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Thanks Goran, I've not used Discord before, but seem to have figured it out enough to ask a couple of questions there. Hopefully I'll quickly figure out who's who.

Thanks Goran. As a test, once I arrived at NZCI after I got a new a new air frame I parked up - switched the generator off - turned on all the anti-ice systems and landing lights and flattened the battery. MFD cut out at around an hour later at 11 volts - and (using the "output battery voltage" facility in XP) I took the battery to less than 1 volt ... engine kept running just fine - so pretty sure we can eliminate the battery as being the cause. Can you tell me a bit more about the sim failure logic? eg "even with a relatively new airframe (best guess maybe 20 hours total) and "all green" in the maintenance manager - is it set to still throw in the occasional failure at random for no reason? (interestingly, with the brand new airframe I got a right hand pitot heat failure -- and when I checked the maintenance manager after the flight the right hand pitot heat / stall heater was still showing "as new" (although the fault went away when I replaced it) (circuit breakers were all in).

Thanks for that - but it doesn't quite add up; I would have though that that would have resulted in a CAS Master Caution of "Main Gen" and "Low Voltage" - and there weren't any CAS alerts prior to the shutdown. You can see in the screenshot that there's still no "Main Gen" alert - and although there is a "Low Voltage" alert I'm almost 100% sure that wasn't there prior to the shutdown (I was there in front of the screen the whole time). I do seem to get Main Gen alerts when starting from the external source, but they're well and truly sorted prior to take off.

Thought I'd treat myself to a flight from NZCH to NZCI. Climbed up to 31,000ft - and at some point during the cruise (had power set quite low - and fuel flow at 39GPH (which is the most relevant figure I could find for best range)) and ... the engine just quit. Notes: 1. At the end of EVERY flight I both refuel & check the maintenance manager - EVERYTHING was in the green prior to takeoff. 2. I tried an inflight restart; Ng was in the zone for introducing fuel - igniters were on - but no ITT rise (tried several times) - eventually flattened the battery. 3. Checked logs with sim paused - nothing out of the ordinary 4. Went through the checklist - still no joy 5. Exited the sim after the inevitable eventual crash (landed right next to an oil rig so hopefully they rescued me!) and saved the logs and the entire output directory (logs attached) Is there anyway I/we can diagnose why the engine stopped? Definitely not fuel (although interestingly the fuel flow was still hovering in the 30-35GPH range during the way down). The ONLY "slightly naughty" thing I did was leave Ng at 100.6% (not "106%") for several minutes during a portion of the climb (over 100%, but not quite in the red and no alert). If something like this happens again (keeping in mind that this happened well into what was going to be about 4 hours flying today) is there any way to "trick" the sim into giving me my engine back and continuing the flight? Not a "biggie" - just a bit disappointing for someone who takes simming seriously and didn't do anything wrong to "kill" the engine that I know of. Would appreciate any thoughts. Log.txt TBM900_Log.txt

Ah - roger. Thanks for that. I'm guessing that was Jason? (I asked him the same question via YouTube). Does seem like a bit of sloppy wording in the manual then given that it refers to "pulse and landing lights" when in reality the landing lights can never pulse - only the taxi lights.

Thanks for chipping in. I could be wrong, but I'm interpeting it like this: - The TBM 900 only has the one switch to control both landing and taxi lights. - Therefore, if the manual is referring to "landing lights" then I'm assuming that it's meaning "that switch in the landing light position" - So when the manual refers to "controlling landing light flashing" I'm assuming that that's with that switch in the landing light position and with the pulse light switch turned on. It seems disingenious to me that in order to make the landing lights pulse one needs to have to put the switch into the taxi light position. Further, I wouldn't expect taxi lights to flash; I can't think of a situation where a pilot would want that. So based on my (quite possibly flawed) interpretation of the official manual it seems to me that the behaviour we're getting when the light pulse should be occuring with the switch in the landing light position and not the taxi light position.

