User Poll...

[Will]

I'd love to see a user poll on typical use of PS1.3 and eventually PSX. Of course the readership of this new board is likely pretty small, to small for significant results... but still I'm curious about the proportion of people who fire up the sim for a typical 747 route and fly it to completion (8-12 hours), vs. those who can only afford an hour or two for their hobby, and therefore do something less intense, like shooting approaches, or doing flight planning and a takeoff, or practicing emergency procedures.

Has anyone asked this type of question of the community before, and if so, how did things shake out?

Will

[John Davis PC]

I can't remember a poll ever being taken , however here's what happens in my sim.

When used as a business the first hour is mostly hand flying a circuit and manual landings except for the first one which is an autoland to show them what it should look like.  Second our usually involves more hand flying but doing more diffcult approaches like Innsbruck, Kia Tak etc.  I also give them a take off in a thunderstorm and climb to 15,000 ft to gove them an idea of instrument flying.

When the sim is used by myself it will nearly always be a complete flight from A to B using all charts and paperwork, and also real weather, if im solo I very rarely use VATSIM though.  Generally Around May I fly the previous years World flight route (all 45 flights) which I complete before this years event so my sim in effect does 2 world flights per year  currently im doing the 2007 route and the next flight is Vancouver to Anchrorage.
Most of these flights are relitivey short 3 - 6 hrs   I rarely do very long flights like Pierre although from time to time it is nice to do one.

In the 2 months prior to worlld flight I get together some of the crew members for training, we usualy pick a challenging approach and set that up as a situation file, we don't tell them what it is until we sit them in and give them the charts, last year we gave them the approach into quito, we give them time to study the charts and then let them fly the approach whilst myself and Andy Keeney (our WF Training Capt) mark and take notes on their performance, this gives us all feedback as how they are working as a crew and the areas they need to improve upon.  Afterwards they fly line flights with all paperwork, real weather and VATSIM usually in Europe ... i.e. Manchester to Palma and back to dust off the cobwebs.

I find all the above gives me a nice balance and a lot of fun, when flying the line flights with real weather and different times and seasons means visually nothing is ever the same even if the same route is flown.

.... and my favourite of all ? ..... sitting on the flightdeck with nearly wrap around visuals watching the sunrise and eating a full english breakfast ... ask any WF crew member in any team World wide and I bet you get a similar answer

Hoppie is here on business and staying with me at present and has Saturday Free ...... Hmmmmm he got away without doing Quito last year .... I feel little test coming on .... Mwaaaaahhhhhhhh

Cheers  PC

[Jeroen D]

I go all the way. Typically long hauler. I lover all the flight preparations etc. And I wll happily sit behind my PC for hours on end, reading my manuals etc. etc.

However, I very rarely visit a long haul flight in one go. Usually it gets spreads out over a number of days.

That brings me to one more wish for PSX; I always appreciated the way PS saved the current status of your flight continuosly ( 7 minutes intervals or so).

I have found that with MS it is much more cumbersome.

[Pierre Theillere]

Hi guys!

Here, in last 6 years, I used to have quite lots of spare tim (being a teacher), with some complete days off in the week... so I was doing many longhauls (9+ hours). Very often, I was planning the flights the evening before, with weather checkings ( http://aviation.weathersa.co.za ) , routeing ( http://rfinder.asalink.net) , performance (using TOPCAT http://www.topcatsim.com ). After a good night rest, powering whole flight deck (up to 7 PCs) right after wakeup, re-checking weather, and also route (mostly for NATs and PACOTs crossings).
I was flying mostly online on VatSim, so I was connecting at the gate, prior to pushback. Then handlying whole climbout manually, and engaging autopilot when reaching initial CRZ ALT.
During (long) cruise, I had time to do soem real-like things, like having breakfast, taking a shower, correcting students' copies, lunch, watching TV, reading... taking a short nap.. then having dinner... with a nice "avionics" ambiance!
Then in my evening, pressing that magic ALT button to release the plane from final CRZ ALT, and disengaging A/P and A/T... and completly handflying whole descent and landing... it was a great feeling to make a kisslandign (or something "not so bad" in heavy weather) after a long flight!
I no longer have time for flying longhauls, for several reasons:
- I switched jobs... now being responsible for aeronautics activities in our National Educational System, for the easter part of the aerea near Paris... so no longer days off! But I'll go to Paris Air show, considered as part of my job, hehe!!
- I started to "dismantle" my flight deck, giving away some PCs... I'm switching to the Mac platform, as I'm using X-Plane for "other planes" (helos, light aircrafts). I I also read somewhere that PSx was going to run also on Mac!!! I'll only keep 1 PC to handle my Aerosoft MCP, the Safeline throttle console, and the Engravity MCDU! Maybe another PC for FS2004 (or ESP...) in case I want some landscape for PSx... but not sure!
So... for some time, I'll no longer fly longhauls: but sure after PSx release, the flight deck will get a new second life!!!

