mtrainer

Good stuff Jerry I'll have to track that down. I'm looking forward to the -8, but for me to get the most out of it I'll be flying various liveries to destinations that are not flown to in the real world. Not that something like that bothers me, as I take the 737s anywhere I think I can land. I'll be doing the same with the -8. Mark Trainer

Traditionally I've been a big fan of real life manuals myself, but the nice thing about having this kind of content in a PDF format is the ability to search it (say for a particular keyword) - a big plus when you need a specific fact fast. Mark Trainer

ORBX has some freeware airports they offer on their website. Mark

Yep that's the one I'm using for my BBJ ever since I saw your screen snapshots. It's a great paintjob. This will be the first airplane I plan to take around the world- something I remember you said you did with this livery. I'm kind of stalled out though in Alaska's PAHO right now waiting for when I have the time to fly to Hawaii. Was the Hawaiian Island chain one of your stops? And if so, might I ask where you went from there (if you were heading Westbound). Thanks, Mark Trainer

There is some stuff in the library for BBJ paint jobs. The one I downloaded, I believe, is fictional. The main problem I see w/ PMDG offering BBJ paint jobs that exist in real life, is that they may be copyrighted by the owners of the aircraft. And as far as adjusting the weight, fuel capacity, and range to match a particular BBJ- I suppose that would be different for each BBJ and if you are duplicating a real BBJ with the same paint job, you run into the copyright issue I mentioned above. Playing devil's advocate, there may be some owners of 737 BBJ that would be thrilled to have their livery duplicated, but on the other hand some of these folks are trying to minimize their exposure to the public, for obvious reasons. And good luck reaching out to them- if I were rich enough to own my own 737 I'd be in it flying to exotic destinations, and not answering letters that aren't going to help pay for the fuel costs, nor the mandatory all female crew I'd insist on flying everywhere with. Mark Trainer "...the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature." - Dr. Strangelove, from the movie "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (best B-52 movie of all time)

Yes….yes! Carl, Upon careful examination, and much reflection, and indeed a little research, it appears they used the high-end Acme Epoxy and not the cheap stuff, which tends to turn yellow. I knew my Lasik Procedure would pay off in dividends! Mark Trainer (whose radio controlled Big Stick 40 is held together entirely by epoxy...)

If it makes you feel any better Dan, I'm certain he went to Bug Heaven. Mark Trainer

Isn't that the theme music to the James Bond movie "You Only Live Twice" though? Could be wrong, its happened before! Mark Trainer

That New Zealand fictional paint job rocks on the -8....New Zealand should consider adopting it! (Although as alluded to, most airliners are white so they don't soak up to much heat...) The 3D model of this -8 is, perhaps, the best I've ever seen in FS- round or oval things actually look round or oval...for a sim old-timer such as myself, this day has been long awaited. I am certainly going to be setting up lots of external views for those somewhat longer flights where the Autopilot has the plane. Mark Trainer

Not sure I can help much here, but....are you using EZDOK or ChasePlane? Or just using the default Prepar3D system? If you are using the default Prepar3D views I can't help you much as I found the limitations in that system frustrating and quickly went with EZDOK and then eventually ChasePlane. My instincts tell me there is a way to pull off what you are seeking within Prepar3D but I ultimately found the ChasePlane User Interface the easiest to use. Mark

Ehh….PMDG take as long as it takes to make your vision of this aircraft come to life. Mark Trainer

Good 'ol FS9, gotta admit that on modern hardware, or just about any computer made within the past 10 years, the frame rates make for a butter smooth experience. I've kinda come around to Sam's (Shrivers9) approach about a year ago when I had to reinstall everything - I too was fed up with fiddling with things and said to myself that this year was going to be the year I spent flying and not dorking around. I have Prepar3d V4.3 add-ons, but they are all the big-brand stuff that's been out there for a while and compatible with 4.3. Using Windows 10 Pro- but not a big fan of it (never seen a company literally dumb down a user interface so horribly). The creators update initially wrecked my system, bad! Had to reinstall the OS to get control again. Mark

I've been keeping an eye out too....living in the Chicago area I'd love to have a polished O'Hare to compliment the Fly Tampa Midway, and ORBX restoration of Meigs Field (a must have if you've been in this hobby as long as I have). From the looks of things currently, I'm holding out for the FSDreamTeam version myself. Mark

It looks as if you're overclocking this i5 2500K CPU from 3.3 GHZ to 4.0 GHZ, may want to try dialing it down a bit. I've built most of my PCs over the years and now I no longer overclock anything, it just isn't worth the worry that always exists in the back of my mind every time something crashes. Download the free Prime95 program, and if it can run that for a couple of hours at a time without failing (it has a mode where it checks its results), you're overclock is fine. And that program pushes a CPU very hard. Mark

What a beautiful plane. Looking forward to this purchase! Mark Trainer

Thread topic asked "What's New?". Is it the tail stand? Something about that "up-ended" comment in your post makes me wonder.... Mark Trainer

In the "old days"....w/ FS9 and such, I'd save scenarios say 10 miles out from landing, 20 miles out, or just before takeoff....is there something stopping anyone from essentially doing the same? (With P3D and PDMG I don't bother so much, almost always a full flight, but usually less than 300 miles flight distance in the 737 to keep the long stretches at a minimum). As someone who was watched a KC-10 Singer-Link system in action and had the opportunity to fly it twice from the captains seat at Barksdale AFB, I can attest they throw you into various scenarios and don't waste time on the boring segments of flight. That sim ran nearly 24/7. Sadly, they moved the entire KC-10 training facilities to another base since then. But the KC-135s are still there. Mark Trainer