I can do, but I doubt it'll add anything that I can't describe. Basically, 1. If I turn taxi lights on - and leave pulse off - I see two taxi lights on in a steady state. All good. 2. If I leave taxi lights on - and turn pulse on - each light altenates between "taxi light brightness" and "landing light brightness". I don't think it should do this. 3. If I turn landing lights on each light remains at "landing light brightness" regardless of whether pulse is on or off. Is that what you get? If I'm reading the book right then when taxi lights are on - and pulse is off - then taxi lights should be steady and at "taxi light" brightness. If taxi lights are turned on - and pulse is turned on then nothing changes (taxi lights don't pulse). If landing lights are turned on then they should go to "landing light" brightness (which they do) - but if pulse is turned on then they should altenate between "landing light" brightness and "something less".

Merry Christmas everyone. @Goran_M Just noticed that the exterior lighting behaviour doesn't appear to agree with the POH; according to page 7.8.14 "The Pulse lite system (if installed) enables the pilot to control landing light flashing to be seen by the control tower or in heavy traffic areas". On the sim the taxi lights will flash when pulse is selected but not the landing lights - suspect that's supposed to be the other way around. Cheers, Colin

Excellent news! (I know how frustrating things like this are). I recall the time where I had a PC brought in for repair; modem wasn't working. Being the logical/pragmatic person that I am my approach was to see if the fault moved when I moved the modem to another PC. It went something like this: 1. Move modem to another PC and test. Modem works OK - so fault not the modem. 2. Install new modem in same slot in orignal PC. Modem works OK - so fault not the PC 3. Install original modem in original PC and test. Modem works - so "shake head and move on to next problem on next PC ..." Southern's law of computing says that Murphy was an optimist ... and a very wise man!

Most things don't change from cycle to cycles - so probably the "best bang for your buck" would be to sign up to NaviGraph - update - and then cancel your subscription; it'll probably cost you less than a coffee and a piece of cake at Starbucks.

Sounds like you've definitely got something conclicting somewhere; suspect the only way you're going to get to the bottom of it is a clean install. I had a quick look at your logs - I see you've got some plugins (always a good place to start) - also see that you're running it off of a drive linked to OneDrive; personally I wouldn't do that given what I've seen in the past with the way many of these types of services can create conflicts with file locks at inopportune times.

Roger that. Thanks.

Possibly the only way you're going to get to the bottom of it will be via a clean install. The only reason I have XP is because MSFS2020 TBM 930 p*ssed me off so much - so all I have is XP & the TBM900 - and everything seems to work pretty much "as advertised". I know it's a bit of a pain but you might need to do a clean install - verify that it works - then add things one at a time to see what breaks it.

Yep. From what I can tell, it mostly relates to the surface that it's on - or more specifically "the surface that it THINKS it's on" (I suspect that it thinks some surfaces have a higher friction coefficient than what us humans would assume to be the case). Generally what happens is I'm looking at the aircraft from the front - use the throttle controls to control the tow power - tow device makes a noise proportional to the power setting - some "visible vapour" comes off the tyres momentarily - and nothing else happens. Goran said the "visible vapour" represents dust, but I'm not clear on why dust would come from a wheel if the aircraft was parked on grass / leaves and there was no tyre rotation.

Excellent news. To be honest, I have no idea what the actual G1000 in a TBM requires in terms of "FD before arming anything else"; I always fly with the FD on so it's not a biggie for me either way. I've also found that vertical nav requires you to "keep ahead of it"; if you try to engage it (or lower the selected altitude) after it should already have kicked in then you're out of luck. Not 100% sure of the exact behaviour - will learn more over the Christmas break.

I was struggling to understand a couple of aspects of the interior lighting control behaviour so I looked up what it said in the official TBM900 POH (pages 7.8.16 & 7.8.17). It mentions that the emergency lighting is controlled by an emergency lighting switch located (what appears to be) a few inches above the center of the overhead panel (marked #5 in the diagram). The POH goes on to say "A rheostat located on the cockpit overhead panel controls emergency lighting operation & intensity. Forward rotation of control knob allows changing from OFF position to minimum lighting then increasing lighting to maximum brightness." In the model when I look a few inches above the centre of the overhead panel I can only 2 two switches relating to oxygen use - and the only rheostat I can see is for instrument panel lighting; the emergency lights in the model have their own on/off switches - the same as the other ceiling flood lights. Just wondering if it's a minor fidelity issue or if there are differences between real life aircraft and my version of the manual? No "biggie" - as always, mentioned in the spirit of understanding & improving the model.

