Edmoore

Hi all, Hoping for some real-world expertise here. So I'm departing from an airport that has relatively low altitude restrictions in the SID for some time after departure. VNAV kicks in soon after takeoff and gets me up to 5000' or thereabouts at a fairly steep pitch angle which is to be expected on takeoff. Having leveled off at 5000 and sat there at 250 knots or so for a while, we're at some point going to get clearance for a further climb. I can do this with LVL CHG or I can stick in VNAV, and hit that little "continue climb" button (forget the name now). But seeing as we're still below 10000 and the aircraft knows it needs to stay under 250, this results in a massively steep pitch angle as the engines go to N1 - I've seen 12, 15 degrees of pitch a couple of times. My question is - in real life, is this how it would be done? I only ask because it seems like it would be a quite dramatic "leveled off, then suddenly really steep climb" sensation for the passengers. I guess the faster you get to your assigned altitude the better for ATC and your fuel flow, but I can't remember experiencing this sort of departure as a real life passenger. I could well be misremembering though... Appreciate any thoughts!

Thanks Michael. This link may work / be quicker for some: http://library.avsim.net/sendfile.php?Location=AVSIM&Proto=ftp&DLID=161004

LOL! Yeah the first time I used VNAV for some reason I forget I would have to LOWER the MCP altitude as well as increase it on the climb... resulted in a pretty precipitous descent once I'd realised..

Sanity prevails. Thanks Rónán.

Patrick - exactly! Actually all joking aside, it's genuinely helped me with my landings. The FCTM recommends flaring at 10' which always seemed super low to me, but watching the autoland do it you realise it's just about perfect.

Thanks all.

Fred - it still sometimes happens even when the minimums have been preset. And in all honesty, under what logic would you say it made sense for it to default to 9000 if setting in flight?There's way too much hair-trigger "read the manual" stuff around here at the moment. Tedious.

Yep, me too. Annoying.

I've had weird performance with them in Preview on OS X as well. Possibly just because they're very complex?

Ah yes, I momentarily forgot that when you make a joke on the internet you have to telegraph it with a flashing beacon... Sense of humour failure, Nigel?

Yep that's it. Hasn't come up again since though. Definitely remember not being able to clear the scratchpad.

This not being the first time I've used a forum, I did try that. No results came up (even now only this thread appears). Maybe an issue with the search function?

Try pressing LVL CHG, that seemed to wake up the VNAV in my case.

It's making my hand flown landings look completely rubbish. Frankly I think something ought to be done about this. This aircraft is going to destroy the self esteem of sim pilots everywhere. EDIT: Apparently I need to spell out that *I am using hyperbole to make a point about how good the autoland performance is*. Blimey.

I've had the same problem a couple of times; in my case switching to LVL CHG (even when on the ground) seemed to "wake up" VNAV which was then able to be switched in.