avallillo

Just about all jets have devices on the upper wings that function as both spoilers (on the ground) and speed brakes (in the air). Every jet I ever flew except the C-5 was equipped this way (C-141, B-707, B-727, B757, B-767, A-300). On the C-5, the devices were only for ground use as spoilers. On that airplane, if you wanted to decelerate in the air, or increase rate of descent, you could use reverse thrust on the inboard engines. The DC-8 also had in-flight thrust reverse; I never flew it, so I don't know if the spoilers could be used in flight as speed brakes. One of the more interesting "speed brake" set ups was on the DC-7, the 4 engine propliner. On that airplane, "speed brakes" was the extension of the main landing gear only, with the nosewheel still in the well. Since speed brakes are merely drag producing devices, that setup worked well to keep from shock cooling the temperamental tubo compound engines.

There are small scales with handles and hooks that make it easy to weigh anything that you put into an airplane. Some things can be estimated, and others, such as the weight of passengers, can be taken on faith as reported by the individual (I would have said this only applies to men, but political correctness being what it is.....!) Interestingly, at the airline level, standard weights are used for just about everything except the cargo. The standard weight of adult males and females has had to be adjusted considerably upward twice in the last 60 years, so great has been the "supersizing" of the American public! It all works out - other than a major shifting of cargo location on takeoff, I cannot recall an accident at a part 121 operation any time during my career that had, as a major factor, weight and balance issues. As for two seat airplanes, if the seating is tandem - that is front and back - then there are probably a few that can only be flown solo from one seat or the other. But with side by side seating, the seats are usually right on the cg anyway, and there is no penalty for occupying only one.

That video was apparently done in FS2020. Where did the period airfields come from? As an aside, I too started reading Fate is the Hunter around the age of 12, and have reread it so often that some of the things Gann writes about almost seem like my own memories! When I flew for American Airlines I met a man who had known many of the pilots that Gann flew with, and had himself written a book about the AA involvement in the CBI (which was known at AA as Project 7A). This man told me that some of the better known segments of Fate is the Hunter were mostly apochryphal - in particular, the Taj Mahal story. Apparently that was considerably spiced up for literary interest, but in any event it made for a gripping few moments of reading! Although I never met or flew with him, "Cotton" Johnson was still flying for AA when I hired on in 1977. He became well known on the property for his successful effort to prolong his career past what was presumed to be his 60th birthday, by discovering a family bible which showed his date of birth a couple of years later than he originally was told. Apparently in those days, family bibles were often the only authoritative source of information along those lines, since birth certificates were unknown in the hinterlands where Cotton was born and raised. In any event, although there was a certain skepticism on the part of his fellow pilots (!), the company eventually accepted this new data, as did the FAA, and he flew on. AA then told every pilot on the payroll that they had several months to scour their records to prove they were younger than they thought - and that after that time was up, the record would stand un-correctable. I never heard of anyone else succeeding in an endeavor like this, so Cotton may have been the one and only!

The other day I started up MSFS (this would have been on or around the 24th of June, give or take a day or two) and lo and behold, an update started pretty much all by itself (usually I get notified to go to the Store and a few other places). Since then, I have been having nothing but problems with my Honeycomb Bravo Throttle - to wit, the throttle interface with MSFS has been erratic and for all practical purposes inoperative. This occurs in pretty nearly all of the profiles that I have set up, and involves whatever axis I assign to throttles. The throttle in the sim will not conform to the hardware throttle position, and moves back and forth erratically. No conflicts are apparent (more than one action set to the axis in question)and this behavior follows the axis assignment; that is, it will occur on any axis I connect to throttle. If that same axis is set to mixture it works fine. The whole shebang works fine in XPlane, so it is not a hardware issue… Anyone have any idea what is going on?

New sims do not specifically require new gear (with the possible exception of the entire computer, but that is another story), but in any sim, old or new, the realism and overall experience is greatly enhanced by really good and realistic input hardware. I myself, in a manner befitting one who lived by the penurious traditions of the airline pilot, had minimal input hardware for many years - essentially just a joystick with another axis that could be used as a throttle. Only within the last few years have I sprung for more realistic input devices; specifically, the Alpha and Bravo (which I found to be irresistably enticing due to their realistic appearance, particularly the Bravo!), and the T-Pendular rudder system. I must say that with this current rig, which looks as good as it flies, the experience of "handling" an airplane in any of the several simulators that I have has been boosted in an exponential manner. Sort of like a poor man's home cockpit. Seriousness, on the other hand, is equipment independent, relying as it does on your own mental attitude. I dare say one could fly seriously with the keyboard only. It might not be very realistic compared to how real airplanes are flown (more so perhaps in Airbusses, but don't get me started on those!!), but you can be as serious as you want to be. And I imagine that some have gotten quite adept at that kind of input, which is great. That is certainly better than I can do.

