M_Sauce

Still nice to get a "no it can't be done", to close the loop. It also prevents others from asking the same question. Thanks for the info.

I did about two weeks ago, still nothing though.

Hello Was hoping someone might know a way to assign the throttle engine cutoff function to a joystick button. The F-100 requires clicking on the throttle to move it to the shutoff or start position. I would like to assign this to my joystick (hotas warthog) which has a similar detent on the throttle. But I can't find the command that will achieve this. I use FSUIPC for my joystick assignments. I tried the macro file that came with the F100, but there is no command in there for this function. I tried making a mouse macro with FSUIPC, but it is not recognized (probably an XML designed panel). Anybody know a way to achieve this? Thanks.

Here are some of the Alaska RNP procedures for SE Alaska. http://library.avsim.net/search.php?CatID=fsxmisc&SearchTerm=bonaccorso&Sort=Added&ScanMode=0&Go=Change+View

Not to mention, after a few type courses, you get them mixed up a bit. Throw in good old-age and a little long-haul-pilot desease, and it gets kind of ugly what you can and can't remember. :lol: Usualy dictated by FDAP. Don't want to ding it and get invited up to the carpeted floors to explain.

Guess Im the only one! Support ticket filled out, hopefully we can get to the bottom of this.

There are so many factors involved in such an issue. The Vancouver/Seattle area is very prone to OOMs and CTDs because it is one of the more demanding areas of the sim. You throw in some of the complex add-ons involved and you are really pushing the boundaries of FSX. Are you using Orbx region and airports as well? All of that coupled with the 777 is just too much for FSX unless you turn down some of the big resource hogs (autogen, AI traffic). Variance in AI traffic could explain why it works at some times, but not at others. You could also then look into corrupt or missing AI texture files which could be throwing your computer for a loop. I never bought CYVR from FSDT for this reason, the area is already incredibly demanding as it is.

Well that is a big if! That was the gist of my post, that a soft landing might diable the air ground sensing mometarily, but not for the whole rollout. To me that sounds more like a system failure than a soft landing. No, that was not me. I never said the primary focus is to make a smooth landing. Here is the direct quote of what I said: So unless you are getting me confused with another individual, we are in a "heated agreement". Trading valuable runway while holding the aircraft off is incredibly bad technique and has led to many runway excursions. I've never advocated that as you can see from posts. Actually perfectly understandable, thanks for clearing that up. I am merely stating that what you refer as "seat of your pants", is really a calculated and coordinated response that you don't actually think through. There is no "feeling in your stomach", it is all sensory and from your eyes and ears. Sure, if you experience sink or lift from a downdraft or thermal, you could say you might feel it in your stomach. But there is no magical "feeling" as you come in to land. Otherwise you would be able to land the aircraft blindfolded, which you can't. I know it sounds like semantics on this, but I think if you tought about it you would agree. What you are describing as a "feeling" is really what you see out the cockpit window matching the mental model stored inside your brain. This is why we are prone to runway illusions that match that mental model but deceive us as well. For example - Narrow or wide runways, up-slope or down-slope runways, non-standard runway light spacing. These sort of factors can really mess up a landing because they match your mental model yet they are not what they seem. If you come in to land at a narrower than normal runway you run the risk of flaring late and having a hard landing. This is because the normal visual cues you use to judge flare height will occur closer to the ground due to the runway being narrower. This is obviously more pronounced at night where visual cues decrease. If you were feeling your way to the runway, your brain would not suffer from these factors. I wish we did have such a sense, but unfortunately we don't. We can mitigate the illusions by briefing them and using strategies to deal with them, but that is all we can do.

