Tbur

Hi, with the new 747-8 I experienced when loading a new set up flight in P3D V4.3 the loading progress bar hangs a very long time (about 15 - 20 min) at the "Adjusting Scenery Objects" step (at 82%). It takes much much much...longer than with other addons the PMDG QUOTSII 747-400 included. Has anybody experienced the same phenomenon ? Normally it takes about 3 - 5 minutes. After that the flight is running fine without any hassles and at a very good frame rate. Scenery: ORBX: FTX Global, FTX Global Vector, OpenLC Europe etc. Airport: Aerosoft "German Airports Stuttgart EDDS". Any suggestions and experiences are welcome ! Regards Thomas Burchard

The same to me 20 minutes ago ! 6 Tries ! I wanted to redownload my purchases while changing from P3D V3 to P3D V4 ! No reset email received ! Thomas Burchard

are there some tools available to "test" a scenery or add on whether it is "exported" the right way for usage with P3D V4 ? Thomas Burchard

It seems FSUIPC5 blocks the multi step system initialization after loading the 747 V3 either as saved scenery or as a new scenery. The only workaround I found is at first load the scenery with the default F22 airplane and then load ("load vehicle") the 747 V3 . Then initialization runs and everything is fine and you can control everything. Now as workaround I rename the FSUIPC.DLL file and no issues arise. I guess there will be an update soon. Thomas Burchard.

Hi, please apologize this possibly very often asked question ! I'm interested to hear what is the common practice when hand landing the 747-400 as you have to do e.g. at St. Maarten (TNCM) using auto throttle or not. My experience as PC pilot is of course that it can be very convenient because you get rid of some workload. But I want to know when it is recommended to do so or are there some issues maybe because safety is affected to be advised manually control throttle settings. Some information from the reality and common practice if there is one as well is appreciated. Thank you. regards Thomas Burchard

Hi, I'm looking for an Electronic Flight Bag like aid which can be integrated e.g. like an iPAD or so into the virtual cockpit. I essentially need it at least as an aid for maneuvering on ground at big airports. Other functionalities of typical EFB's are nice to have but not mandatory. I purchased Aivlasoft EFB. But this is a little bit cumbersome if you have only one screen. As I know it is not integrateble in VC. I think 747-8 has it integrated in the lower EICAS like 777 ?? Any suggestions/recommendations welcome. Regards Thomas Burchard

Hi Kyle, thanks a lot. It seem I did it in this way more less. Thomas Burchard

Hi, that's a very impressing model of the Queen. As you sit in the cockpit (virtually of course) it is the feeling of smoothenes in flying as you will have as passenger in this beast. Very great work. Now 2 questions: 1) Is there some information available about fuel management best practice. What I mean is e.g. when to close or oben X-fer valves and which one (inner, outer) , when use the override pumps and so on. I tried to get through the FCOM and QRH. There is a lot of descriptions in the case of imbalance and so on but I've not been able to get out some kind of standard practice. So "instinctively" I managed in a flight from EDDS to OMDB (86 tons fuel total at t/o) to watch when main 2,3 get equal to main 1,4 (reserve reached 0) and then close the outer x-fer valves according to the principle one tank for one engine. I got a warning to switch on the overide pumps which I successfully did. But did I right ? Some hints and help are appreciated. 2) In last summer I'd the opportunity to have a session in a CAE Level-D flight simulator 747-400 at the Lufthansa trainig center in Frankfurt as a birthday gift. So I remembered that the landing light switches had been installed turned by 180 degrees that means Up = ON, down = OFF ! Was this an (German) option or is something wrong with my memory. Best regards Thomas Burchard

I started using and learning X-Plane (now 10.51, 64bit) as the PMDG DC-6 was rolled out. After using XP until now but revitalising my P3D installation right now there arised some pro's and con's after using XP for 9 months: Pro's: -stunning stock sceneries -very easy to use and to configure camera system (9 num keys for position saving, smooth visual augmented adjustment in the 3D space). That's a real lack in P3D/FSX ! -feeling of very realistic flight behaviour. This is a subjective feeling. I'm not a pilot ! -smooth ground handling -good and smooth graphics capability (rare stutter). -Possibility to make minor adjustments by your own at sceneries with the WED tool. -stunning night illumination Con's: -no season adjustment for sceneries. Always summer ! There is some rumor that XP 11 will have a solution. -all available airliner models (IXEG, JAR, FlightFactor etc.) have partially severe bugs (e.g. IXEG some times leaving unexpectedly a valid FMC route !) or are prone to crash XP completely - I'm sorry ! Simulation depth has always a potential to be improved. The only exception is PMDG DC-6 ! -poor standard in terms of documentation and tutorials (exception PMDG). Sometimes there is a POH available which is a copy of the original. But this is mostly useless because a lot of functionality and logic is not (yet) implemented in the add ons. -The general support standard has some potential to be improved ! -unclear release policy of XP: Now XP 11 beta....how long? -when the count of installed add ons is rising the risk of some cumbersome interferences between general plugins, gizmo, plugins brought by add ons and sceneries (why??) is rising also which takes days to chase after and to find the problem. I miss some proven guidelines for the programming folks to be followed that this frustrating and time consuming trouble shooting can be avoided. This topic is commonly called "Quality Management"! Thomas Burchard

