colukra yenynah bentleigh
Prometeo Archuleta
I am interested in semi-manually flying the ZIbo Mod as an exercise in learning how to better control the aircraft. Taking off, climbing changing altitudes. maintaining speed during maneuvers, etc. with no FMC but using the features of the MCP/AP to control heading, altitude, speed, climb/descend rate. Both with and without auto throttle would be useful. I am interested in this because I have tried to do it and had terrible times getting the aircraft to slow down to landing speed when simply trying to control altitude and speed with the MCP with auto throttle on. So there must be some techniques that I am not following or other things I am not doing correctly.
Here's one I made, I have done a couple of others too. The best practice to start with is to take off as normal using automation, then turn modes off. Initially keep the AT on and focus on flying level and keeping in trim. Then try turning onto headings. Then climb and decent. Build up that way just like you would in a real aircraft. The culmination of all of this would be a visual circuit which combines all the elements.
I echo what @scooba_steve says. I'd recommend to start by flying more of the departure manually. It is my understanding that in real life, they don't engage AP anywhere near the 1,000 ft mark, and it is typically up around 3,000ft. Make it a goal to fly the departure manually to at least 3,000 feet, and make the transition to AP CMD unnoticeable.
On the arrival end, do the same. Start the descent manually, fly the STAR manually, etc. Engage AP to get a stabilized approach, then disengage and fly it manual. Eventually, get to the point where you can fly the whole arrival and approach down to ground manually.
While it is good to learn and remain proficient in manual flight, I personally do not look down on flight simmers that leverage AP. Let us not forget that IRL, a pilot that finds themself in a broken aircraft and has to fly manually, still has a first officer to assist.
scooba_steve, Just what I was hoping to find when I posted. I just finished watching your stream and will look for others. Interesting observation that you made about the weather modelling causing pressure changes making holding altitude difficult. I will be trying your suggestions. Thank you very much.
I setup a flight out of KBFI in Seattle with some information in the FMC to create V-speeds. I set origin airport as KBFI and destination as KSEA. Somewhere I read that it is best to create at least one waypoint or else the FMC is unhappy. So I did. After flying around awhile i turned towards that waypoint and then engage LNAV. The A/C turned to intercept a route to the waypoint but when it arrived, it went into a steep bank as if it wanted to just sit on that waypoint because it didn't know what to do next. I did have the destination airport entered in the FMC and thought it would next turn towards KSEA as next target and turn with a nominal bank rate as usual but this did not happen. In addition, I could not recover using the HDG SEL to normal flight. Not sure where to go from here, not understanding what happened or why, not sure what t dol to prevent in future.
HAH!!! The joke's on me; I discovered what is wrong and it is my flying skills (big surprise!).. Somewhere along the initial part of the flight, tooling around in the sky, having fun, I did not completely raise the flaps and I broke them. The starboard flap is extended farther than the port flap and the ailerons are controlling the difference when maintaining heading. There seems no way to repair this in flight in the Zibo Mod so I will just see if I can land this beast with this issue.
If it was pilot error in your case then get into the habit of "bugging UP," i.e. you select the UP speed when accelerating then only go faster once you've done the after take-off checks. You do those, right?
Does anyone know what manuals are missing from 777, 747 and DC6 latest installers? Apparently one has to find the manuals online now (official support answer - oh man - trust me this is now a gray area). Boeing changed the licensing, and though there was no announcement from PMDG about this. If you have your old installers - keep them as they have all the manuals.
Actually if you guys download the newest installers (for example - download today and do a clean install) from the site and do a clean install in a sim (for example your sim should not have PMDG directory - let the installer create it - hence the lack of documents will be noticed) - you will see 737 does not have the manuals (even posted a ticket and got an official response).
It has been posted in their forums by few other users also - but for some reason those threads got zero traction. It was posted here also when these were official (quick search will reveal). It always ended up with phrase - submit ticket to them.
apparently users that install the latest or have bought the 737 77 747 recently wont have the manual only if you had purchased the addons a long time ago as sky wolf has mentioned all to do with licencing
Thank you so much bsram! I'm so very glad that the manual helped you out in learning how to fly the 737-800. I highly recommend though that you read the manual alongside my 16-episode Aircraft Dissected series on YouTube which covers all of these concepts with live visuals and sounds in great detail. Please consider subscribing to the YouTube channel as that motivates me to make more high-quality content for the community:) You can watch the entire playlist for free here:
Additionally, if you're also learning how to fly the Airbus A320, I have extended this Aircraft Dissected series to that aircraft with 2 episodes uploaded so far but more coming in the future. You can check out the playlist here:
I do think it would be helpful if it were organized a little better. Breaking sections into paragraphs with different headings would make it a little easier to read in my opinion. At times it can feel like it is just a large wall of text which can make finding specific information difficult.
Really good. I left the 738 behind after starting to fly other aircraft like the DC-3 and 727, but this manual/tutorial series has gotten me interested in the 737NG again. THanks for all the effort put into this, absolutely deserving of 5 stars.
The Boeing 757 was the highest-capacity and latest-designed narrowbody Boeing ever produced (and, in the case of the 757-300, the highest-capacity narrowbody anyone ever produced); it was also the only Boeing narrowbody lacking any form of manual-reversion capability for its flight controls in the event of a total hydraulic failure.
The only reason I can see that would sort of make even a bit of sense (if you scrunch up your eyes and look at it in a certain very-specific sort of way) would be if they left it out in order to avoid introducing excessive differences between the piloting skills required for the 757 and those required for the (widebody, and, thus, reversion-free) 767, and thereby possibly jeopardising the common type rating pilots can obtain for the two - but how can operational convenience possibly justify skimping on safety?
When you have controls designed to be operated manually, in an airplane that heavy and that fast, you have to include things to provide aerodynamic force compensation like servo tabs and offset hinge lines (look at the IL-82's rudder hinges; like a B-29's...the most obvious tell-tail of manual controls on a large aircraft) to make the control forces reasonably manageable, and even there, I can say with pretty much total certainty the IL-82 required muscles the size of fence posts to operate comfortably. A jet like that with B-29 flight controls is hardly a leap forward. You also have to mass balance the surfaces because there are is no flutter damping capability afforded by the mechanical control linkages. All rather heavy.
When you have hydraulic controls, you can get away without mass balancing the surfaces, without servo tabs, and without offset hinges, because the hydraulic actuators (plus flutter dampers in some cases) provide all the required force, AND the required flutter resistance.
So, if you are going to design a hydraulically boosted system with manual reversion, you have to incorporate some of those aerodynamic force aids to be able to operate the controls manually. But once you have a design that is sufficiently robust from a design/risk/failure tolerance perspective to operate with hydraulics only, there is no point in including manual reversion. It's a step backwards, adding all kinds of complexity and weight for no benefit.
It gives the impression that a secondary control for the trim (If the power to the pitch trim motors have been cutout) is extremely vital, seeing it features two fold out handles that are located 90 degrees apart, so a pilot has good leverage at any point in the rotation to their desired trimmed state.
Trim pitch "wheels" as you describe date back to the time when turning that wheel actually pulled on steel cables that were connected to the hinge mechanism for the control surface itself. This mechanical/manual system was a simple and robust method of manually trimming the aircraft and was very widely used before electronic/fly-by-wire control systems were invented.
Since the 737 is the oldest basic design platform in the Boeing product line, its original design dates back to a time when trim wheels were mechanical and pilots were transitioning out of still older planes into Boeing's new offerings- and those pilots expected manual trim wheels.
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