clarkTX

"Maybe you can quickly enter a PBD waypoint 10 miles down runway heading and then you could active NAV/PROFILE and the new plan would stay on the runway heading. Anybody do it that way?"Actually, this method turned out to work really well. Its easy to enter a PBD ten miles down the runway heading eg (KAFW/168/10), then fly NAV/PROFILE immediately. Use "DIR-TO" to skip on to the first SID waypoint once you get permission to "resume own navigation".Well... problem solved!CheersClark

Thanks John. The wrinkle is that I don't want to engage the flight plan yet (NAV and PROFILE) since ATC has only cleared me for "runway heading" to this point.What I've found out is that if you engage the autopilot in a climb with a set Altitude in the FCP, this *also* kicks the speed/thrust control into "Speed on Pitch" and defaults it to the current speed. Thus the aircraft wallows at just above v2 until you enter the desired speed into the FCP and pull the speed knob. Lesson learned: the speed number can "go white" even when you haven't touched the speed knob because your altitude commands are implicitly linked with speed/throttle. Now I know :)So, when FSX ATC says "takeoff and follow runway heading" here's what I do now:* prime the FCP controls with the runway heading, initial climb altitude and initial speed (say 235kts to get you just above slat retraction).* pull the heading knob before takeoff to prep the FD roll mode into "Heading xxx" (you can't seem to prep speed and altitude while on the ground though)* lineup and advance to takeoff thrust* follow the FD cues and climb out along runway heading* at 1500+ activate AUTOFLIGHT which will follow the pre-loaded heading xxx flight director* pull the FCP altitude and speed knobs to command the autopilot to accelerate and climb to your first SID altitude and get you to SR speed* contact departure and receive clearance to turn to your first waypoint and "resume own navigation"* now press FMS SPD, NAV, and PROFILE buttons to engage the flight plan* (optional) if the first waypoint is far off to one side and the FMS wants to go back too far to get on track, use DIR-TO to cut the corner.If anyone knows an easier way to follow ATC "fly runway heading" on autopilot by doing more prep on the ground I'd appreciate hearing it. I'm unable to pre-arm the speed or altitude into the autopilot before wheels up. Heading will preload into the flight director but you cant seem to preload speed and altitude while on the ground, so you need to pull those knobs in the air.Maybe you can quickly enter a PBD waypoint 10 miles down runway heading and then you could active NAV/PROFILE and the new plan would stay on the runway heading. Anybody do it that way?Clark

So I can't duplicate this situation again so I probably just missed a step somewhere in there.ThanksClark

Thanks. Since 192 is white, I wondered that myself but it went from white 184 to white 192 as it passed TTT all by itself. I didn't touch anything except Autoflight once in the air.The only way I know how to command a specific speed is by the SPD knob and I have not pushed or pulled that, and that is set to 250 anyway. Is there another way I may have commanded a speed? My flight plan for TTT, NOBLY and beyond all had commanded speeds of 250 as well.I'll rerun the scenario from a save just before take-off and I'll press the ATS cancel and autopilot cancel buttons to be sure. Then I'll press Autoflight again to re-engage the ATS. I'll come back with the results and more details of the ATS messages.ThanksClarkEdit: I'll also try the FMS SPD button as you suggest. I had thought that mode was automatic but maybe not...

Hi allAfter takeoff from KAFW my ATS doesn't want to increase speed past 190kts so I can't get to slat-retract speed or beyond. I'd like to accel to 250 and I have entered that into the flight plan beginning at TTT. But as it crosses TTT (and the next waypoints) the ATS ignores the waypoint speed and stays slow.In the pic attached, you can see I'm in ATS mode, profile mode and FMS-NAV mode. The aircraft is fully auto at this time as far as I can tell. For what its worth, my SAITEK throttle is full forward at this time.You can't see the PERF page, but it says "ECON CLB" and has 347kts in its climb speed settings. Before take-off I verified the acceleration altitude was around 3700' so I'm above this.Why won't she accelerate so I can clean up slats and get going? Is the 5000' ceiling interfering with the ATS?The only other odd thing I can see in this scenario is that the first waypoint is close to airport and 90 degrees of the runway heading so I can't just go straight to it. I climb away until about 4000' before ATC lets me turn back to TTT and I noticed that the route to TTT has the "-/" (begin climb) icon. I could be that By the time I can turn back to TTT I've already reached 5k and that climb icon might have disappeared.Maybe I'm breaking the ATS logic so it can't advance past take off speed?Any help appreciated.ThanksClark

