FL630

I'll stick with Infinite Flight, this looks a bit gamey!

British engineering, that's how!

Yeah that's correct. Stapleford (EGSG) has two parallel runways, 22L/R and 04L/R. The normal runway in use is 22L as this favours wind direction in the UK and it also has a 600m asphalt insert. I can't think of a single time when I've flown in and out of there that I use the grasss extension but it's totally usable. There are also two King Air's based there, they get in and out using the grass/asphalt runway no problems. Total runway length is 1077m. There is also a fairly substantial slope on the real runway. 22 threshold is 115ft and 04 threshold is 185ft ASL, obviously FSX doesn't simulate this. 22R is there for reasons I don't really know, I've never used it, I don't know anyone who has. At the end of the runway is Lambourne VOR (LAM 115.6 MHz), used as one of the four holds going into Heathrow, plus some Stansted SID's too. I've been there and looked up and often seen 5 or 6 heavies circling above the airfield, it's great! Orbx's rendition is really accurate, great textures and everything is perfect and in the right place. Only thing to fault is to get on 22L, you've got to pick 22R on the runway selection!

Looks great! How framerate friendly is it?

Yeah it's my work, pm me your email and I can send you the texture files if you like. It's not based on a real aircraft, I just made it up as I went Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I always find it a shame that on forums mostly you only hear about companies when people have a bad time, so I thought I'd do the opposite and give a company some well deserved praise! I purchased with the advice of a few people on this forum the Mindstar G1000 for my Eaglesoft DA42. Sadly from the outset I've had a few problems, lots of CTD's and errors which I've never seen before. I thought I'd drop Mindstar an email to get the issues fixed because for a short while I was using it and it was perfect! Within 5 minutes I had a reply, with the suggestion to link up via a remote desktop and get the problem fixed. What makes this more impressive is that not only did he reply quickly, it was also 6:30am his time! Within 20 minutes we were linked up and got under way solving the problem. About an hour later it was solved, things were explained and and I was given advice how to make things work in a very easy, straightforward and friendly way. To me customer service is a big deal, having spent my money I always believe that I should get a good backup after the sale and too many times I get disappointed. Today Mindstar really stood out as one of the best examples I've been involved with in any industry. Whilst their product is quite niche I would highly recommend anyone who is looking for a high quality Garmin G1000 or G430-530 to look here first and last. Nice one Mindstar, one happy customer! Ian

Yes indeed! Orbx England, Stapleford and Rex overdrive. Aircraft is eaglesoft da42 in my own scheme. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Fascinating! Amazing how the fundamentals if multi engine flying can be forgotten so easily. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I agree with your point about manual approaches entirely. The thing is though the above boils down to lack of monitoring and cross referencing. I don't know of the accident with a stuck throttle on TO, but if you're watching your IAS and N1 values, you should soon see that there is a problem with one of them. I'm not sure how we've changed from landing to take off, but on a fully automated landing, be that with a decision height or full autoland, the use of A/T surely does not increase the workload as you mentioned. It might change the style of workload, but is it not easier to monitor than to adjust and fly manually whilst monitoring other things? I don't have my IR yet, no, I start next week. I didn't mention anything about the RA beyond the comment about the Turkish crash at EHAM.

I'm not sure I agree with that, surely when you're concentrating on the landing it's far easier to monitor the speed rather than control it on top of all the other things you're looking at/busy doing. If you extend this logic, why not fly the approach completely manually?

Agreed, whilst the A/T physically caused the crash but cutting the power, the lack of instrument scan to pick up the faulty rad alt might have been the more major issue Interesting, thanks for the detailed response! Hopefully I'll be doing my type rating on the 738 this year, so it's great to hear how these things work from people who use them daily.

So the Boeing A/T retards automatically when you get to the right height? Do they retard fully before touchdown or do they hold the selected airspeed until touchdown then retard? Surely if it's the latter you're have a huge adverse effect on LDA? I've edited my above post, the question regarding the hot/high was to you, I just got confused by user names.