Sorry, a bit confused by your story. Did you float down the runway in trying to achieve this soft landing? How long was the runway? Please provide more details, your story has a few inconsistencies otherwise. The reason the aircraft thought you were still flying was probably because your power levers where above the threshold limit to trigger an "on ground" condition. You would have to maintain such a power lever angle long enough for it to become a problem, which seems very strange. The problem which you say arose from such a touchdown would be very momentary otherwise. It doesn't matter how smooth a touchdown is, it is a very momentary situation and it is a matter of 1 or 2 seconds where the aircraft might not have the required compression on the struts to sense on ground. This would not be a condition that would continue for the duration of the rollout. I don't understand how you ended up almost in the grass? A smooth touchdown could only be achieved with the nose still in the air, so nose wheel steering would be irrelevant. Besides, you would not be dependent on nose wheel steering during the initial part of a landing, the rudder is your primary method to maintain centerline until your speed decreases its efficiency. Are you sure your incident was not a system failure, or a significant float trying to achieve a smooth landing in which getting the aircraft stopped became and issue? Onboard tires? I thought they where all "onboard". Did you mean "Inboard"? Still makes no sense, why would the Inboard tires fail but the outboard ones not? Blowing tires would mean the ABS failed to prevent lock-up, which would affect the outboard tires the same. Can you elaborate on this please, I am a bit confused. Keep in mind, no-one here is saying that floating past the touchdown zone in order to achieve a smooth landing is good. My point was that a smooth landing is not mutually exclusive from a safe landing. Again, "seat of your pants" does not exists. What you describe as "seat of your pants" is your experience gathered from carrying out such a maneuver many times, and your brain making incredibly fast calculations which you make on the controls almost unconsciously and without thought. As in, you are not really thinking about it. For example, you don't have to "think" about the processes involved in walking. You just do it, without thinking "hey, I'm gonna move my left foot forward, then I'm gonna move my right foot forward". That does not mean walking is simple by any means, it is an incredibly complex process that to this day, scientists have an incredibly difficult time replicating with say, a robot or machine. Which means that looking at the VSI on touchdown, even in the sim, will also result in a terribly bad landing. Give it a try, right before you think you are gonna touchdown, look down and try to fly by looking at your VSI.

I guess we disagree on what is considered "contribution". I guess I will have to call in unfit for my flight tonight and let the company call in a reserve to cover the trip back. I wonder if they will be able to find someone as knowledgable as yourself though, that might be tough. :lol:

Exactly, it is not as though landing within the touchdown zone and making the touchdown smooth are mutually exclusive. The aim is for both. You can sacrifice a little bit of smoothness if needed for ensuring that you touch down in the touchdown zone, but only so much - at some point the safer option becomes going around. Well your instructor was probably trying to instill good habits into you, with the aim of setting a good foundation. He probably realized that smoothness would come later. After all, when you are first learning, your touchdowns are not gonna be that great initially. So yes, at that point, you need to concentrate on the fundamentals being solid. Besides, you are learning in a training aircraft. I've seen landing gear on training aircraft like a C-172/152 take a massive beating - it is designed to. An airliner weighing hundreds of tons is a bit different. You will be lucky if it survives the first couple of bounces before it turns into a FedEx at Narita situation.

You still seem to be focusing on vertical speed, you keep quoting figures as if they mean something. I don't think you understood my post, you should go back and re-read it. I, along with every professional pilot I have ever flown with, aim to make every landing as soft as possible. How it comes out is the result of many factors, they all work and affect each other and it is impossible to say "do it this way - every time" and you will be fine. What works one day, might not the next due to weight, local mechanical turbulence, wake, thermals, and many other things - all of which affect the energy state of your aircraft crossing the threshold. You are certainly not gonna float down half the runway with thrust on, but you never plan "I want to plant this one on". What you can say is there are certain good habits you want to form, like looking towards the end of the runway for alignment and height perception. Or understanding the relationship of your visual cues and how things are supposed to look during the flare (ie, ascertaining bank/pitch from comparing the glare-shield to the end of the runway). Notice these are all visual cues, looking outside. You can not conduct a landing by looking inside, and flying the gauges too low is a good way to ensure driving the gear through the wings. It is a common noob mistake when manually flying a FD-coupled ILS approach. At some point you need to stop looking inside and transition to the other "glass" instruments (i.e., outside) Then you quote this: ... as if it disproves what I said, when it really supports what I said; As i said, the cues or perception (some call it "seat of your pants", but it is really a very educated response from experience) - are all the same. That does not mean the techniques are the same. Swept wing airliners do not land at or almost at their stall speed, as straight wing aircraft do. You need more margin on a swept wing since its handling characteristics / drag effects are completely different around the critical angle of attack. This is why auto-spoilers are employed on most swept wing jets - the wing still has some energy in it when you touch down which you want to dump and prevent from bouncing back into the air. Sorry if my opinion offends you, that was not my intent. But reading so much speculation on a subject from people who don't really know what they are saying seemed a bit silly. I don't know what your profession is, but if I did the same, I'm sure you would find it just as ridiculous and I would fully expect you to speak up. Hopefully we can focus on the thread subject, but if you would like to debate this further I would gladly do it on another thread. :mellow:

