ken_v

This is indeed a NG/MAX thing only. There, having the "manual extension access door" open disables landing gear retraction logic, and allows manual landing gear extension with the gear lever in any position (contrary to the Classic). This in turn makes for a much simpler (and a lot less fun ) "Landing Gear Lever Jammed in the UP Position" NNC on the NG... On the Classic this NNC guides you through de-pressurizing Hyd. System A in order to extend the landing gear, whereas on the NG there's no need for this. Ken

Hello, Well, this forum thread got me curious.. so I decided to try to find out in the real plane. (Cruise flight can get boring sometimes..) The approach shown in this video is the Barcelona ILS Z rwy 02, with a vector leg to the northeast. First, you can see that I try to look around Milano.. increasing range, the vector leg just barely becomes visible passing across the screen, still going strong northeastwards. Then, observe how it ends right about the NIGSI waypoint (close to SNU VOR, in the Vienna (Austria) area) Now - how far is it from Barcelona to NIGSI? I have no idea - I didn't think of putting it in the LEGS page and check. Can be done easily enough in IXEG, I suppose. Or using some spherical trigonometry formulae, if you've got a few hours to spare ... or in this case, a nice quiet place in the countryside of Austria. Certainly a lot further than we would have wanted to fly after a go-around Ken vector3.mp4

Hello, I've taken this short video shot from the real plane recently (sorry for the lack of hand-held stability..) If this is what you mean, you see the depection in IXEG is quite correct: The elevation values and the terrain are drawn as the 'sweep' (there is no actual sweep of course, it isn't radar) refreshes the screen with EGPWS data, then they stay fixed even if the EHSI moves or turns around them.. As such, the numbers can almost 'fall off' of the screer as you can see in my video; until they are redrawn by the next 'sweep'. Ken EHSI.mp4

Thanks for all of your replies. I used to be the same ... until when a few years ago a mandatory check of the TR outputs became part of our procedures before any CAT2/3 approach (don't know if that was as a result of incorporating some updated Boeing procedure or just company-invented stuff). That's why it sort of stood out to me when I saw it. In fact, looking at the system schematics I think it is quite impossible to determine the voltage pickup location like that, because while doing so will provoke an unpowered TR, it will also open the TR3 disconnect relay, preventing the backup of a DC BUS by its opposite side TR. So the Volts readout would be zero anyway, because both TR and underlying DC BUS would be dead. Apart from that, let me just say that your (and Tom's) implementation of the electric system is sufficiently in-depth and well done (*) that it actually made me want to go through lots of old sim debriefing notes as well as a couple of well known and widely used reference sources - one of which is partially available online at http://www.b737.org.uk/ - just to make sure what I wrote wasn't total nonsense.. (*) just try, for instance, failing a DC BUS and observe how it affects certain fuel pump controls. Not the fuel pumps themselves (they are on Transfer and Main buses), but the controlling circuit behind them - can't switch them on or off any more. Made me look it up in the books (and then smile ) when I noticed it. Got it! Not holding my breath for it, but it's not entirely off the table, then. The level of detail in there is already mind-boggling and it's of course totally up to you to decide if and when you want to refine it even further (push the boundary, as you say). It's pretty easy for me to just start abusing that inviting list of electrical bus failures and then make posts nagging about what I think should be slightly different, not knowing anything about how easy or hard something is to code in X-Plane (without breaking the rest of the simulation). Just know that I'll be sitting in the "system fidelity before eye-candy" camp, ready with more scrutiny and input. Indeed in LOC it should disregard the selector (which makes sense, really). But in VOR mode it shouldn't : I think it was AFI near Brussels in that particular video. I tried another setup yesterday (using Erlangen near NUE) in the same conditions (around 15000', high GS, outbound intercepts around 20-30nm from the station) and it worked fine, even taking out the intercept angle a bit too soon to my liking this time, slowly creeping from one dot towards a centered course deviation bar for minutes.. Strange. Indeed I don't think I've ever used the VOR mode in reality for enroute-navigation. Before we were allowed to fly non-precision approaches in LNAV we did do VOR approaches in VOR/LOC, but as this is always low level, low speed and inbound, it's an entirely different case than what I brought up above (and it works great in IXEG, by the way) Right. Was just experimenting with the plane when I made the video. You should've seen the rest of the panel setup

Hi, Just so happens that I recently made a video of an APU start and generator connect.. however I wasn't specifically looking at the EGT gauge, as these crappy movie stills will probably tell BEFORE generator connect: AFTER generator connect: Doesn't look like an EGT rise to me.. rather the opposite. Probably EGT still stabilizing after start. Ken