Whilst it's not a Boeing related answer, have you ever noticed on an Airbus the countdown will be 100, 50, 40, 30, 20, retard retard, 10.....? Retard is to retard the throttle (not the aircraft being nasty about your flying skills ) and it arrives somewhere between the 20-10ft mark. So keep the AT on all the way to the point it then tells you to cut the power. So if you wish to cut the power, it's at this sort of height you'd do it. Obviously windy or gusty conditions may change this, but in calm or "normal" conditions I see no reason why you'd want to disengage the AT's, it's just more workload at the time in the flight where you least want it. Added to that in the sim-world, you're flying single pilot, you've not got somebody else to take half the workload. It makes sense to me to have the power idled when you touch down for obvious reasons. I wont argue a real airlines SOP's, but I assume you keep it on as a way to increase the safety factor in the event of a go-around with the trade off of a longer LDR? The majority of 737's I see land tend to idle before they touch down, of course though this may be a SOP of RYR. As a query to JoeDiamond, if you're flying either heavy, hot, high, humid or off contaminated runways, do you keep AT engaged?

Decided to take my new repaint DA42 for a spin around my home lands. I know my setup and graphics are nothing on some peoples here, but it'll do for me. Pre flight checks at Stapleford (EGSG). Someone needs to tell them to get the grass cut ^_^ Taxi way is clear, lets taxi to 22L Passing Stapleford's great club house. V2 Positive rate, gear up 6000ft looking down through the clouds at our green country Special VFR transit over London Heathrow at 1500ft Some low flying over the Blackwater, yes this does happen a lot in real life! Just remember to turn your transponder off And back to Stapleford for what was sadly a crash (sped sim speed up rather than zoomed in :mad:)

G-INFO is showing it belonging to a guy in Sherburn, I'd assume she resides at EGCJ now. Lovely looking aircraft!

Well, thanks to the help of this thread I have completed my first re-paint, came out quite well! Thanks Joe for the tip about that thread, ModelConverterX helped reduce the time taken getting all those panel lines matching up! Ian

Thanks all, downloaded the above program, saved as an extended BMP. Result below. LOTS of work to do, but hopefully it'll turn out good. Excuse the terrible ground textures, they're turned down to get faster loading whilst I'm skinning.

Just got the Mindstar G1000 and I'm very impressed, a quick procedural ILS into EGHI proved everything to work well, got the landing perfectly on the centreline but a little long. Looking forward to using this combo more, I've got a lot to learn! The only thing, and hopefully you can help me here Ron, is that the G1000 doesn't appear on the 2D panel. If I click the displays, they appear when expanded. Any idea why? Thanks Ian

Most real life TO's will be using derated thrust, unless you're hot high and humid, which is why you'll find that real life performance (or that of which you can feel sitting in the back) is different to FSX at 104% N1.

Well that's a shame, I read about last night and that seemed the general opinion, such a shame!! Looks like mind star might be the winner.

Looking into this now, I do have a soft spot for the TBM series of aircraft, if the G1000 is fully functional, this is both a lot cheaper (I have a few discount points through JF right now) and will provide me with a G1000 AND a new aircraft! Thanks for the suggestion ANAMIV

I was just saving as a 32bit .bmp, like the standard aircraft files. I assume this is where I am going wrong?

Hello, Apologies for the most likely basic question, I did try a search but had little luck. I am trying to re-paint the Eaglesoft DA42, I downloaded the Eaglesoft paint kit and did the following: Copied another scheme, renamed the folder and edited the .cfg file, the simple bits done. The aircraft with its "new" scheme loads faultlessly in FSX. The contents of the standard scheme is two sets of five 32bit .bmp's, two for the fuselage, one for the wings, one for engines, one for parts, two for fuselage. Some are named with a T at the end, some with SPEC. What does this mean?? My method of repainting is to open the .psd files from the paint kit, design my scheme, open the original .bmp, paste over that scheme, then save in the original format. When I then go to FSX I get a predominantly black surface, every so often with the correct new scheme coming through. What am I doing wrong? I'm a dab hand and PS, but I'm new to painting FSX aircraft. Thanks Ian

It's a nightmare, isn't it! The ATPL theory side is a joke, the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. Seems we focus so much on the older equipment and ignore the real-world-use stuff. I can tell you how the insides of an ADF work, but ask me how to do a GPS approach? No idea. It was only a few years ago the syllabus dropped Loran-C! What do you fly? Same over here I believe, a few VOR's have gone too recently, which is a shame! Though I can't think of a single pilot who will be sad to see the back of the NDB

I believe, from reading around the internet, that this is an option on aircraft, or more likely regions. The EASA ATPL requires us to do NDB approaches and tracking as part of the course, so all the Diamonds at my school have it. I'm not sure where you're from, but due to the decreasing use of NDB's around the world, I'm sure there are many places which it'd be unnecessary. It's stupid if you ask me, in the several hundred hours I've got on old fashioned gauges, I've used the NDB once, as an experiment, totally rubbish out of date tech.