halbach

Well I'll be, that did the trick. Thank you very much!

Thank you for pointing to GSX. Tried it out, loved it, & bought it. Fantastic animations. Now I would like to update my aircraft so that I have selective control over the various exterior doors. My Project Airbus A320 only opens the front left cabin door. Tried CTR + E followed by a number but still only that one door opens & closes. Kind of novel to see the baggage pop out of the fuselage! And pushback is perfect, always lines my plane up on the taxiway centerline except when the last gate is by the fence. AND no more dodge-'em with the tug!

Been using the Steam version for about 6 months now and have noticed a persistent problem with the pushback from gate phase. The actual pushback works normally, but when I hit shift+P to end the pushback the tug does release from the nosewheel but then starts doing a really weird withdrawal. Instead of pulling back and returning to the gate it just wanders slowly from side to side. On multiple occasions the tug excursions loop all the way around and have run into my A320, terminating the flight! To avoid the crash I wind up having to play dodge-em with the blasted thing, sometimes I have to apply 70% or more power to sprint away from the little beast before he bites me again. Is anyone else seeing this situation? It's not aircraft specific, it treats all my aircraft with the same disdain. This never happened when I used FSX boxed. Hoping someone has a fix.

There are occasions when ATC vectors you to intercept the ILS when only the localizer has become active, glideslope indicator is centered and not moving. This is usually when you are still more than 15 miles from airport. Hitting approach button will result in a failed approach and cause the plane to descend since altitude hold is turned off. When vectored to intercept the ILS and I see the glideslope has not "become alive" yet I use the heading button to turn the aircraft towards the localizer and maintain altitude until the glideslope becomes alive, then it is safe to hit approach button.

RC4 does give a direct heading from your current ground position, gate, ramp, etc. to the assigned runway, but that is as the crow flies, not how the taxiways lie. After landing and exiting the runway contacting ground just gets the "Taxi to the ramp" reply and a menu choice of critique or leave. Like AP1 says, I just head for the nearest available gate or ramp once off the runway.

I used to fly the default 737 with a few add-ons but about 6 months ago I climbed aboard Francois Dore' s modified Project Airbus A320. WOW! Very easy to fly, lots of immersion in the cockpit. The VA I fly for, Platinum, lets me choose where I fly from and where I want to land. I generally stick with the larger cities to ensure an ILS approach but don't completely rule out the occasional GPS style approach. This PA A320 has really got my mouth watering for the upcoming release of the FlightSim Labs A320. The three add-ons I always use are EFASS, Rex, and Radar Contact.

There have been several responses in the EFASS forum indicating that Vinni is in a German hospital being treated for heart disease. Not much beyond that other than asking for patience.

Well, just about everything you have mentioned except for fuel levels really has no bearing on your failure to lift off at Vr. The things I would look at are pitch settings, flaps settings, where is the center of gravity, is the aircraft heavier than MTOW, are the engines developing full power? It would be helpful to know which particular plane you are having problems with.

One of the problems with the default ATC is that you have to ask for the different runway and separately ask for the approach for that runway (if available) or else ATC will continue the original approach and then either circle to land or sidestep to land. I use Radar Contact 4 and when Approach Control assigns the landing runway I have the ability to select any of the other runways at the airport, whether active or not. The runway and approach are taken care of with a single request. Hal

The Altimeter calibration knob has the label "STD" on it. You need to have 'Show Cockpit Tooltips' checked in Settings>Display>Aircraft and also have the metric units selected. Then hover your mouse pointer over the Altimeter Calibration knob and the tooltips popup will show the metric reading. Unfortunately the readout in the PFD remains in US mode. Would be nice if it would work like on the Airbus where the Altimeter calibration knob also let you select US or Metric and the readings on the PFD change accordingly.