I second the emotion of having more than one. As far as MSFS is concerned, go with the basic version unless you absolutely positively must have either an airport or an airplane that is included in one of the higher priced versions. P3D is probably a dead end, and never was really intended for the hobbyist - apparently everyone using it in that manner is skirting at least the edges of the various licenses, although I don't think anyone is in Sing Sing or Brixton on account of it! MSFS 2020 is so stunning, visually, that I forgive any of its' minor issues, most of which have to do with the typical MS flight model issues, which I suspect that P3D shares. For realism, or more properly more of it, in flight models, XP is the go-to sim; either 11 or 12. Lots of good quality add-ons these days, and the benefit of ortho scenery which you can cobble up yourself using ortho4xp. All you need are a few husky outboard hard drives to hold it all! Unless you are really attracted to on-the-margins visual effects, XP 11 would do very nicely, with the aforementioned add-ons and especially the SimHeaven scenery add-ons, which are a must, especially in XP11 with ortho. With all of that, most of which is free, you can come very close to FS2020 visually, at least if you are not interested in actually finding your own house. For combat, of course, nothing that I know of comes close to DCS World. Another niche area of the hobby is classic times simulating, or what might be called the Time Machine. Previously, this was the exclusive domain of FS9 and, to a certain extent, FSX through HJG and Cal Classics. But now, courtesy of RedWing, a new series of sceneries is becoming available for the 1935 era for FS2020, both for the USA and Europe, at least in parts. So FS2020 is slowly coming of age. All things considered, if you choose not to get both XP and 2020, I'd recommend 2020 since you are already used to the flight models in FSX.

For the first part of the video, "Linda" sounds like her real name should be Svetlana! An Aeroflot copilot.

Seriously, though, one hopes that this would come equipped with true plug-and-play capability in at least both of the main sim platforms today - FS2020 and XPlane. The one problem with the otherwise outstanding Honeycomb Bravo throttle unit, which includes some interface for the functions included here, is the near impossibility of setting it up to actually work in the sim, unless one has the equivalent of a PhD in math and computer science. The fault for some of that lies with the sim developers, who have come up with nomenclature for the interface elements that is completely unintelligible, at least to pilots. But I can imagine some major levels of headache getting something like this set up and running in an actual sim environment (I have never been able to get the lights and A/P stuff to fully work on the Bravo). So be mindful - the software and interface is at least as important as the look, feel, and reliability of the hardware! More important than the price, although not by much....

Ah............. If only it were a Boeing!

I did this once upon a time with a second discrete installation of FS9. I was not aware that the classic planes and scenery were available for FSX. I, too, may have to consider bringing FSX back! As to FS2020, help may be on the way. There are already a number of Golden Age transports available - the PMDG DC-6 is perhaps the most notable but there are many others now - and RedWing is in the process of creating some mid-1930's scenery and airports for FS2020, to go with at least the earliest airplanes. They may also be thinking of making airports from the late 40's-1950's era to go with the planes from that era. And, there is at least one early jet (Boeing 707) which is apparently in development. So....things may get interesting over there! The big challenge in any platform will be to find a way to remove the more modern structures from the scenery. In New York, for example, eliminate any skyscrapers that were built after the Empire State Building, more or less. Probably bring the suburbs back a few miles too, and eliminate a few bridges (Verrazano, for example).

Well, my shortest flight, and possibly a world record for the shortest flight in a transport category aircraft, has already been documented here in the article "Short Haul", which used to be in the features section, but I have no idea where it is now. Like all of my other articles here, it has no doubt been shorn of its pictures and auto-edited into a condition that would have have me black and blue from the ire of the good nuns who had charge of my primary education back in the day! For those of you who have not seen it, it was a real life 727 ferry flight from LGA to JFK one evening around 1979. The winds were such as to favor a takeoff on 22 at LGA, from whence it was a mere whifferdil over to runway 13L at JFK. The whole flight from liftoff to touchdown took a shade under 4 minutes. Even a flight shorter in distance, like El Paso to Biggs AAF would take longer than that due to the configuration of the runways. Try it in MSFS or XPlane and see if you can beat that time!

Folks, unless you managed to score one of the Honeycomb Charlies, Thrustmaster TPR is the only real choice, in terms of something that actually looks and works like real rudder pedals. All the rest of them that look like the ones illustrated above, where your feet merely slide back and forth, are completely inaccurate - with the possible exception of one WWII fighter plane rudders have not worked like that pretty much since Glenn Curtis. I know the TPR's are expensive, but as has been said here, they are worth it. I had a chance to try out the Honeycomb Charlie at Oshkosh last year and they too look and work correctly. They should be a few buck cheaper than the TPR's, if cost is in play....

