Loren Larsa

FSPassengers and the fuel may be your problem, unless you turn off FSPassengers' loading of your aircraft, it will mess around with the fuel transfer and tank choices that PMDG does. So what is happening is most likely that FSPassengers have put fuel somewhere and denies PMDG to transfer it to the engines, and thus they fail. But from your last post I guess you have disabled FSPassenger's control over the fuel?

They plucked it from the store? Awww, that really sucks. The MD-11 is probably the best aircraft to fly so far out of all the ones I have tried, I always keep coming back and it feels like home.

Yes you can get the MD11 down and up from 6000 feet of runway, only thing is, your flaps and weight will be key factors. For the fun of it, I did plant the MD-11 on a 3000 feet runway with pretty much minimum fuel load and just a container in the front to have a workable CG. But to do that, it was flap 50, insane floating tendencies, even with the engines at idle and planting the wheels at the beginning of the runway rather than the touchdown zone. Getting out of there is another story though and kinda forces you to improvize with landing flaps for takeoff and very minimalistic fuel load, so it can be done.

Perhaps, but the pilots in the front aren't there anymore to do the mundane tasks of getting it off the ground and back down again. Thats not the core of what they are trained for, they earn their big bucks when things start to go wrong, like the BA 777 that didn't get power on final because of a blocked fuel oil heat exchanger, at which time improvization becomes the name of the game and doing what you can with what you got. A computer fares pretty poorly in the unknown. it can't do or attempt to do anything it hasn't done before (Programmed) and our "learning computers" are about as intelligent as a single bee / fly today, so it is quite a while to go.

Judging from your temps you had the wrong fuel in the tanks, Jet A freezes like crazy, A1 is better and there is a 3rd fuel you can put on which is the fuel for the cold climates, I cannot recall its name but if you expect to fly in temps like that, you put that on the tanks. As for the BA38 crash, their fuel oil heat exchanger got clogged by ice crystals that didn't melt, these were already in the fuel line, but a sudden demand for power broke them loose from the walls of the fuel line and the faulty design of the fuel oil heat exchanger got it clogged, as such the engines were stuck at close to idle thrust.

True, the IB chip runs hotter and thats why it won't go as far as Sandy Bridge, but to jump from an i5 2500k to the latest IB would be madness anyway, or a waste of money in other terms as what you gain doesn't justify the cost of getting it. The reason why IB runs hotter isn't in the chip design, but another cheepo move by Intel, the heatspreader or the cover on the CPU isn't soldered on like the older chips and Sandy Bridge is, it is actually stuck on there with glue around the edges and some thermal paste in the middle. This means that the heat have to travel through another layer with loss, and it doesn't transfer nearly as fast as it does on a Sandy Bridge, and this is why the temps are higher and also why you will hit a wall earlier. The good news of this is that if you are techy enough, you can easily strip off the heatspreader entiely and run the cooler directly in touch with the core. The dangers is loss of warranty and if you don't manage the cooler pressure you put on it, you can crush the CPU core, much like you could on the old socket A AMD chips back in the day.

That stuttering issue is traced to PMDG's copy protection causing issues when saving, the workaround is excluding the FSX folder from the real time protection list and that will fix the issue.

Well if you do not want to shell out, flightsim.com have an autosave program that is free in their utilities section, does the same as the FSUIPC one as both just call the save dialog so they save the same way that you normally do, just all automatic without you noticing anything. It will clutter the folder for panelstates however, as it only cleans up its own saves so you will have to go periodically and manually clean out the PMDG panelstate folder yourself.

Sped up, since I am often on the clock, and then I don't mean in the time I can spend in the sim, I mean in the time I have to get the cargo to its destination in real time. Whicch is also why I try to shorten turnaround on the ground to bare essentials.

Well when hauling cargo, I have done a lot of short hauls in the MD-11, where I get a few minutes at flight level 300 before I have to do the descent and get ready for landing. On a real note, the Japanese are thinking of going high density seating on the 777, and replacing their 747-400Ds with them.

PMDG will also install a CAT on the 777.