First of all let me just say, wow... what a great simulation is this! For starters, the look and feel of the 737 has been captured to an unbelievable extent.. Makes me feel right at home. Then there's the depth of system simulation, that makes me want to experiment with the plane in such a way that it's rather fortunate that this is a sim! I have been out of computer sims for a long time and I re-installed X-Plane especially for this long-awaited add-on (I had been lurking on the former ixeg.net blog and forum for quite some years..). As a result, my X-plane install is very clean and uncluttered by other add-ons (for now). I don't know if one thing has anything to do with the other, but I must say that I have been spared of most of the soft/hard/tough-to-troubleshoot crashes and unpredicted sim behaviour that has occasionally been reported by others especially a few weeks ago. Therefore, please consider the following remarks not bug reports (they do not impact in any way the usability of the simulation nor the pleasure of operating it) as much as well-meant vetting, scrutinizing (well.. you've asked for it repeatedly in countless forum treads ;-)), mostly nit-picky matters brought up for discussion etc. It's pretty great to be able to (maybe) assist in the finetuning of a wonderful product to become even better, more accurate and more robust. CDU 1/ CDU legs page. Between-point distances of over 9.9nm should have their format without decimal point, i.e. to the nearest NM. Is this rounded up or down..? I have no idea. 2/ CDU PERF INIT page during preflight: when entering a T/C OAT after entering a CRZ ALT, the resulting ISA DEV is erroneous. eg. Enter FL310, then -50°C T/C OAT --> this results in ISA DEV displaying 25°C, while -50C at FL310 is in fact around -5°C ISA. Interestingly, if you do it the other way round eg. start by filling in the ISA DEV value, the T/C OAT is filled in correctly. 3/ When pushing the +/- key on the CDU keypad, 'minus' should be displayed first, then 'plus', rather than the way it is now. ELECTRICAL SYSTEM I have played around a lot with the electrical system and the electrical failures. Great to see little details having been put in. These are some things I noticed, that could maybe be of use if it would later be decided to further enhance the simulation accuracy: 4/ TR1 and TR2 indicate slightly less amps than TR3. I would not expect to see this, rather the opposite (TR3 indicating about half needle deflection of what TR1 and TR2 have). In fact, if I would see TR3 indicating more than either TR1 or TR2, and TR1/2 being at around zero amps, I would probably suspect a TR1/2 failure with TR3 having taken over the load. In any case, I would think twice before going somewhere CAT 3 ;-) 5/ with Transfer Bus 1 failed/unpowered, TR1 indicates zero amps and zero volt. This is partially correct: underlying TR1 is unpowered and this is correctly shown as TR1 amps at zero. However, the TR1 voltage indication should actually display underlying DC BUS 1 voltage, which is still powered by TR2/3 and therefore should still read normal and not zero. 6/ with Transfer Bus 2 failed/unpowered, TR2 seems unaffected in amps while it should be dead. Same remark for the voltage indication: it should still read normal. 7/ when airborne without any AC generators online, on battery power only (a bad day at the simulated office), I have noticed this: * GPWS should be dead (it is powered off a bus below XFER BUS 1), but aural alerts are still produced (no PULL UP annunciator though) * the opposite: with a cabin altitude above 10.000ft there is no cabin altitude warning sounding while there should be one. I don't know on which specific bus it is wired, but it's listed in the "significant equipment that operates with all generators inoperative" in the books (and I remember hearing it in the real sim :s) * also, Radio Altimeter 1 seems to be still working. That is normally also on AC Electronic 1 and though I know that there are a lot of wiring differences as to what is powered by standby power, I really don't know whether it should be powered along with the rest of the CAPT flight instruments - it isn't included on the significant operating equipment list. But maybe on the LH fleet that was used as a reference they decided it was a negligible consumer and wired it up to the standby power anyway. * the TE Flap Position indicator still works, while it is on Transfer Bus 2 and therefore should not be powered 8/ when Air Data Computers are not powered or their source bus has failed, the Main Electric altimeters are (correctly) unfunctional, however the red ALT flag on the left part of the numbers readout is missing. AFDS 8/ in VOR/LOC mode, the AFDS ignores the Bank Angle Selector, happily banking to 30° instead. In HDG SEL it works fine. 9/ VOR/LOC outbound radial capture: the aircraft keeps turning and increasing the intercept angle until the radial is fully centered, obviously overshooting and then doing the same on the other side. The attached movie clip illustrates better what I mean. Thanks again for a great product and such a great rendition of the 737 classic. Ken VORLOC.mp4

Hello, This is aircraft specific. Quoting from the manual: Where I fly, our aircraft come from a variety of sources, therefore they display many differences in wiring and equipment, and indeed this variance is one of the many we experience on a daily basis. Most of them are as modelled by IXEG and as you describe - going into HDG SEL rather than a blank roll channel.. Ken