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ELITE Jet 7.01
By Patrick Wanner (17 October 2002)
Introduction
ELITE Jet was originally developed by MD-81 pilot Urs Ribi, in close cooperation with Swissair. Its goal was to provide the airlines with a high-performance instrument and aircraft transition trainer. Despite its origin in airline training, Jet has also gained acceptance among commercial pilots wishing to sharpen their skills on high-performance aircraft at home.
System Requirements
To use ELITE Jet without GenView, a very useful 3D terrain add-on for ELITE, you need a computer with at least a Pentium 166 MHz, 32 MB RAM, 80 MB hard disk space, a 16 MB graphics card with 16-bit color support and DirectX 3 or higher drivers, a free USB port, a free serial port (for external hardware), a sound card, a mouse, a floppy drive and a CD-ROM drive. ELITE runs on Windows 98, Me, 2000, NT 4.0 and XP.
 On approach to Zurich's runway 14. Note the DH light is on. |
 On approach to Zurich's runway 14. |
 Entering a side-slip during the flare. |
| A note regarding the screen shots. Some of these photos were made in ELITE Jet version 7.0. Shortly after 7.0's release, a new version (7.01) was released, introducing several new features, some of which affect the look of the panel. The biggest change is the addition of a percentual speed brake indicator and a more accurate flight director. | ||
ELITE Jet also works on Macintosh computers. I didn't have the opportunity to test this capability, but I assume that it works as well on the Macs as it does on PC's. To use ELITE Jet on a Mac, you need at least a PPC-603e 66 MHz Processor, 64 MB RAM, 100 MB hard disk space, a 256 Color / 1024 x 768 resolution display, a free USB port, a free serial port for external ELITE hardware (if applicable), a mouse or similar pointing device, a sound card, a CD-ROM and a floppy disk drive for installation. If you don't have a floppy drive, the installation files can be e-mailed to you.
The requirements for GenView are a bit steeper than ELITE Jet alone. You need at least a PII 450 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 700 MB hard disk space and a 32 MB graphics card with OpenGL support. Otherwise the requirements are identical to those of ELITE alone. GenView doesn't run on Macs.
 After touchdown, the reverse thrusters are engaged. |
 Standing up throttles in preparation for takeoff on ZRH runway 28. The thrust computer has been configured and since the engines are spooling up equally, the autothrottle will be engaged in EPR mode and the takeoff commenced. |
 The aircraft is accelerating, now at 70 knots with takeoff power set. |
The testbed is a P4 1.7 GHz with 512MB RDRAM, a 60GB hard disk, a Geforce 3 Ti200 graphics card with 64MB and Windows XP Professional. ELITE Jet runs completely fluidly on this machine both with and without GenView activated.
Although the use of an external throttle quadrant is recommended with Jet, it is possible to use a standard throttle lever (which most joysticks and yokes include) to control both of the aircraft's engines. If however you wish to practice engine-out scenarios, you will need a compatible external throttle quadrant. Initiative Computing produces various throttle quadrants, targeted at different user groups. For this review, the King Air quadrant was used. I can readily recommend this quadrant, as it includes quite a lot for your money (six levers, four of which have reverse and feather detents and gear and flap switches). Those who prefer using Precision Flight Control's quadrants will be happy to know that their whole series of hardware is fully supported. For a list of all supported throttle quadrants, please contact ELITE Simulation Solutions (ESS) or Initiative Computing (you can find the contact information at the end of the article).
Aircraft
ELITE Jet includes only one aircraft: the McDonnell Douglas MD-81 with the Swissair avionics package. The MD-81 is the one of the first variants of the MD-80 family: it first entered service in 1980 with Swissair and Austrian Airlines. Today however, American Airlines operates the most MD-80's. McDonnell Douglas made multiple variants of the MD-80 with both extended fuselage length (MD-90 series), improved performance and glass cockpits. The MD-81, being one of the earliest variants of the MD-80, has the shortest fuselage length and oldest instrument set. Despite this, the MD-81 is a good aircraft for transition training, in order to get acquainted with relatively advanced flight guidance systems.
