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I'm back with yet another long-winded post! As I couldn't find a thread discussing various aspects of operating the Fenix (and didn't feel like necroing an old thread), I decided to start a new one. I'd like to see a discussion among Fenix enthusiasts with advice, interesting tidbits, experience of handling the aircraft etc. Input from real world Airbus pilots will of course as always be a huge bonus, but there are also some very skilled and knowledgeable simmers out there! I'll start off with a rather lengthy description of my futile attempts at short field landings, based on excellent advice in the Fenix updated V2 thread. I'd suggest checking it out, as it contains great advice on e.g. how to successfully perform the fabled CATI autoland (hitherto considered impossible). Hopefully, reading about as well as seeing my many mistakes will get the discussion going! Goal: Taking the A320 safely down to the very short runway (970m) at ENSD Sandane. The RNP approach is fairly tricky, with a slope of 5.40° from 6000ft to threshold at 180ft. It also requires a very late turn towards the Rwy in order to not smash the aircraft into the nearby hills! The MDA by the way is 2020ft. Plan: no payload, ZFW 44T), 1000kg extra fuel, estimated LAW only 45T max manual braking max reverse thrust A/THR off Despite risking eternal humiliation here on Avsim, I've decided to share two videos documenting my attempts. At the very least it shows how NOT to do things. This could possibly be educational - and could perhaps create some interesting discussion. First attempt: TL;DR: Ended with a hazardous go-around. Feeling very clever, I had configured the weather with 15kts of headwind, just to make things a little easier for myself. However, on departure from ENAL Ålesund I was a bit baffled by the high pitched moaning and large waves topped with white foam, as can be seen in the screenshot below: On final approach it eventually dawned upon me that I might have configured the winds erroneously. In fact I had set winds according to the metric system instead of US... 15m/s = 29.2kts i.e. near gale force winds. Hence, as I switched over to the US system, the wind strength was instantly halved, something the aircraft didn't respond very well to with airspeed plummeting. At the very least I made the sensible decision to go TOGA thrust and a go-around. As the aircraft was just above ZFW and wanted to climb like a rocket, it was very tricky to manage pitch and flap retraction in order to avoid an overspeed situation. In clean configuration I vaguely recall vertical speed being in the magnitude of 7000fpm... I decided to restart from ENAL for a 2nd attempt. Luckily the air time is only 25mins with a cruise ALT of FL080 in order to clear the mountains. 2nd attempt: ...did not go too well! (biggest understatement of the year) So… what went wrong? Or perhaps we should ask what didn’t go wrong? forgot to reduce thrust levers from CLB detent before disengaging A/THR, resulting in the engines spooling up massively from idle came in way too high and fast (it IS a steep approach) forgot to arm spoilers (after extending them to manage speed) + didn't notice the ECAM warning didn't respond quick enough to rapidly reducing airspeed just before crossing the threshold didn't flare at all, resulting in touch down at nearly 900fpm! which inevitably lead to a gigantic bounce... and to add fuel to the fire, I went MAX REVERSE THRUST in the high bounce, in a desperate attempt to bring the bird down which resulted in a nose-down landing, sigh TL;DR: I completely failed to assess the situation properly - should obviously have done a go-around!! Even worse - I did all this after having watched a very decent instructional video which focuses on the landing flare - shared by @Claudius_ I highly recommend watching it. Come to think of it, it’s almost like I did my very best to do exactly the opposite of every advice given in that video… Now I´d better call maintenance to get someone to have a look at that landing gear. As I was running away from the aircraft I was sure I saw one of the nose wheels inside engine #1 (not sure where the other wheel went) as well as the nose of the aircraft resting on what was left of the nose gear. This was not all in vain though, as I learned some lessons as well as got some valuable practice handling the aircraft with A/THR off (which I've never done before). I found it much easier and intuitive than I originally thought, just like @Farlis mentioned. And - hand-flying the Fenix is a breeze, thanks to the fly-by-wire system. Just make a small input on the sidestick and leave it there. Fantastic! And SO much fun! Conclusion: I did in fact manage to "land" on my 2nd attempt - BUT in doing so I wrecked the nose gear AND had my ATPL-license suspended pending further assessments. 3rd and 4th attempts: 3rd attempt did not as planned either. The aircraft did not want to settle on the runway, and I decided (way too late!!) to do a go-around. How well that went can embarrassingly be seen in the video... 4th attempt: Having learned a bit from three failed attempts, I daresay that I managed to do a reasonably successful (and possibly safe) landing, with even some runway length to spare in front of me 😄 EDIT: It just occurred to me that it probably would have been smarter to turn off FDs when FINAL APP guidance was no longer available. Constructive criticism of my comments/ramblings as well as the videos is as always much appreciated. I've tried to analyse the mistakes I made, but I'm almost certain I did even more mistakes that I'm not aware of. And don't worry - I can handle criticism - most of the time 😉 Fun fact: when I'm not busy at the Executor, I spend most of my time 28nm southwest of ENSD 🙂 Fenix V2 handling impression: Despite (obviously!!) not being type rated on the A320, my impression is that the aircraft handled beautifully and predictably in all stages of flight despite my newbie mistakes and rough handling. During a holding pattern on the approach though, I had several AP disconnects. I’ll put this down to pilot error. As other people could very well be way above my skill level, I'd really like to hear what you think. Does the Fenix handle in a realistic way? What are some of the remaining issues at this stage? Oh, and btw is there a way to turn off the TAWS aural warnings? Not sure if it's wise to do so though. And before anyone points out that it's in the FCOM - I know (I'm only up to page 124 of 7560 though) 😉 In fact I'll be so kind to share it with you (courtesy of a helpful soul in another thread).

Hi everyone, This is the official discussion thread for DTG Flight Simulator. My name is Martin and I am the Community Manager for all flight simulation projects here at Dovetail Games. In the build up to the launch of DTG Flight School we ran a Q&A thread which was very successful. However, lots of people wanted to just have a general discussion about the new sim, and not ask questions. So this time around I have created a discussion thread for that very purpose. If you are looking for the latest news about DTG Flight Simulator then you can find the news thread here. If you would like to ask me a question about DTG Flight Simulator then you can find the Q&A thread here - Martin

It has been suggested that we consider changing our image hosting and posting policies. It has been suggested that AVSIM no longer host images, but instead ask users here to host their own images. With the increase in free storage available, such as Google, Microsoft, and the many other Cloud based storage providers, this suggestion has some merit. What would it impact in terms of our policies? If we were to do that, we would reduce the restriction on the number of images shown here. We would probably double it from 10 to 20. We would also most likely increase, somewhat, the physical size of the image allowed to be seen here in the forums. Just to make this clear... WE HAVE NOT DECIDED TO DO THIS. We are taking suggestions and are encouraging discussion here. So, with that caveat, what do you think about this approach?