avallillo

The seat is not the absolute governing factor, although the only exception I can think of would be a line qualification for a new Captain. In that event, the check airman (always a Captain at my alma mater) is in command, of course, since the "Captain" in the left seat, while type rated, has not completed the IOE required under the regs. In actual practice at most airlines that use a bidding system based upon seniority (which is just about all US airlines, at any rate) the crew positions are bid positions. The PIC is the Captain who was awarded the Captain bid for that trip that month. There are instances, usually at the beginning of a downturn/furlough cycle, when a qualified and current Captain can no longer hold a Captain bid and must revert to holding an FO bid. In this relatively rare circumstance you might find two qualified and current (on the equipment) Captains flying together. The PIC is the one who was awarded the Captain bid for that trip. The other fellow is the FO and is paid as an FO unless some other section of the contract is in play, such as pay protection. (The sections of contracts governing pay can be mind bogglingly complicated! It took a school several weeks long to train new crew schedulers about the pay and credit sections of the pilot agreement. Most pilots are not intimately familiar with all of the provisions!) At my alama mater, the PIC was also indicated on the flight plan. FAA regs require this - all flight plans, even a VFR plan for a Cessna, require the name of the PIC.

Typically these days there is only one "Captain" on a crew, at least at US airlines. Northwest once carried two Captains on their long haul crews, but this probably had as much to do with the fact that once at Tokyo that augmented crew became two regular crews, to roam the Orient for a few days before pairing up again to head for home as an augmented crew. There is only one "pilot in command" at a time, regardless of qualification. At my airline, where augmented crews consisted of one Captain and several type rated FO's, I was in command for the entire flight, even when I was in the bunk. Any command decisions were referred to me. This is probably the case just about everywhere. It is based upon FAA regs and enshrined in company regs as well. N4GIX is correct - pay is computed by the minute from block out to block in. Everyone aboard, pilots and flight attendants, get paid for each of those minutes, at rates that obviously depend upon crew position, equipment (in the case of pilots) and longevity with the airline. This is, of course, more for accountingn purposes than anything else, because as was mentioned, time spent preparing for a flight (and that could be more than an hour for long flights) is not part of pilot or F/A pay calculations. The hourly rates in the contract are what they are in part to provide some phantom compensation for all of that "unpaid" time. Some of the newer airlines have tried flat rate pay schemes, or even montly salaries, but for the most part that sort of thing has not worked out in the long run. With the hourly (actually,as I indicated minute-ly) pay system, the onus is on the pilot to fly in order to get paid. With flat rate systems, golf courses around the world might get crowded as pilots enjoy not having to hustle up some flying time to increase the bottom line!

I sent an email yesterday.

I may have to uninstall and reinstall again. There are a number of problems with the panel as it is, including GFC700 will not capture altitude, no Flight director on GFC700 panel, A/P won't respond to heading select mode on occasions, and A/P does not disconnect - you get the tone but the A/P is still engaged. Only way to kill A/P was turn off avionics bus switch (this is realistic, by the way, since killing avionics bus 2 is one way to shut off the A/P in the real airplane!) Does uninstalling via the windows control panel take care of everything, or are there additional deletions that need to be done?

I'll try the delete. When I press enter after entering the name, nothing happens. TV

Thanks! Will do! TV

I recently installed the latest iteration of the G-1000 panel, after having uninstalled the previous version. I now get messages on FSX startup about multiple items of some sort having the same names. When I click each message sequentially, then FSX starts apparently normally. The messages reappear after selecting a Mindstar G-1000 equipped airplane. Again, clicking each iteration of the message appears to clear the way for normal operation. Is there something wrong with the installation? On another topic, I would like to create some user waypoints. The only way I can find to do this is by using the MFD cursor. Whereas in the real thing you can create them via the User Waypoint page of the Waypoint chapter, that does not seem to work here - I cannot get the cursor beyond the waypoint name. In addition, I cannot delete any user waypoints - the page menu has no content; no "Delete User Waypoint" items. Is this just part of the way things work on this simulation, or am I missing something here? Tony Vallillo

I still fly it, and indeed it was the problems the LDS767 had with Win8 that caused me to downgrade my new computer to Win7, where it lives peacefully now! I am always somewhat bemused by the fixation with "new" graphics, and/or 2D panels that crops up so often. No doubt it is true that the LDS 767 is by now an older product, and perhaps there are newer offerings out there with more eye candy. But this thing still flies remarkably like a real 767; and I know whereof I speak, having flown the real thing for 9 years. Having retired in 2008 (off the 767; the 777 never went anywhere I wanted to go, and the money, while a bit better, was not enough to entice me to eschew the delights of places like Rome and Buenos Aires!) it is now the only 767 I can fly! Better still, since the product is indeed on the older side, it depicts the airplane as I flew it, and not in some upgraded version that came along later. I have heard that there are several other offerings (including at least two for X-Plane) of airliners that have a similar level of detail and realism (especially systems and navigation) as the LDS 767 does, but since I never chose to fly the 737 or 777 I have no interest in doing so on a PC based simulator. The 767, as an airliner, can do everything that any of the others can do, and it had just the right amount of automation - not too much nor too little. I do agree with other responders that an LDS 757, were it to appear shortly, might well have missed the market by now. Even so, I would definitely buy it since it would likely be as detailed and realistic as this previous offering is. Any FS airplane that flies well and operates realistically can never really go out of date! It was well worth flying back in the 767PIC days, and it remains so to this day. An outstanding simulation of a truly outstanding airplane. Tony Vallillo

On the other hand, he certainly had no intention of crashing the airplane, since he could have done that at any point after he locked the Captain out. We will need to see how this plays out, since there is more to it than meets the eye at the moment.

There is a bit of truth in everything that has been discussed here. I myself had a pretty bad experience with FSX on my new Dell with Win 8, although I must be clear that the basic FSX, when installed according to some fairly simple instructions (ie, right to the C:/ rather than where Win8 wants to put it), ran fairly well. It was the essential add-on (the LDS 767) that did not work. So to some degree, all of this is very variable and dependent upon factors that the non computer experts are hard put to deal with. My solution was to get a legal copy of Win 7/64 online (download version at that!) and do a complete clean install. Now that takes a bit of doing, although the instructions are fairly readily available, and the end result was a well behaved FSX, FS9 and now also Xplane 10. But there is another issue underneath all of this, and it is plain to see from the responses to this original post. Our world seems to have devolved into two groups - on the one hand are the folks like me, pilots or flight enthusiasts with for all practical purposes no expert computer skills, and on the other hand the folks who were either already computer "experts" or who have developed that skill level along the way. The former group have had neither time nor inclination to pursue another area of expertise, and just wish that flight simulation depended less on computer tweaking skills and more on just installing the software and flying! We will probably always bemoan the need for arcane knowledge that has nothing to do with flying, and we will always be grateful for, and to some degree dependent upon, the willingness of the experts to show us the way. Likewise with equipment. Building a custom hot-rod computer is great if you can afford it, but it costs an order of magnitude more than an off-the-shelf. Most of us will never be able to do that, so we must soldier on with what we can find that is affordable. So bear with us if we can't follow you to that overclocked, liquid cooled wonder world! But if we want to keep this hobby going, we need to keep the knowledge price of entry as low as possible - there is enough to learn about flying itself, without wasting memory acquiring high level hardware and software skills. Otherwise some, perhaps many, will opt out just like the originator of this thread has indicated he may do. I hope that he does not, for we really don't want to lose even one enthusiast.