 Taken during the rotation to T/O attitude. The aircraft is now showing a positive rate of climb on the radio altimeter. The vertical speed indicator will follow shortly. |
 We are now climbing fast at V2+10 and the gear is coming up. |
 At 1500' AGL, we select climb thrust on the thrust computer and continue maintaining V2+10. |
Flight model
ELITE Jet uses the same flight modeling algorithms as ELITE Prop, using performance tables as a base for a hard-coded flight model. Jet handles pretty realistically in the air: the bank and pitch seem realistic, and stalls are reasonably well modeled.Jet also simulates all of the secondary control surfaces you'd find on the real MD-81, including flaps, slats and spoilers. The flaps and spoilers have the aerodynamic effect one would expect and operate realistically for the most part. A nice feature is the speed brake indicator, which shows you how far the spoilers are extended in percent. My only criticism is that the spoilers cannot be armed like in the real aircraft and can be extended beyond flight detent while in the air. However, as long as the user operates the speed brakes in accordance with the real-world procedures, the realism of the simulation doesn't suffer.
A new feature in ELITE Jet is asymmetrical thrust. It is modeled realistically, both in the contexts of differential thrust lever detents and of V1 cuts. Combined with Initiative Computing's excellent throttle quadrants, engine-out scenarios are not only realistic, but also fun to train. This is Jet's first step into the domain of procedures training and hopefully future releases will continue to add valuable features like this.
Altogether I would say that ELITE Jet's flight models are more than sufficient for the purpose of instrument flight training and for certain aspects of procedures training. In future releases I would like to see some improvements in the areas of ground handling and of irregular flight operations (asymmetrical lift, airframe stress and the like.).
Panel
Jet features a panel complete with all primary and secondary instruments, as well as a fully simulated digital flight guidance system (DFGS). Although the panel isn't photo realistic like the other ELITE panels, it looks clean and is easy to use. I will now move onto a discussion of the DFGS, as this is a primary feature of ELITE Jet.ELITE allows the user to customize the panel. You can choose between cross-bar and v-bar flight director, customize the appearance of the ADF (automatic direction finder) and choose between a large and small pitch scale on the attitude indicator.
 At approximately 3000' AGL, we engage the autopilot and select a higher speed on the autothrottle. We also begin the flap retraction schedule. |
 On another ILS to ZRH 14, this time to test the autoland capability. We are at approximately 1100' AGL, completely configured for a CAT 3 approach and landing. |
 With part of the panel minimized, we can see the runway and the crosswind becomes apparent. |
The DFGS in an MD-81 consists of an autopilot, auto throttle and flight management computer (FMC). Jet doesn't simulate the MD-81's FMC, thus only standard instrument (IFR) navigation is possible. The primary interfaces for interaction with the DFGS are the flight guidance control panel (FGCP), thrust rate indicator (TRI), flight director (FD) and flight mode annunciator (FMA).
Jet includes all of these and they are, for the most part, well modeled. The autopilot, is well simulated and includes all of the real modes except Turbulence and NAV, a lateral navigation mode for linking to the FMC. The autopilot also has, like its real-life counterpart, the CATIIIb auto land capability. After testing it in a 20 wind crosswind though, I noted that the autopilot cannot side-slip the aircraft (like the real one does) in the ALIGN stage of the approach: the autopilot just lands with the crab.
The auto throttle, thrust computer and annunciator panels are well modeled and they mostly perform as they would on the real-world aircraft. The auto throttle has SPD, MACH and EPR modes, the latter of which can be linked to the thrust computer, which in turn includes presets for various stages of flight (takeoff, climb, cruise, go-around, etc.). The annunciator panel shows you which modes are engaged or armed and seems to be a perfect replica of the one found in the real MD-81.
The only inaccuracy I noticed is that turning on the auto throttle will automatically begin engine spool-up to the pre-selected EPR setting. The normal behavior would be for the auto throttle to go into CLMP mode (in clamp mode, power is removed from the autopilot servo), in order to begin actual engine spool-up you would have to press the EPR button again or press the TOGA (takeoff / go around) button. I also encountered situations where minor FGCP actions, like changing the radial on the course selector, resulted in auto throttle disconnection. This problem seems however to be limited to my setup alone: apparently no other users have had this problem yet, but I would be remiss if I did not mention this problem in my review.
Otherwise I have no complaints about this panel and praise Initiative Computing's excellent simulation of the intricacies of the real aircraft's instrument panel.