As I wrote I've always flown in real wheather (NOAA plugin) since the DC-6 is out (since July !!). Now we have summer. The wheather over there it seems almost is very bad ! I have no clue what's coming up in winter. I am new to X-Plane. I've heard some rumors that there is a lack of winter textures. We will see what happen when it is winter ! Thomas Burchard

The DC 6 was my 6th or 7th attempt to conquer X-Plane coming from FS 98..ifLY....FSX....P3D but now I took over this thing. The DC 6 is a big leap forward and shows remarkably what the real potential of X-Plane is!! My result is that X-Plane is a very convincing flight simulation environment where you get a real flight experience as far as you can get it with a good graphics PC, 64bit Windows, a lot of RAM, NOAA wheather, skymaxx and a single screen. It seems that I will stick with X-Plane with in the next future. Very comfortable for example is the feature to control your views with the num key pad very very quickly. This enables you to get around in the cockpit very fast when work load is high while approaching and landing or take off etc. So there is only a little demand to configure a lot of hot keys for essential commands as you should do with the legacy simulators mentioned above. The most commands can be given with the real levers switches and knobs in the cockpit as it has to be done in the real live. No problem. Next models coming up from PMDG to be also released for X-Plane would be highly appreciated. iXEG has made also a very excellent job. Only the FMS has some flaws sometimes. Maybe the real 737-300 has the same flaws ??? I don't know. Both models I'm flying with a lot of fun. It is very funny to fly the routes of Everts Air with the DC 6 in Alaska in real NOAA wheather! Thomas Burchard

Hi, just for clarification in terms of thrust setting for descent: is a >0 BMEP value a reliable indicator for positive torque from engine towards propeller that means for long live of the propeller gear which is achieved when the propeller is driven by and not driving (windmilling) the engine ? Best regards Thomas Burchard

Thanks a lot ! What I guessed it was my mistake ! Best regards Thomas

Hi, possibly I make some mistakes, please help: After using AFE for T/O, climb and cruise for a while sometimes I need to gain full manual control over the aircraft for example when I travel through alpine valleys in Switzerland to make a landing at LSZS Rwy 03 (5600 ft) coming from south via Julier Pass . So I need to slow down the aircraft to about 120-130 knots in 9000 ft and manually setting flaps to 20 or 30 to get around the steep curves.. But no movement of flaps and later on gear for landing is possible. The levers move but no reaction ! What I'm doing wrong ? When I wake up the AFE with the "In Range" workflow and set him to sleep again after finishing his work flow then full control is available and everything is fine (????). The AFE is not helpfull in this situation. You have to maneuver through very narrow valleys with sharp curves. For example the Super constellation flyers association's L1049 (http://www.superconstellation.org/index.php/en/) fly this route once or twice a year ! Thanks for help. Thomas Burchard Germany

Hi, at first many thanks for this great landmark aircraft which teach you what a demanding job it was to manage for example a 10 hour long distance flight. As a member of the Swiss SCFA association (http://www.superconstellation.org/) we have the oportunity to make travels through Europe with a Lockheed L 1049 Superconstellation (HB-RSC). So some procedures we are familiar e.g. engine management which you can hear very well as passenger. This addon now finally enabled me after a couple of attempts to conquer the little bit strange X-PLANE as a long term FSX/P3D simmer. It was worth it to do so. Now some questions and suggestions to be maybe considered: 1) I'm missing a clock ! Was there no clock at the DC-6 in Namibia? 2) The SCFA's L1049 has installed an instrument called "ignition analyzer" in the cockpit at the flight engineer's place from BENDIX (Scintilla). As I know a lot of prop liners (Everts Air e.g) had and have installed this device ! I guess to programm the functionality of this feature is probably a little bit demanding. To have this feature including the simulation of fouled spark plugs and other issues in the ignition system would make the experience a little bit more complete. With our Superconstellation it sometimes happened that a couple of spark plugs had to be changed at an intermediate stop! 3) With PMDG 737, 777 there is a feature that you can adjust the throttle leaver at your input device manually so that you can switch off autothrottle without any hazzle and and erroneous jumping of thrust. A similar feature would be very helpfull when you suspend completely the AFE for example after takoff, METO, climb and so on. Now you have to adjust very quickly the throttle leaver to meet the correct thrust setting manually after suspending AFE. Best regards Thomas Burchard