I don't own the PDMG 777, but I've heard the Fly By Wire system in the upcoming Dash 8 (B748) will have similar properties, so....ever consider branching out to something a little more hands on? I'm personally partial to the 737 NGX and while it may not be the newest PDMG offering, its got long legs. I also own the PDMG 747-400 (and plan on buying the -8 when available) but am holding off a little while longer to truly study that plane as I feel I still have more to learn from the 737 NGX. I like to master one plane before moving to another, but the depth of the 737 has kept me busy for the past 18 months that I've owned it. I suspect you'll be pleased regardless of your decision as long as you keep it in the PDMG family. Mark Trainer

Like Rick said, just choose shorter hops. It's all "pretend" anyhow so just pretend it was a longer flight. Fill it up with less fuel. I flew the Caribbean livery from Miami across ORBX South America one 60 minute or so hop at a time, and actually landed at what may be the only dirt airstrip on Antarctica once I ran out of "South" in South America. Did the same thing getting it back to the Bahamas. I LOVE flying the Hawaii Island chain with the 737, if you stop at each major island you'll have your hands full the whole time and never spend more than 60 minutes at cruise altitude. To make it more of a challenge, I've slowly reduced the initial fuel load to what is barely achievable to make all the hops from the Northern Hawaii Islands to the South Islands with all major airports (well one per island) between landed at, so if I make a mistake....I'm sweating bullets on that last leg. I have actually ran out of gas on the runway right after setting it down on the final leg. In the real world this might be a career ender, but for me it was quite rewarding because that particular flight was full of toddlers from Burma. Mark Trainer

Speaking of windshear... My friends and I, in 1985 were coming from Shreveport Louisiana to Dallas Texas to spend a few days at Six Flags Over Texas. One of my friends had some coupons for the airport at DFW, which at the time I think was called the AMFAC hotel. We got there the day after the Lockheed L-1011 crashed due to a microburst and our hotel balcony provided a view of the carnage. I remember thinking that the parts remaining seemed so small, that there was no way it seemed like it could add up to an entire airliner. In the category if "it's a small world after all", a friend who I went to high school with and who once lived down the street from my parents, was the one person who got killed on the ground as the plane initially bounced off the Interstate and flattened a car. It was this very accident that led the way to wind shear detectors being installed around the airport, as it put a very bright spotlight on a phenomena that not many folks had ever heard about. Most sinister of microbursts it the property of initially reflecting in a higher IAS, causing a throttle retardation, only to get on the other side of it to find you've got no air blowing over your wings and engines that need time to spool up, at a time when you're close to the ground and most vulnerable. Regarding the video, it seemed they made the right call - always err on the side of caution. My dad was in the Air Force and part of the process of getting to Flight School was to pass a psychological test, they actually didn't want shoot from the waist hot-shots flying their airplanes, they wanted disciplined people who would follow orders and make conservative decisions. I don't think Tom Cruise in his Top Gun role would have been able to pass that test... Mark

Initially I booted into Prepar3D after the install of just the V4.3 client and didn't see any of my ORBX stuff. Was bummed out so I downloaded the entire Prepr3D update, and installed that. Booted into Prepar3D V4.3, still no ORBX stuff. Heart sank at the thought of reinstalling all of the ORBX stuff. Went into FTX Central 3, and poked around a bit to see if it showed my purchased as installed or not. It seemed to think it was all installed, so.... Went back into Prepar3D V4 and boom! All the ORBX stuff was there. I guess it had to re-register all my stuff. Good luck - I was very close to reinstalling everything but it turns out it was not necessary. Even my chaseplane settings were still there. Some of the uncertainty and hassle with these updates are why I skipped P3D V.4.2 and went straight from 4.1 to 4.3. Even so, from my "use case", 99% of what was in 4.1 still applies, not seeing anything major here w/ 4.3, but appreciate the stability and minor performance improvements just the same. Mark

Not sure if they are still using it, but I was lucky enough to come across a book at the Barksdale AFB library about 30 years ago- it was called "Basic Airmanship" (or something like that) and was essentially the first book given to pilots in the earliest parts of their training. It explained everything in a very ordered, logical, no nonsense way. A beacon of clarity I must say. Mark

I've gotten to fly C172s a few times as the (now) ex-wife came from a family of pilots (dad and brothers) - one thing flight simulator didn't prepare me for is this: Due to the torque of the propeller, turns in one direction were easy, the other direction, took more effort. Didn't see that one coming. Mark

Nice review Alan. I too loved the scuff marks! So many good aircraft to choose from these days.... Mark

I also supported this game a couple of years ago with a minimal purchase at my son's urging. He loved Freelancer when he was younger. The main problem here is scope creep - and....they have changed out the rendering engine about 3 times already. They could learn a lesson from the initial engineers of the Boeing 747- they designed a plane and said, "This is the plane we're going to build - regardless of materials improvements, electronic improvements, computer improvements, etc." It was an engineering marvel in that I believe they pulled it off in 18 months, design to flying. They should have started with a modern version of Freelancer (the head Star Citizen fellow was the lead behind this project back in the day). They could have then built forward on top of that - but starting with a complete, real, working game. All I'm seeing lately is more and more content offered, but it's the gameplay that will serve to keep the platform afloat for the long haul. Also not a fan to pay-as-you-go to win games. My hope was that this would be like the early versions of World of Warcraft, except in a much larger game space. WoW was a great game until they started making it super easy for all the whiners. I dare not start down that rant. Mark