 The flight mode annunciator shows us that the autopilot has now entered align mode, in order to align the plane with the runway. Unfortunately, Jet's autopilot isn't able to do this and continues flying with the crab. |
 A screen shot just before touchdown, with a wind correction angle of about 10 degrees. |
 A screen shot of the new panel in Jet 7.01. One of the biggest changes is the new percentual speed brake indicator. Here we are intercepting the localizer for the ILS approach to New York La Guardia's runway 4. In addition, we are slowing down to 210 knots, with the speed brakes extended approximately to flight detent. The FMA tells us that we will either need to select a higher speed or extend the flaps (ALPHA SPD). |
Sounds
ELITE Jet models various sounds rather nicely, including engine sound (variable, depending on thrust level), stabilizer trim warnings, gear warning horn, stall warning, altitude warning and the ground proximity warning system (GPWS). Jet doesn't however model gear and flap sounds, which is quite a pity, since its sound effects would otherwise be quite good. A bit of confusion arose while writing the review, since the MD-81's I am familiar with have altitude callouts, which are used during the landing. The Swissair MD-81 that was used as a base for Jet apparently didn't have this feature and callouts are thus not included in the simulator.
Malfunctions
As mentioned in the Flight Models section, a new feature in ELITE Jet is asymmetric thrust. After testing engine failures both in the air and on the ground, I have found them to be quite realistic.Jet also allows other malfunctions to be programmed, either for immediate, timed or random triggering, including receiver failures, gear failures and engine failures or power loss. There are simulators out there with many more malfunction possibilities than Jet, but I think that Initiative Computing has balanced out its selection well: they've modeled only the failures which concern the pilot flying, thus maintaining a realistic workload.
ELITE Prop / Jet
ELITE stands for Electronic Instrument Training Environment and is a term which covers both the Prop and Jet programs. For a long period of time, Jet was not updated, whereas Prop has been continuously developed and improved. When Initiative Computing undertook the updating of Jet to Prop's standards, they implemented almost all of Prop's core features in Jet, except for the instrument display in the replay mode. This means that, excluding the less powerful replay mode, ELITE Jet has, at the core level (map, control, configuration, modification, METAR screens), exactly the same functionality and the same well-designed interface that ELITE users are used to as ELITE Prop. Jet also works with all current GenView and RealView add-ons.
 We've broken through the clouds and the autopilot has now been disengaged for a manual landing. |
 Jet's configuration screen. Note how you can modify the instrument configuration. |
 ELITE Jet has extensive malfunction capabilities. |
Manual
Jet includes a good 74 page manual in PDF format. The manual is based on a real MD-81 operations manual. It begins with a gradual introduction to the MD-81 and then proceeds to explain the purpose and proper use of all the instruments and avionics. It finishes by explaining the use of the DFGS in the context of an example flight, which is accompanied by about 20 pages of tables full of speeds (V1, V2, Vref, etc. for all relevant gross weights). Although Jet is meant for real airline pilots or people with previous experience with jet class aircraft, I feel that any user with knowledge of IFR flight could find his way in Jet with the help of this manual.
Conclusion
Jet has a good panel, a pretty accurate flight model and excellent analysis tools. For this reason I would say that Jet is best used for IFR and jet familiarization training and possibly for certain types of procedures training. Those looking for a truly good MD-80 procedures trainer with excellent flight models should look to Airline Simulator 2.If your requirements for procedures training are not that stringent however and you are looking to primarily get to know advanced flight guidance systems all while practicing simpler procedures, you will find ELITE Jet an excellent trainer, quite in line with Initiative Computing's high standards. Those looking to sharpen their IFR skills in a fast, demanding aircraft and who want ELITE's outstanding analysis tools, should use ELITE Jet.
For more information on ELITE Jet, please refer the following web sites and phone numbers:
In the U.S.A.:
ELITE Simulation Solutions
672 N. Semoran Blvd.
Suite #104
Orlando FL 32807
Telephone: (800) 557 7590 or (407) 277 7700 outside of the U.S.A.
Fax: (888) 269 1120 or (407) 277 7623
Web site: http://www.flyelite.com
In Europe:
Initiative Computing AG Switzerland
Wiesentalstrasse 4
CH-8185 Winkel
Switzerland
Telephone: (0041) 1 861 05 61
Fax: (0041) 1 861 05 63
Web site: http://www.flyelite.ch
For more information on ELITE, GenView and RealView, please refer to the following reviews:
Official review of ELITE 7.0 for FlightSim.Com
Official review of GenView for Microwings
Official review of RealView for FlightSim.Com
Patrick Wanner
patrick@dmarch.com