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Either I am a WorldFlight pilot, or I have a 747-400 static on a tarmac somewhere while programming an add-on.

[Holger Wende]

Hi WIll,

Great idea to initiate this survey

Approx one half of my flights are short hauls between Eurpean destination which I know relatively good and where I have all required maps, such as Munich, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Hamburg etc., i.e. legs up to ~2.5h. Sometimes I fly such legs in VATSIM or IVAO.

The other half of my flight time I fly some of the many pre-defined scenarios (approaches to somewhere or just departures). I miss some tool to analyse e.g. my rotation rate. I guess there is still room for improvement, maybe PSX will bring something.
One of my favourite scenario is a training pattern as described in the manual. Well, at least I try to fly it as described, fully manually. But I still need many, many, many more hours training... I would love to fly them more accurately

And finally there are some rare occasions where I fly long hauls, but I typically split them across several days. But I try to prepare these few flights with real weather, reasonable and economic amount of fuel, charts, correct routing... My last flight was from Munich to Colombo (Sri Lanka), go-around in Colombo and diversion to Trivandum in India. At the gate I had slightly more than 5 tons fuel left. This made me happy, but the whole trip was spread over a week.

Holger

[Hardy Heinlin]

I miss some tool to analyse e.g. my rotation rate.

Pitch rotation rate at VR during take-off? Good idea. I'll try to add this to the analyses.

|-|

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Stupid suggestion maybe, but in the same area you can compute the closest distance that the tail came to the runway surface. This is eventually the variable that determines whether your rotation action was done correctly or not.

[Jeff Kittelty]

G'day Will,

I fly short hauls around Oz with the occasional European/Asian/USA long haul if time permits and quite often together with my son James doing something similar with his PMDG sim. I pretty much fly on Vatsim and with almost 1500 hours up. I'm addicted!

My sim consists of 4 pc's Ch Yoke & Pro Pedals 747IPC/VisualPS1/FS9/Hoppies Acars (quite often used by Oz controllers so come on down guys and give it a go)/Tug/Tiller/Active Sky/TCAS and Charts.

Starting at the gate usually with black cockpit I gather all required info such as Route/Company Route, ATIS, Winds Aloft/Temps, Flight Level, Fuel etc, then request clearance from atc and go from there, great fun and good flight planning is essential especially when online also helping to make the expierience more immersive.

Go Hardy, can't wait for PSX

Jeff

[martin]

That brings me to one more wish for PSX; I always appreciated the way PS saved the current status of your flight continuosly ( 7 minutes intervals or so).

Important item, I'd like to second that. Saving/resuming flights across sessions is a vital feature for long-hauler sim pilots which have to lead another (the so-called "normal")  life as well...  

And a good differentiator from the competition, too:

I have found that with MS it is much more cumbersome.

In fact, with the more sophisticated (3rd party add-on) airliners it's almost impossible, in my view. To begin with, many don't have flight situation and panel state (including FMS!) saving at all, one (Digital Aviation Fokker) has it (by design) only while on the ground, etc.

From those I know PMDG gets closest, picking up from a previous session works can be done (with some fiddling) for the CRZ phase, but anything else is very tricky or outright impossible (your mileage may vary.)

Nothing near the completeness, reliability, and ease with which this can be done in PS1.

So, yes, we very much would like to have that in PSX, too.

Cheers,
Martin

[Hardy Heinlin]

Stupid suggestion maybe, but in the same area you can compute the closest distance that the tail came to the runway surface. This is eventually the variable that determines whether your rotation action was done correctly or not.

Fine! I'll add this, too. Things like that make fun to program as the implementation is rather trivial, yet what it indicates is pretty interesting.

|-|ardy

[Richard McDonald Woods]

I am a fan of the B744, and probably always will be.

All of my flying is on-line to VATSIM. I was an avid PS1 user, but now am using PMDG B744X on FSX and Vista, which I feel is a step forward. I am expecting a move to PSX when it's available.

My interests are always in flying longish flights - 5-12 hrs during the daytime when I can fit them in. I really enjoy the flight planning processes and the in-flight fuel monitoring.

Cheers, Richard

[Holger Wende]

I miss some tool to analyse e.g. my rotation rate.