Well yes... I have been in Microsoft fog coming into Denver, looked all clear and I could make out the runway in the distance, 3 seconds later I was in a thick soup of fog that didn't dissipate before 150 feet above the runway... If it is really bad, thats when you really pull the autoland out of the bag.

Have you bought the Flight 1 ATR then? That one has a flushing toilet, and I am not kidding.

As the biggest oddball of the group, the 777 will be treated the exact same way I tested the MD-11, 747 and various other aircraft in my hangar, I take off from ENGM on a northbound route, do a banked turn around a hill and then back to land at the 19R. This is a common testing procedure and will most likely be carried out with the default PMDG livery. Next route is ENGM to ENVA, most likely also done in the default livery of PMDG, now if I am impressed with its freight capacity and performance, I will look into repainting aircraft in my own "Falcon Lines" livery, recently the MD-11 was repainted, and the 747-400 PAX and Cargo are already completed and are serving nicely for moving freight.

If you are out to simulate RL routes I guess the 737 is more your cup of tea as you will have a huge selection of routes. But, if you fly where you want or run your own airline, the MD-11 can compete in the amount of destinations you can fly to, but the other factor that will factor in is if you like automation. If you like the plane to handle most of it on its own without nagging at you to do X even if it knows the information from Y, the MD-11 is your choice, think of it as a hybrid between a Boeing and an Airbus. The NGX on the other hand is very manual, so you can expect to do most tasks manually, so it depends on what you prefer.

True, but the GEs are not on the top thrust rating for some of the lower grade 777s, there it seems to be a PW engine that inches ahead.

Not any real preference, except I have been in the PW camp with the 744 and MD-11, and I guess with the 777 it might be a GE and PW show for me. In short, I go for the engine with the most thrust, hate being short on power

I do not have REX or AS2012 or even tried them out, but I am guessing that you can pick a lighting theme in the settings for these addons as they may have tweaked a few things. Setting that to default may cure your issue.

Well in truth I haven't set it to go over the 250 restriction below 10k myself, only in the 747 to be honest, however my point stands that you will not be able to gain much extra speed before you enter the red tape and an overspeed condition is present. Might give this a try and see how she behaves though just for the fun of it.

Yes, because you are not allowed in the real world to fly faster than 250 knots below 10k feet. Some heavies can get a relief on this restriction, but if you want to override it ,you may have to set it manually, but you won't be able to go too fast as the air and you will stress the airframe.

Hypoxia is a very strange and silent killer, and it creeps up on you, fortunatly we are sitting in a sim at a very comfortable altitude so we should never experience it. Judgement is also impaired so once hypoxia has set in, you are only responding to commands, which saved a crew around Ypsilante when the ATC ordered the pilot firmly to descend to 10000. Clip in question:

@KriVa I am comparing MD-11, DC-10, 737 NG and the very first gen 737, not the classic, can't recall what Boeing named the very first generation. Besides the last time I checked the type rating, it was separate for the Classics and NG which was a few days ago, still pricey though at 17-20k Euros for the rating, plus additional if you need the pilots license, but that is off topic. You can't get the very first 737 type rating on a NG certificate I think? Not that there are many of those left in the air anyways.

True that the original 737 design is from the 60s with a low bypass turbofan, but it is quite revamped. The MD-11 is based on a 60's 70s DC-10, only difference from the bodywork is a revamped tail that is very controversial and a stretched fuselage, which is also true for the 737. Considering the type rating for an early 60s 737 is different from the NG which was made around the MD-11 days, there is still no excuse for Boeing to not have it modernized as McDonnell Douglas did, they faced the same dilemma, even though it is aimed at a different market.

The MD-11 when in the same situation will tell you with words "Cabin Altitude" so you know what is wrong, in addition to the Boieng style warnings. Why this wasn't put on the 737 we will never know, but the Betty in the MD-11 sure works out better than the Boeing alerts of dings and dongs and other weird noises.

I have noticed PMDG aircraft and some others that play with the FSX autopilot system that certain wind directions tend to make the autopilot go bonkers on correcting and then overcorrecting. And the PMDG 747 I have had enter snaking turns when following a STAR because it couldn't seem to understand that it needed to do a proper turn.