This is troubling to read. As a busy father I'm expecting to be interrupted now and then and could easily go AFK once a month. I've read other posts like this recently. I had *just* signed up to VATSIM today and I want to join a VA and try to contribute to the ATC player's experience as best I can by becoming a pawn they can push, but now I'm not so sure I want to jump in with people that don't understand this is a hobby, not real life, and there are sometimes unforeseen circumstances (often if you are a parent).If it were me as an ATC, I'd treat a non-responsive aircraft as a challenge, something interesting rather than the norm. I'd call online pilots and challenge them to attempt an intercept or something. :) Does it really kill your experience that much that you have to come down on people that are otherwise trying to contribute? Why not just mark the blip "unresponsive" and move on?Like the other night, I was practicing my first landing in my new PMDG MD11 and FSX ATC cleared me to land on a runway that still had a jumbo sitting there. I reacted a bit slowly but did manage to switch to GA and went around again. At first I was like, geez FSX ATC, way to screw up! Then I thought, actually that was a lot more fun than a perfect automated landing. I look forward to more screw ups by FSX ATC. :)Clark

From the PMDG FMS manual- BLOCK entry: "Pilot entry in this field allows trial entries for fuel planning purposes"Are people confusing this with the actual fuel on board, or are people saying the BLOCK fuel calculator is inaccurate and so go to other fuel planner software?Clark

(old post I know, just correcting it for future readers).No, BLOCK has nothing to do with how much fuel you currently have on board. UFOB is how much fuel you have on board (useable fuel on board). "Ballast" is extra fuel loaded for balance/handling but not actually consumed for the trip.BLOCK is a "test case" input field to the convenient fuel calculator on that page. After entering your flight plan, cargo/pax, and weather info, you can test different fuel scenarios by entering a proposed fuel amount into BLOCK and reading if you have any extra fuel or extra flight time in the EXTRA/TIME field at the bottom of the page. Once you get near a 0/0 EXTRA/TIME result load the plane with whatever you entered into BLOCK. In other words, load fuel so UFOB equals the magic number found in BLOCK.The reason the tutorial "quick copies" UFOB into BLOCK is so that you can double check UFOB is enough to get you there.Clark

I noticed that the extra/time result field doesn't refresh after entering a new BLOCK value until I press something else on the FMS. A bug I guess. To workaround, I press CLR twice after entering my BLOCK value and then the FMS will run the calculations.(yeah, old post I know :) )

Thanks M

Avsim main page shows a new file in the library "airnav navdata data File definition" for FSX. I dont have a dl account yet so I cant see any more info on it and I didnt see an info post in the file library forums. Would this update the vors lanes airports etc in FSX database by chance? That would be cool.Thanks Clark

Thanks, Jay. Its just that the ATC window is clunky for VFR as I've described, and besides, this is a *sim*; I'd like to use the actual radio buttons. :) I'm highly suspicious that the radio buttons don't actually work as they would in a real plane. Are the GPS and radio dials just for entertainment purposes only? Clark

Hi All I'm new to FSX and I think I'm misunderstanding how the sim works. I like to use the GPS systems and fly VFR at this early stage and I can't get the radios to work as advertised. The problem arises when I attempt to contact the tower of my destination airport anywhere from 20-40 miles out. Like the instructions say, I can use the Waypoint page of the GPS to look up the tower frequency. When I select it with Enter it does update the Com1 channel on the GPS itself but when I swap it to active, only the Com1 field on the GPS changes. The radio in the radio stack doesn't update to the new channel so what was the point? Even if I manually set the channel on Com1 in the radio stack (then swap it to active), the ATC menu doesn't reflect the new channel or bring up the menu for the tower, so what was the point of setting the Com1 radio if I can't talk to the tower anyway? Are there 'sync' steps I'm missing that push the com channel to the radio stack and to the ATC menu? Or to make the ATC menu actually update to match the new COM1 channel I've just set in the radio stack? It's a real challenge (and rather clunky) to have to chase down the tower in the ATC "nearest airport" menu when its beyond 2 pages down and there's a lot of airports in the area that make the airport list jump around alot. you can't pause the sim to freeze the ATC airport list because then the ATC menu becomes unresponsive. :( I'm guessing the answer here is going to be very obvious because I haven't found any other posts asking about tuning the radios. It's just me :) ThanksClark