Well, little internet means no FS2020. That leaves XPlane and the remaining derivatives of FSX; ie, FSX Steam or the various Lockheed P3D products. I would recommend XPlane 12, with XP 11 as a backup choice if your new mid range computer cannot handle XP12. Although neither of the XPlane versions has the cinema-realistic eye candy scenery like FS2020, the flight dynamics are better in XP and XP12 has much better base scenery than 11 and probably better than P3D without some kind of photo overlay add on. Actually, XP (especially 11) can be all dolled up with ortho photo overlays that you can create yourself with a free program called ortho4xp. Tarted up this way, XP 11 (and presumably this will also work in XP12) looks almost as good as FS2020. There are some very good light planes available for the XP's, just as good if not better than the ones for FSX.

As Mark says above, you need to install the Honeycomb software, which is available from the Aerosoft website. There is a separate version for FSX and XPlane. For FS2020, most things should work out of the box, but all of those lights and buttons in front of the throttles must be assigned either in the software or in the case of 2020 in the sim. It is not a task for the faint of heart. One good thing - there are, at Aerosoft, a number of profiles you can download for XP, which are mostly set up to enable at least the autopilot buttons and knobs. Even with that, often the warning and annunciator lights do not all work. There are some good videos on YouTube that show this in all of its' complexity.

Well, no one apparently has this problem, or is in a position to offer advice! No problem, for Honeycomb has once again stepped up and taken care of the problem. The unit will be replaced. They indicated that this sort of thing was an issue in the first batch of builds back in early 2021, and has been addressed by a new fabrication process that handles the wiring in a different way. This will hopefully take care of the problems that some of us had faced. Honeycomb customer support has been nothing less than stellar. It is a shame that they had to deal with these issues because the unit itself, aside from the difficulties that any computer tyro such as myself encounters when hooking up something this interactive (and which attend to all advanced devices, yokes, throttle assemblies and input pads), is easily the most realistic looking and feeling throttle unit that I have ever encountered. Short, that is, of the actual Boeing equipment, with which I have many more hours than I have hours on all my sims combined!

It was the best of throttles, it was the worst of throttles. The Honeycomb Bravo's realism was unsurpassed in anything like its' price range - this from one who spent the better part of 30 years with his hand wrapped around real Boeing throttles! Even though it was only around half scale, it looked, worked and felt very much like the real thing. And it had many neat buttons and dials; which, on occasion, actually worked as intended. On the other hand there were, early on, disturbing evidences of quality control issues, and in the beginning they were as hard to lay hands upon as a real unicorn, or a humble pilot! I was fortunate enough to have obtained one in the beginning, and I was both delighted and impressed by the look and feel of the thing. Getting it set up was another matter, of course, and in truth still is, but pre-made profiles appeared in due course over at Aerosoft, some of which actually worked - to one degree or another. Sad to say, after a couple of months, one of the throttle axes lost the thrust reverse operation, due to a wire inside the unit that had broken from its soldered connection and could be seen flopping around inside. Since the thrust reverse levers are among the most attractive and realistic features of the unit, I called Honeycomb support and, lo and behold, actually wound up talking to someone after a few tries. The long and the short of it was that they took it back and sent me another unit. Excellent customer support! Unfortunately, the second unit was a disaster right out of the box. All six throttle/flap/speedbrake axes were seriously mis-calibrated from the factory. Fortunately, I had by now obtained the secret handshake email of the service tech, and so was able to get yet another new unit rolling my way. Again, excellent support, but by now I was chafing under the enforced lack of a throttle assembly to go with the flawless (to this point at any rate, and knock on wood!) Alpha yoke that I also had managed to acquire early on. After spending yet another three-four weeks of watching the FEDEX tracker inch its' way across the country to my location, the third Bravo arrived. All seemed well.... except that there was a tiny sound, like a muted guitar string plucked, when the third axis was retarded to idle from above around 60% thrust. Nothing seemed to be affected by this, performance wise, and having been exhausted by the multiple RMA's I decided to hope for the best and be very gentle with it. For around 6-8 months all seemed well. I could see, inside the unit, which wire was catching on something, but of course I have no expertise to actually open something like this up, even watching a YouTube video, so I just hoped for the best. And I got the best, for around 8 months. Then, that axis started to behave strangely. At first occasionally, and now pretty much all of the time, it does the following (all references are to the Windows joystick calibration utility - this occurs across all flight sim platforms, and does not seem to be software or calibration related): When advanced from idle to full throttle, all is smooth and well. When retarding the throttle (this is axis three, which is throttle two in a 3 or 4 engine setup and throttle 1 in most 737 setups), things go smoothly until reaching around 55% of throttle travel. Then, the axis goes nuts - it jitters around between 50-64% for a few seconds, as read on the Windows calibration utility. then it goes to 100% and stays there. All of this, of course, while the physical throttle is left at the 50% or so setting where the problem started. In the beginning, running the physical throttle to full and back to idle would clear the fault, but lately it takes a great many cycles of the physical throttle to effect any change in the electrical output. The fact that it shows up in all sims AND the Windows utility indicates that there is a physical problem with that axis. Of course, I will try to dig up that email and arrange for it to be fixed or replaced, but before I do that, I return again to the wellspring of knowledge and advanced computer science degrees that apparently inhabits this and some of the other websites! Does anyone have any suggestions for this problem? I can always just not use that axis, but it is needed for a 4 engine set up....

