donet

A few years ago I retired from my job as a Maintenance Engineer with Qantas Link where I was freindly with the engineers in the Qantas Simulator building. On a quiet night shift I would wander over and if there was no pilot training going on I could have my pick of the simulators. I got to fly them all from the old 747 classic and the 747 400 to the 767 and the Dash8 and this is how I rate them. The old classic was a beast, and the 747 400 was heavy and labour intensive when flown manually. I didn't enjoy it a lot even though I did manage to fly it under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The distance from the water to the bridge is 161 feet and the height to the top of the tail is about 61 feet. So you have 50 feet below and above to play with if you don't want to take the tail off. A mate did just that and he reckoned the crash didn't stop till Leichhardt some miles away. Try it yourself in the Sim. The 767 on the other hand flew like a Cessna. I called it the sports car of the big jets. I was riding in the jumpseat of a 767 once and I remarked to the pilot my opinion and he said dead right, there's no better big jet to fly. For a host of reasons of which I won't bother you with here the 767 also happened to be one of my most memorable flights and as I was leaving the cockpit I said to the captain " Thanks for the ride, this is probably the best seat in the house." And he replied "No it's not, this is." And of course he was right. But the airplane we had the most fun flying was the humble old Dash8. You would know that when pilots are in the sim they're either training or undergoing check rides and they're time limited so they don't deviate from the manual. I however was under no such restrictions and so was able to have some serious flying fun, all with full motion on. Flying under the Harbour Bridge was easy. Flying under the Harbour Bridge and banking left to continue on and under the Anzac bridge was a little harder. And flying under the Brisbane Story Bridge and hard banking left to avoid the city buildings was very hard and killed us often but it can be done. Landing on taxiway Foxtrot at Kingsford Smith International without crashing through the terminal building usually meant skiming the landing gear over the roof of the International terminal. Sydney simmers should try it sometime. Barrel rolls were no problem and if you could get enough speed up even a loop was possible. One of our favourite tests was to circle the airport at 3000 ft and the other engineer come pilot would unnanounced pull the power levers back to idle and wherever you were over the airport or the city you had to dead stick land the airplane. Those times were such that after landing you had to remind yourself to start breathing again. Even though you could crash and walk away, with full motion on you treated it as real because if you did crash it threw the sim hydraulics into a fit and the engineers had to come down an reset everything which in the middle of the night did not make them happy. And it was very important to keep them happy. So in the end it was the Dash8 that we all came back to and thanks to the generosity and patience of the Simulator crew I had some very happy years of learning and fun and got to fly more hours, and do things that the paid pilots could never do in one of the best toy shops in the world.

Can anyone confirm that the MSFS 2024 "Save custom camera views" option is broken and or is there a fix for this? I have tried all the different key combinations like Ctrl + Alt + number etc with no success. Anybody got any clues?

Enable "ATC Enforce Flight Plan": Go to Options > Assistance Options > ATC and set "ATC Enforce Flight Plan" to ON. This forces the simulator to honor your chosen starting position instead of defaulting to the runway in use based on wind.

Has anyone had experience good or bad with Windows latest update 25H2 ?

Thanks for that fellas. One less thing to worry about during the buying process.

I am looking at buying a laptop with a 2560 x 1600 screen .My question is would a 2560 x 1600 screen distort the cockpit or scenery image compared to a 2560 x 1440 screen ?

Thought I'd share my ILS experience. As a maintenance engineer for Qantas Link I was coming back from Canberra in the jump seat of a Dash8 300 having taken measurements for a later prop balance. We were on the glide slope for Rwy 07 at Kingsford Smith Sydney and at about 300 feet the aircraft did a sudden lurching dive of only about 50 feet but it was quite violent. The aircraft immediatly reconnected with the ILS and continued down the glide slope as per normal. The autopilot hadn't disconnected and for a few moments the crew couldn't figure out the cause. Then we looked down the end of the runway and saw the cause. A fuel tanker going down a perimeter road had driven across the beam from the antenna and blocked the signal causing the Dash8 to do a monumental hiccup. No time to be frightened it was over in a couple of seconds but a very interesting occurance.

I have exactly the same problem. Originally I thought it was a calibration problem but after calibrating and trying different brightness and contrast settings nothing worked. I would love a solution to this as it just ruins night flying especially close to the ground. Ryanbatcund,... what do you mean by special 3D lights ? Thanks in advance and Merry Xmas also

Hi Rob, Have exactly the same scenario with Lancair Legacy and AccuFeel. Massive uncontrolable turbulence after 10/20 mins of flight. Only cure was spoilers out and descend to a low level. I aggree, I think there is a conflict but what to do I don't know. Donair

After much research including all the models mentioned above I settled on this. HORIZE P170 EM ( Clevo based ) 17 " 1920x1080 res glossy screen Intel Ivy Bridge i7-3920xm 2.9-3.8Ghz Turbo nVidia Geforce GTX675MX 3GB GDDR5 Graphics 16GB 1600Mhz Ram (2 sticks) I28GB 520 Series SSD 550/520 Mbs Read/Write....Windows OS 480GB Intel SSD 550/520 Mbs Read/Write....FSX Windows 7 Pro 64 bit FSX Gold Windows on the small drive and FSX & ORBX ftx Australia SP4 and ftx Pacific Northwest on the larger one. With SimForums NickNs Win7 and FSX & cfg tuning guide applied, scenery maxed and autogen very dense, water 2xhigh, A1 ga traffic maxed, clouds and weather etc and FPS set at 30 I get consistantly smooth and stutter free flight. You can get the same specs in a 15" model for your portability.

Well we'll soon find out if Laptops are deserving of the rubbishing they get in general. Below are the specs for the new Laptop I'll be getting in a couple of weeks and after fine tuning Windows 7 and installing FSX Gold Edition and flying around the block a few times I'll get back to you all and let you know if works or if I'm planing on jumping off the nearest btidge with the laptop in one hand and the bill in the other. Horize P170EM Clevo Notebook Intel Ivy Bridge i7-3940XM 3.0-3.9Ghz Turbo nVidia Geforce GTX675MX with 4GB GDDR5 IC Diamond Paste 24 Carat on CPU+GPU 16GB 1600Mhz RAM Intel 480GB 520 Series SSD 550/520 Mbs Read/Write Plextor M5M 128GB SSD mSATA 540/320 Mbs DVD+-RW Double Layer DVD Burner Windows 7 Professional 64bit 17.3-inch FHD LED 90% Gamut 1920x1080 Premium Glossy Display 3x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, E-SATA, HDMI, DVI THX TruStudio Pro Surround Sound & Subwoofer 2.0mp Webcam, Onkyo Speakers Warranty + 90 Day 100% Pixel Guarantee --------------------------

I have a question for the experts regarding Hyperthreading. When enabled does Hyperthreading in an unclocked Intel Ivy Bidge i7 Processor with Windows 7 64 bit OS actually slow down FSX ? Or does it not matter remembering we're talking about an unclocked system. Regards, Donair

Thanks for that J van E. That was the sort of short and succinct answer I was hoping for. Last thing I wanted was to get involved in a discussion on the value or merits of ORBX products. Just to clarify I take it that the AU mesh is a separate product, and if so do you need same for the NA Pacific Northwest product ?

Hi all, My question is if I install a FTX scenery package such as Australia SP4 or NA Pacific Northwest do I need to install a landclass or terrain mesh sofware? And is there any other software that is required for FTX? Thanks in advance, Donair