I'm new to FSX, and have the same problem in the Mooney at least. I'm solving it using the "move eyepoint" controls during final approach. Sorry, I don't recall the keys those are since I mapped them to a joystick button. But let me know if you can't find them and I can look them up for you. Clear skiesClark

Tonight is not my night. So I'm just trying to learn how to properly check in with Tower using the G1000 and radios somewhat "realistically" and I can't get them to work as describe in the Lesson pages. This time I'm trying to manually tune the radio as described in the lessons. What is supposed to happen: look up the tower frequency in the WPT tab of the G1000 (check), highlight the tower frequency (check), press ENT to move the frequency into the Com1 input field (doesn't work), or press 'c' and manually enter the frequency into the Com 1 input field then swap the freq into the active field (check), open ATC and see the menu options for Tower there (doesn't work; the ATC menu is stuck at some Approach comm for a nearby airport and "back" takes me only to "select nearest airport" menu). I can't seem to get much radio/Garmin stuff to work as described tonight. Do the manual tuning/ATC menus work for the rest of you all? Is there something obvious I'm missing here? If I manually tune Com1 to a weather station I'll hear the broadcast, but if I tune to a Tower the ATC menu won't recognize it... ThanksClark

Hi all Can you tell I'm trying to learn the G1000 tonight? :) Anyway, I'm also stuck trying to use the cool G1000 feature mentioned in the Lessons manual: frequency selection. On the waypoint page, the g1000 is supposed to load the selected frequency ("Approach" in this case) into Com 1 if you have the freq selected and press the "ENT" key. This doesn't work for me. I can select the freq easily, but pressing the ENT key does not load the freq into the Com 1 standby field. this would be so helpful, so does anyone know what I'm doing wrong here or is this a known issue? ThanksClear SkiesClark

Just found one very old topic here: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/63437-garmin-g1000-and-ndb/page__view__findpost__p__446064 Did MS or anyone else ever discover a fix? The 2d view of the G1000 is so much easier to read... Clark

Hi all New FSX flyer here and I'm trying to learn to use the G1000 but the mouse control of the FMS knob is giving me carpal tunnel. ;p So I've been trying to assign keys or Saitek X52 buttons to the Group/Page functions but either method results in a double press so pressing the key or joystick button will jump 2 pages or 2 groups at a time. "Repeat" is not enabled and I also tried the "when key released" option. Is this a known issue or known user error and can someone share the fix please? Haven't seen this covered in the forum... Clear SkiesClark

Thanks Bert, I won't bother trying that anymore. Success! So it seems that the outer ring hotspots are only on the upper third of the dial (11 o'clock and 1 o'clock). I was hunting around in the middle and lower half of the knob and was never hitting the hotspots. Clear skies! Clark

Zombie thread back from the dead :) Hi all I'm a new FSX pilot with a stock installation. No mods. I've been flying FSX for about 10 hours now in several planes using the virtual cockpits and every 3d knob I've encountered (even the dual ring knobs) works fine - except for the FMS knob on the G1000. I have the same problem as the OP. I get an entry highlighted but I can't scroll. Well, almost - one time out of 50 for some strange reason the FMS knob worked for just a moment and the Main page changed to the waypoint screen and I was able to page through the WP sub pages. I could not get out of the WP pages or chose waypoints on the flight plan sub page if I brought it up though so the outer ring must have stopped working again. I exited flight to read more lesson info, went back in, and the FMS knob wouldn't work even once. I've tried both 2d and virtual cockpit G1000 panels. I've enlarged the 2d panel and zoomed the 3d screen way in just to make the FMS knob large in case I couldn't hit the outer ring. I've tried the mouse wheel, clicking when + or -, click/drag to no effect. So frustrating! I'm running the FSX w/ Acceleration version; I'd give you a specific version number if I could find it :) Anyone else seeing this bug lately or heard of a patch needed to make this work? I didn't find any recent threads in this forum. Help! I'm running out of fuel! ThanksClark