You get a total of 12 lever arms, molded to look like a)Boeing throttles (4); b) GA piston or turboprop throttles (2 each Throttle mixture and prop) and a flap handle and a speed brake lever. The other "differences" in the two photos above are the stripe on the trim wheel being visible in one of the pictures and not in the other.

Yes, did all of that, and it still is dead on arrival. Signed out of XBox as well (and back in after reboot, of course). It's apparently a known problem, maybe started with SU10 now that I think of it. But it looks like I will be in for a lengthy hiatus from it, since none of the web originated suggestions are working. And I won't be able to get the next updates since I can't even get into it. Oh well........

FS2020 has gone tango uniform on me, possibly for good (thank God for XP12!). It will not start up, and just sits on the Malibu splash screen with the little logo "syncing data" going, little dots spinning merrily but to no effect whatsoever. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is going on with this silly thing?

Excellent artwork and you got the orange color spot on, which is not always the case. This qualifies as a fictional livery, since AOA flew only the shorter model 049 Connies, not the 1049 as we see here. But had CR Smith not lost his faith in international flying after the war, and had AOA remained part of American Airlines, no doubt we would have seen the 1049's as you depict them here!

You sound like you were much like me, although I had the good fortune to never have been furloughed. An often overlooked advantage of the older sims like FSX, FS9 and XP 11 is that they delivered with the nav database that existed at that time. Every day now, it seems, I look at a sectional or IFR chart and discover that another VOR that I knew from time immemorial has bitten the dust. Unfortunately, the data from Navigraph reflect these changes; and flying like we did it in the "old days", using Jet Routes and airways, is no longer fully possible on an updated sim. Until someone comes up with a way to preserve the old navaids and airways in a modern setup, those old sims, non-updated (for nav data) will be our only link to the past!

All of a sudden, when I try to get onto Flightsim.com I get a screen saying it is checking my browser before sending me over to Flightsim.com. It takes around 4-5 seconds and then over I go. What is happening here? Something new on the site, or is this a scam of one sort or another?

Interesting, since I had not known that Delta flew the shorties - they were there and gone before I started flying. When I was flying around the South, from the early 70's, they had nothing but -30's. One poster remarked about a third pilot on these airplanes - you are probably thinking of the 737, not the DC-9. AFAIK, no US airline ever operated any DC-9 series airplane with three pilots - those airplanes had only one jumpseat, and by law that one had to be made available for the FAA upon demand. On the other hand, the 737, although certified and designed for a two pilot crew, ran up against the sensibilities of the UAL pilot group, who had decided that there should be 3 pilots up front on all commercial jets. This, as an aside, was the main reason for the airlines adopting the flight officer concept - the F/E was a licensed pilot on the pilot seniority list - for all jets back in the early 60's. In any event, the 737 was handicapped by the inclusion of a third pilot at many, although perhaps not all, ALPA airlines, and came equipped with two jumpseats, which the new ones may still have today. It was operated like this until a Presidential Board around 1983 ruled that a flight engineer position was not needed for the 757/767 nor any other subsequent airliner, and the 737's went back to a two pilot crew.

Here is a list of all payware and freeware airplanes for FS2020: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/list-all-payware-freeware-aircraft-04-4-22/423989 Take your pick! As to whether planes from earlier iterations of MSFS can be used in 2020, I have seen some posts that lead one to believe that there are ways to port at least some FSX airplanes over (look for MSFSlegacyimporter in Google. I have it but have not tried to use it yet, since it is complex and there can be difficulties, up to and including crashing your sim). There may also be a few "imported" airplanes floating around for download. But caveat emptor - these may be quite problematic. Read the posts associated with any planes or importer programs that you look at.

Well, guess what guys and gals? I got a seemingly identical CTD with XP11, right after I had gotten one in 2020. Same issue, at least for me - panning around the outside view. Been using XP a number of times since and no issues, in part due to some troubleshooting online with Jetline Systems (they discovered some updates that I was not aware of, but nothing else really...). So far, a week gone by with no crashes on XP, and few on 2020, but I doubt whatever is messing up 2020 is really solved yet... PS - straight Jetline system, no overclocking that I know of, 3070 video card