TheHorsley

Sorry to bring up an old post, I was after something similar too, is this program still available somewhere? regards

Yes and No. Yes - you will be familiar with the systems, configurations and the autopilot No - you won't be able to fly the thing without the autopilot, you'll overfly control it and move the throttles way too much. Only experience and confidence after flying an aircraft for a few hundred hours will give you the confidence in setting your power and leaving it there, especially for an approach. I've flown a number of OEI Simulator exercises and it's quite hard to do by hand at night in marginal weather to the minima. Recently I was out on a shakedown flight and we simulated zero thrust on one engine. The aircraft flew nothing like the sim - nothing at all, the rudder input required was minimal compared to that required in the sim and it held speed much better. I would almost say it was fine to fly on 'one engine'. So if the Sim built by the same people that made the plane can't get it 100% surely a private company has a slim chance. All they can do is give us an insight and the excitement of flying heavy metal from home. I still enjoy it though, and a lot of other people do, which is why we keep PMDG in business

Great tweak thanks for sharing, I do this with other models now, and if i feel like seeing the external model, i just turn it back on, easy. Also the High Def cockpit guages advice madee a huge difference, thanks NyXXUk and others!

Aircraft state seems irrelevant to the question asked. Silly response indeed.

When flying an approach the safest way to determine the type of approach is through the order of precision, ILS, Rnav,VOR,NDB. So if the runway has an ILS, you would use that over an Rnav. If you're doing an Rnav for practice, when the same rwy has an ILS, having the ILS up is in fact not aiding in your practice of the Rnav, because as pilot's were trained to centre the Loc/G/S, so you'll end up following the ILS anyway. If you're going to go to the effort of flying an Rnav, might as well do it properly that way your profile management gets a good workout!

Just manage your profile manually and you'll hit your altitude requirements everytime, i'm always wary of any FMC managing a descent for me.

It's called a "smart turn" to make the turn more comfortable to passengers and, as said above, to establish the aircraft on the new track smoothly. If there is a requirement to Fly Over not Fly By a way point then you must tell the fmc to overfly the way point, otherwise it will just smart turn them by default. In your first screenshot you asked the fmc to fly quite a tight maneuver, if it didn't smart turn there's a high possibility it won't make the track for the next way point and could miss it entirely.

You could also enter a navaid at the destination airfield in your fmc after your last waypoint, fly to that while you try to figure out which rwy to use.

The generic numb-pad would be a cheap fix. I use space-bar to reset my view back to looking forward after panning about, its an easier target than the '5'

So a plane does need a pilot after all...