Hmmm. I'm at a loss to understand why the PFC-throttle hardware would output mixture information if only the throttle was moved. Perhaps the easiest solution would be to simply sell the PFC-throttle and buy something like the Bravo Throttle Quadrant? (I have one on order, but unfortunately it's not shipping until February next year).

Unfortunately, I can't read German - but reading through what you've written in English, my understanding is that your throttle hardware is also sending mixture information to the aircraft and that you can't find a way to disable that. Is that correct? I'm no expert in these things (unfortunately) - I think that "mixture" control inputs move the throttle on the TBM when it's in the high-idle / low-idle / cuttoff condition state (ie moved to the right hand side) (I've moved it using the function keys - F2 & F3? off memory). Are you able to move the throttle using only the mouse until you get a good engine start (that's what I do anyway). Assuming no excess fuel, try: 1. Drag throttle into cut-off region 2. Boost pump = ON 3. Igniters = AUTO 4. Starter - ENGAGE (2 sec) 5. Drag throttle to low-idle when Ng above 13% 6. Drag throttle to high-idle and then across to flight-idle once Ng hits 52% From that point it should ignore any mixture inputs. Hope this helps!

Hope you (or someone else here) is able to get it sorted for you. I was looking at getting that VR headset myself, but since 1 went from a single monitor to 3 - frankly - it's just so damn nice that I'm not in any particular hurry to go the VR route at this stage. Would it be worth "maxing everything out" (at the expense of frame rate) to see what it does in terms of image clarity? And if that cures it then back settings off in the hope of getting a good compromise? I'm no expert in these things, but 2x 4k is more pixels than my 3x 1920x1080 setup - and I'm running that on an RTX 3080 - and even I've had to limit the frame rate (to about 35fps) and back the AA off a couple of notches. I could be wrong, but I suspect that a 1080Ti might be a bit behind the curve.

Good thing that we have it then!

For what it's worth, I have a software setup that's about as basic as it's possible to get; XP11.50R3 & the HotStart TBM 900 - that's it (inc Gizmo which got installed at some point ... I don't even know what it does). I get the occasional CTD, but they're pretty few and far between (perhaps 1 every couple of weeks). The base code seems pretty solid.

Thanks for that - I won't try to hold anyone to it. What I WILL do however is continue to enjoy a damn-fine model and will look forward to (hopefully) enjoying an even better model early(ish) in the new year. Regards to your wife! PS: If anyone wants to know how bad it could have been, do what I did yesterday and go fly the TBM 930 in MSFS2020; it's an absolute piece of &*$%; very little works on the G3000 - what does work often doesn't work properly - lots of other things don't work either - and it's got so many bugs I'm struggling to remember them all. Literally couldn't wait to get it back on the ground and switch back to XP11.5 and the TBM 900. Night and day.

I don't know anything about .fms "versions" - all I know is that on my model the database date on the MFP init screen was about 4 years ago until I updated it using the 11.41- format data using NaviGraph. If I'm understanding what's been written elsewhere then - the TBM 900 should work with V11.50+ nav data with the exception of the ILS guideance, but all I can say is "that hasn't been my experience"; the database date stayed around 4 years old until I used the 11.41- format and it's been fine ever since. I use Navigraph to produce FMS plans for the G1000; so long as I append .fms to the filename and save it in the right location it works just fine. Can't comment on other software as I have no experience using anything else. I understand that the ILS issue with the v11.50+ data format has been addressed in the new TBM 900 version that's currently being beta tested, but as I never had any luck getting it to work at all with this version I'm just going to wait and see what happens when it's released. It's my understanding that they don't give dates for releases.

You'll need to use an external provider like NaviGraph (who also provide additional flight-planning tools). If you do go the NaviGraph route be sure to use the X-Plane 11.41- format for the TBM900 or (from my experience) it doesn't work.

Is there any potential for a compromise here? Along the lines of "Most likely in the next month" or "Probably not for at least 3 months" (etc). Promise I won't tell anybody off (I appreciate that it requires an educated guess, but your guess is likely to give us a far better "guesstimate" than ours).