mtrainer

You're flying over Whidbey Island, Washington State. Mark Trainer

Yeah if you own payware airports I'd take the -8 between them. If you're all stock airports, you could do my area, which is a bit flat, but easy, is from KORD (Chicago O'Hare) over to KMDW (Chicago Midway). Although getting stopped in time at Midway, while I believe *should* be possible, will really test your pilot skills and I'd suggest doing it light on fuel, passengers, and cargo. Just be sure to take advantage of some of the tasty food that was being loaded on board by PMDG by taking the long way there. Mark Trainer

Not a real pilot, so selected no. But, I have flown a Cessna 172 a few times, and have spent time (two different occasions) at Barksdale AFB in a Singer Link full motion KC-10 simulator in the pilot seat flying, which was wicked awesome. Mark

Yeah, that video...nice how clean they kept the cockpit, it looked awesome! What a great aircraft. I've seen a few SR-71s at museums but they all had their engines removed, I presume the Air Force is hanging on to those somewhere special since there has been little in the "raw brute thrust" engine department lately. Park those engines so they're ready to go should the need emerge. It would be a FS purchase I'd definitely consider, as stated in a previous post it's a classic and nothing in the civilian market has beat it in nearly 60 years. Today, in such an economy driven market folks rather travel at Mach 8.1 and put up with a longer flight instead of paying the premium for Mach 2.0. I get it, but you'd think with all the Wall Street folks making bank that there might be a renewed interest in something like this. In the Concorde videos I've seen on YouTube, it wasn't just about speed, but also about luxury, service, champagne, and good food. Mark Trainer (Wishes he was Stinking Rich in the late 60s and 70s)

Ahhh…I see, yes I die at airports over 7,000 ft. high more than anywhere else and I'm a pretty conservative dude. As far as I know all you can do at high altitude airports is add a bit more flaps and increase your landing speed so you don't stall out. And go around if it all doesn't look perfect. Mark Trainer

There is a logarithmic function correlating the number of 3rd party add-ons and the time spent researching and "fiddling" with the simulator. In 2017 I vowed to keep the 2018 sim down to bare basics, PDMG, ORBX, REX, and Active Sky. And since then the fiddling, oddities, and Internet research and heartache have gone way down and the number of hours actually flying with acceptable framerates has gone up. Mark

No, it will always have a market - there still isn't anything like the Concorde. Amazing how many 60s/70s planes still blow the doors off our modern fleet (Concorde / SR-71). Nearly 50 years later... we're flying around at Mach .82 at best commercially. Mark

ouch

What is meant by a hot and high variant? Every product they offer on their website can surpass 10,000 ft. without breaking a sweat. Can you offer a more detailed explanation, perhaps with an example of a real plane to get an idea of what you're talking about? Confused, Mark Trainer

It's those massive Canadian Downdrafts! All kidding aside, I've never had an issue w/ this product- installing it or tail spinning into it. Mark Trainer

I have looked into this and have drooled over the websites for these MCPs, but for PC desk users, where do you put it? My desk is full of monitors, a keyboard, mouse, joystick, throttles, etc. as it is. Mark

Yes, V4.3 is the way to go. If LM follows their typical release schedule, you may want to do the math just to see if it is cheaper to license it on a month to month basis until V5.0 comes out, or buy it outright. Life is short though; just go get it. Every time I agonize about buying something my girlfriend calls it "Mental M*asturbation". I hate it when she says that because there isn't any real fun in stressing out about making a wise purchasing decision! Mark

A little short on info was given here in this initial post, but if you're new to Prepar3D and the joystick, I'd start as simple as possible and begin by removing FSUIPC from the equation. I own the payware version of this product but on a oath of diminished complexity I decided that 2018 would be void of as many external products as possible and thus removed it (and a lot of other stuff) - and as a result it seems life has become better, since I spend more time flying and less time fiddling around with the settings of 10-15 interacting products. The hardware interface menu of Prepar3D is a bit non-intuitive, but you have to steer clear of two horrible but somewhat related "'gotchas", first that multiple devices can be mapped to the same functions, and secondly that you have to check the "axis" settings on every device in the device drop down menu to see what might be controlling your inputs. There can't be any overlap there either or your life will result in much unnecessary sadness, and then eventually medications that are tough to stop, and worst of all will then lead to making your night landings twice as hard to complete without causing all the toddlers on board to burst into tears (hallmark of a bad pilot). Hopefully someone with specific experience with the TM16000M will chime in here and provide more info. Edit: You mentioned simconnect - that program also had me over a barrel and quite frustrated - for the life of me it was only by installing all of them oldest to newest (yeah, it makes no sense) that I finally restored order. As always, what worked for me may not work for you, because at the end of the day I don't understand how simconnect got so convoluted or what really fixed the issue. But reinstalling them all (the ones in the Prepar3d folder) worked for me- good luck bro. Mark

I was referring to a backgound task that can be completely CPU consuming, thus providing the perceived slowness of the simulator. Over-clockers often use a program called GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search) to stress a CPU to see how far it will overclock and still remain stable. Others use it to actually participate in a science project to find the largest "Mersenne Prime" number ever found. Just google "GIMPS", it should be the first link that pops up. A prime number is a number that can only be divided by 1 and itself, evenly. A Mersenne prime is a special category of prime numbers - it is 2, raised to the power of a prime, minus 1, that results in a prime. The record, last set in December of 2017, is a number that had over 23 million digits in it. Lots of cool facts about prime numbers, I won't get started here. Regarding your last question, I've always purchased some of the higher-end PC hardware and was glad for it, if only for the reason that it will ultimately have more utility for a longer period of time. Mark

It takes some discipline, but just stick to what Prepar3D defaults to once you install it- it scans your hardware and pretty much makes a reasonable setting configuration. Resist the urge to keep bumping things to the right. It may be fine in some areas/weather, but you'll eventually run into a situation where you're wondering if you've got a background program looking for the next largest Mersenne Prime. Mark