regularly do:EGAA - EGPHEGAA - EGNTEGAA - EGPFEGNT - EGLLEGCC - EGLLEGLL - EHAMEGLL - EGNVEICK - EGGDEIDW - EGGPEGAA - EIDWELLX - LSZHLSZH - LSGGOMDB - OOMSLFPG - EGKKEGKK - EGJJAny more suggestions guys?
×
×
  • Create New...