The only way I got metric readings was to hover the mouse over the barometer calibration dial

Good Evening, Tom; I have taken FSX with RC4 up to 8X, haven't tried 16, yet. The flight plan I had included several near 90 degree turns and the aircraft went beyond the allowable off-course limit, resulting in control sending me back to properly cross the waypoint. I would imagine with more gradual turns even at 16X RC4 can keep up, although I would only use the max for trans-oceanic flights. RC does give me the option to increase the width of the flight path to allow for further "straying" although still being new to RC4 I have not touched those yet. Hal

A feature of Radar Contact is that you can tell it to pause FSX at a given distance from your destination. I set mine for 140 miles and when at altitude and cruise speed with Otto at the comms I just set the acceleration to 2x and go about other things around the house. I do check on it every so often and when the flight pauses, it waits for me instead me waiting for time and distance to go by. Wonderful feature I really appreciate having for the long hauls. Hal

I fly with RC4 and never have problems getting the aircraft down in time for ILS capture. One of the things that RC4 does is require you to cross the 40 mile destination perimeter at 11,000 feet for a near side approach or 12,000 for a far side approach. Are you making those? When RC4 tells you during the descent phase at pilot's discretion to reduce altitude to 16,000, for instance, there really is not much room for discretion. I get there as quick as possible because they usually give 30 miles to get to the 11,000 or 12,000 altitude AND cross that 40 mile line at or below 250 KIAS. From then on RC4 will continue to vector you towards the localizer. With RC4 I usually have to increase descent rate considerably to meet those goals. I have only flown B737-800 and B777-300 with RC4. As for when to activate the approach phase, that is usually done when Control has vectored you onto the final turn to intercept the localizer. When the localizer indicator begins moving toward the center that's when you hit the button. Unfortunately, this is a little late and will cause the plane to fly past the localizer, resulting in several oscillations back and forth until the plane settles on the localizer. What I usually do is use the Garmin 500 and load the approach in that. With the approach selected and loaded, but not activated, you will actually see a line extend from the runway, and the end of the line (away from the runway) is what you are aiming for. On your final turn to intercept when you see that line just about to point at your airplane symbol is a good time to hit the approach button. Good luck Hal

I tried the DX10 Preview but it made all the grass at the airport shimmer like crazy, not the runways or taxiways, but the grass. Had to turn it back off.

Thank you, JD! Now that I have the startup sequence in proper order I am really getting to enjoy Radar Contact! It indeed does bring a whole new dimension to sim flying. In my previous post I had mentioned using ALT-TAB to minimize FSX and to open and start RC resulting in a black screen for FSX, I have since learned that pressing ALT-ENTER is a much better way and prevents the black screen. Now I am diving headfirst into Ultimate Flight Planner (free) and hope to never go back to FSX flight planner for generating flight plans. My heartfelt thanks to the fantastic team that brought us RC.

I am very new to Radar Contact, just got it up and running yesterday but during the install I mistakenly told the installer I was using WideFS. RC seemed to install ok but when I do the tutorials sometimes I cannot select the operations shown in the window such as 2 for weather and 1 for clearance delivery. I do not have any addons which would intercept keystrokes. I was able to get it operational by shutting everything down, doing a cold start with the PC and starting up with the flight plan fully loaded in FSX before starting RC. Now it is possible I may not have launched RC to run as Admin. Could that have been the problem? I'm using Windows 7. Or should I just uninstall RC and reinstall and not specify WideFS? Now I am at the point no matter what I do I am unable to select the window options. I rebooted, start both programs to run as admin, everything loads, aircraft at the proper location, the Radar Contact window is there, I open the radio stack (default B737-800), press 2 for ATIS, nothing happens, no freq change, no atis. Press 1 for clearance, same response. OK, did some additional reading here in the forum and found the solution. I did not realize that FSX had to be fully up and running before starting RC. I was activating RC while FSX was on the FLY NOW! window. So now I press the FLY NOW button and then Alt-Tab to the desktop to start RC. When I click on the FSX icon in the taskbar I hear the Windows whinney tone and it opens to a completely black screen. I open task manager and switch to FSX and the cockpit view returns and all is working again. Maybe someone here can point out a way to avoid the black screen thing. Could having selected WideFS at install have anything to do with it? Hal