Let me start by congratulating PMDG with a truly outstanding addon, she both looks and flies like a dream. Even being awake at 4AM local time, and having to sit through a DDOS attack didn't really kill the mood, and the sheer excitement when I loaded her up the first time. I'd like to share with you my first few days and flights with the 737NG, the good and the bad. Let's start with the bad. 1: Strange VNAV behaviour Everyone raves about how accurate the VNAV is, and I can only agree with them, atleast as long as we're talking about the climb part of the flight plan. I've not yet flown a flight, and I've flown roughly 7, where I didn't have to deploy spoilers to slow her down. And I haven't flown a flight where I haven't had "Drag required" plastered over the FMC during decent. Anybody got a good explanation? 2: Brake issue Yesterdays flight from ESSA - LEMD ended very, very strange indeed. Upon landing at LEMD, I disengaged my autobrakes and taxied to the gate - however, on my way there, without even using the brakes, they grew hotter and hotter. Eventually they were so warm that they failed, and I was left without brakes. However they didn't cool down again, and the only way I could stop the plane was using reverse thrust. Even then, with parking brakes and chocks in position, they plane would still move ever so gently. 3: Autoland I have not been able to make a CAT III autoland, with the AP in fail-passive mode. It works fine in fail-operative mode, but one of the AP channels will always disengage in fail-passive. Now the way I understand it, is that fail-passive should only disengage and allow manual control, if anything fails during the autoland procedure, whilst there's enough redundancy in fail-op mode, to allow the plane to safely land under autopilot, even if there's a failure somewhere. Correct? But the good bits. Service life failures (Random failures) So far, on my flights, I've had 2 failures, both out of ESSA, oddly enough, once a flaw in the pressurisation system would have caused a very unhealthy flight for my passengers, and one other time, I had a busted IRS, which would simply not align.Anyway, the failures work beautifully, they're diverse and the effects are really cool. Overall it's much cooler then A2As accusim (Which is also awesome), but it really helps the immersion and makes you aware of what you're putting the airframe through. The visuals (Sounds and frames included)Just perfect, it looks, sounds, feels and flies very smooth. Especially the sounds deserve notice here, they are just perfect, every button, knob and switch sound different. The engines, the packs, everything is audible and distinguishable. Overall - Thank you PMDG, the expectations were astronomical, but you somehow delivered.