Pitch rotation rate at VR during take-off? Good idea. I'll try to add this to the analyses.

|-|

Great!    
Then I would like to take the opportunity to kindly ask for some more details to assess the take-off quality, such as:
* Time between VR and lift-off
* Pitch angle at lift-off
* Time and pitch angle at V2+10
or whatever combination is useful.

I am not sure whether it also might make sense to collect some more landing parameters, e.g. height at the runway threshold.

I hope this helps to improve our flying qualities.

Thanks in advance, Holger

[Hardy Heinlin]

I think the last three parameters are not quality factors and are not checked in training either, as they depend on the individual weight, thrust ratings and airspeeds. The rotation rate, however, is always the same, just like, for example, the min and max flap speeds which are always the same in order not to overload the pilot's memory with yet another number.

Check that the rotation rate is 2° to 2.5° per sec., i. e. watch the motion directly, don't count the seconds until lift-off. To see if you're too slow or too fast you need to get a feel for the right motion of the pitch scale on the AH, – if you would evaluate your rotation rate indirectly using the stop watch, you would get the result when it's too late.

|-|

P.S.: Well, pitch angle at lift-off is basically the same parameter that Jeroen mentioned (+/- 2 feet depending on weight).

[John Davis PC]

Definitely a good idea to leave the "Autosave" feature in PSX , this has saved us a couple of times in World flight if we had a problem, also a couple of weeks ago when We had a power failure here when I was 20 mins from landing.

Cheers  PC

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

... autosave ...
Ideally you follow the way it is done in computer event logs. You set how often you want to have a snapshot written out, and how many snapshots need to be kept.

For this sort of set-once-forget-forever items, I don't mind having a text file to edit instead of having two dozen pages of clickable options. Make the text file readable or allow # comments to be included and done.

[Peter Lang]

However, I very rarely visit a long haul flight in one go. Usually it gets spreads out over a number of days.

An alterantive for me is to climb out for long haul, flying manually to initial cruising altitude, then watching the autopilot for a while and finally set the aircraft 100 or 200 NM before Top of Descent, reduce fuel in the menue and land manually.

Normally I prefere training patterns especially in Kai Tak in bad weather with all automatics off.  

@Hardy
In PS1 there is the possibility to jump to the next waypoint. Will this also be implemented in PSX? Or better: could there also be a function implemented to move the aircraft e.g. 100 NM before T/D (with the remaining amount of fuel and the appropriate cruising altitude)?

Peter

[Phil Bunch]

A bit more information, presumably with some reliability, from cnn.com:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/01/air.france.brazil/index.html

====================================================

" The first three hours of what was to have been an 11-hour flight appear to have been uneventful, CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said.

But about 4:15 a.m. Paris time, Flight 447's automatic system began a four-minute exchange of messages to the company's maintenance computers, indicating that "several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down," he said.

"This succession of messages signals a totally unforeseeable, great difficulty," he said. "Something quite new within the plane."

===========================

4 minutes seems like a long time for the aircraft to survive a cabin depressurization event and multiple electrical failures and yet still be working well enough to transmit such data.  Perhaps there will be enough information in these transmissions to help the authorities figure out what happened (and what did not happen) with a reasonable degree of certainty.  I wonder if the details will be released soon?

Does anyone know if this flight normally transmits its GPS positions regularly?  One would think that such information would be useful for the search teams but I don't personally know if most long-range airliners even have GPS these days.  Even non-GPS position information would be pretty accurate, although there might be quite a distance between the last transmitted position and the crash site.

Just speculations questions on my part...

[CarlBB]

Um...
To be honest my last PS1.3 was on WorldFlight.
Due to a shortage of time, at the moment I use the 767-300. I am currently flying last years WF routes and I am up to 25 at the moment.
When I have used PS1.3 at home, it was with PS1.3 on one laptop, Overhead panel on another laptop and FS running on my desktop - that was to practice for WF 2008.
In the 767, I use real world weather, no vatsim, as I am typically in and out flightdeck.
Rgds,
Carl

[Will]

I guess I should answer my own poll.... I moved away from PS1.3 a while back in favor of another simulator of a shorter haul aircraft.  I very much like doing the whole shebang: flight planning, takeoff calculations, takeoff, cruise, landing, and parking at the gate. I just really don't like the whole experience to last more than about 5 hours. Perhaps 6 or 7 hours if I do it on a weekend.  Given 1.5 hours for preflight, and 0.5 hours for landing and parking, that means legs of 3-4 hours. Nice for legs inside the domestic USA, which just happens to be the region of the world that I have complete charts for.

Will