Wow, it is funny to hear some of you talking about stuff that you have no idea of. Sorry guys, but so much garbage is being spouted on how to land a wide-body airliner by so many people that have never landed a wide-body airliner. It is the equivalent of someone claiming they can perform emergency surgery because they watched a whole season of ER. First of all, the comparisons of a swept wing heavy airliner with a small straight wing Cessna are hilarious. Swept wings behave completely differently from a straight wing, hence they require completely different landing techniques. The cues you use to judge your alignment and height above ground might be the same, but you are talking completely different animals. So please, don't compare the two. You will never hear such talk from a professional. Wow, really, where do you guys get this stuff? Soft landings are a bad practice? I've never heard such garbage. Every landing you make is with the aim of making it soft. You know, planes break above a certain G-load. Sure, you don't want to "float" by holding off a bad flare trying to turn it into a soft landing, but you also don't want to carrier-land you transport category certified aluminum tube. It does not take much to break them (see multiple MD-11 landings, DC9s breaking in half, EMB-145s breaking in half) so you aim for your landing point, usually the actual aiming point markings, and you accept a little flare distance - just like Boeing and Airbus do in programming their auto land systems. Not to mention your landing performance figures from the manufacturer that include a certain amount of flare time. It is factored, it is expected. And auto-spoilers, along with other various related systems, do not just depend on WoW switches. You also have wheel spin-up sensors from the anti-lock braking systems, as well as throttle lever angle sensors. i think you will find the lack of spoilers on landing is often caused by landing with the thrust not at idle, which can come from poor technique but could also be cause by sudden shear over the threshold. You are not gonna affect your WoW sensors from just landing soft. They will either compress, or not compress. As far as hydroplaning, there are so many factors involved, not just touchdown G. Sure, it is recommended to have a slightly firm landing, but no more than slightly. We are not talking about a landing where the passengers say "ouch", but just not one where they say "are we on the ground yet?". And that is not so much to prevent hydroplaning, but to increase the wheel's time-on-pavement. The sooner the wheels are on, the sooner the systems that slow you down start to work (reverse, spoilers, ABS). Keep in mind the ABS system on most airliners will not let you put brakes on (cycles pressure back to the reservoir) until sensible wheel spin-up, just like the system in your car. Last thing, as far as VS on landing, really - where did this come from? Every airline pilot I know (including myself) could not tell you what the VS is on landing because - none have ever looked at a VSI below 100ft. It is just not part of your scan, and if it is, then you sir have no business sitting in the front seat of an aircraft. Even in a CAT3B landing where the outside is soup, you would still be looking at more important things than the VSI on landing. On a normal manual landing your eyes should not be looking inside at all below 100ft. If you are, you are setting yourself up for a hard landing - guaranteed. It is one of the most common causes of hard landing inspections at my airline. Sorry, had to say that, it is hard to read some of the posts on here and get past all the nonsense. Having said that, I would like to return to the original reason I opened this thread in the first place - I do agree that the flare on this aircraft does not feel right. I can only guess as to why this is, since I have no clue at how hard it must be to design a FBW aircraft like the triple. My guess is that PMDG designed the flight model to be flown for how the majority of airlines fly them - with AT engaged for landing. I don't fly the 777, but that is the policy at my airline as well. This probably means that some compromises where made to achieve that most common technique in the triple-7, and these compromises are accentuated when you do a full manual landing. I'm guessing FBW simulation is probably the hardest aspect to simulate in FS, which is probably why there are no good PMDG-like quality Airbus add-ons out there. As someone already explained, I think this is expected when you push a leisure piece of software that is several years old and clearly not designed to do the things that wizards like PMDG and others are asking it to do. We are talking about a 70 USD platform which is being asked to do what a 22 million dollar Level-D sim does (minus the motion of course). Hopefully, they are able to come up with some tweaking - I think that if it can be done, they would do it. If they don't, then I am sure it is not for lack of trying and I am still massively impressed with the aircraft.

Too bad it won't be on the 777, I really do love the HUD. I guess I'll have to wait for the PMDG 787 then... haha. All airports, even ones with CAT3B, can benefit from HUD use. I believe you can actually fly to lower minima with the HUD, pretty sure Horizon /Alaska Airlines have some of the lowest takeoff/landing minima due to the use of a HUD. You only have to fly with it once to realize why Boeing calls it the biggest advancement in safety. This is why they made it standard on the 78, by removing the decision from accountant-run airlines. As far as putting one on a 747, I'm sure it could use it. The problem is there is no room. Sit in a 747 Cockpit seat and your head will be a few inches from the overhead panel. Because you are sitting so close to the ceiling panel, due to being in the upper deck, there is probably no room to put the hardware (projector) which sits on top of your head in a HGS setup. I think once we see an advancement on the hardware to minimize it or at least mount it remotely, that is when HUDs will really start taking off.

Any body test this yet? Any word from the developers on why this is?