Did a little flight on my PMDG 777-200 tonight from ENGM Oslo to ESSA Stockholm. This plane is such good fun, it's brilliant if you like tubeliners (which I do)! I've got the FMC routine down to about 3 minutes now, so as long as I have worked out my STAR/SID from the route beforehand then I can jump in and fly pretty much anywhere. Best feature of the PMDG 777 remains the auto-time compression feature which allows you to fast forward through the 'straight & level' bits of your flight so you get to focus on the interesting bits instead!
So here's some shots of the 777-200 arrival at ESSA.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3207[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3208[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3209[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3210[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3211[/ATTACH]
great pictures. My first attempt at a flight sim was at pitch black and had 0 idea what i was doing!! Tonight i might break out the old joystick.
I've only just noticed that none of the flaps show on any of the pictures, it was a full flaps 30 landing, so the wings looked a lot more impressive than the pictures actually show. Shame they don't show in the screenshots taken from the replay. :sad:
The checklists in the PMDG 777 are good too, you can bring them up onto the central display screen and run through them at the appropriate time. It's often a nice reminder of what to do when!
I need to learn more about the ToD (Top of Descent) though, I know that just prior to ToD the FMC warns you to adjust the altitude level. The idea being that if you have set your MCP altitude to say 35,000ft (to match the flight pan) then the FD (Flight Director) will have you cruising at 35,000 as you approach ToD, but the FD will not start its descent until you have manually reduced the altitude set on the MCP, so you reduce the altitude to say 5,000ft and the FD will then start the planned descent at ToD.
The bit I am confused by is how low to set it? If you set it to say 5,000ft then the FD planned descent seems to stop at 5,000ft and you find yourself at 5,000ft when you are just 4 miles from the runway when you should have been at 1,200 ft by that point. So it seems to be that I need to set it to a low enough level where the flight computer recognises that you are 'Landing' and then overrides the altitude set and continues to follow the glide slope. But what is that level? What exactly is low enough for an FD override of the MCP altitude setting?
Anyone know? Either that or I need to dive into the 400 page manual again....!