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pdmike

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About pdmike

  • Birthday November 29

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    Southern California
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    Attorney

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  1. Great! Thanks guys. That solved that one. I have been away from FS for a while and it has been a LONG time since I had to configure a new, download of the program, so there are things I knew well that I have totally forgotten. This is/was one of them. Stay tuned - I'm sure there will be more. I really appreciate your help.
  2. I am having trouble minimizing FSX Steam Edition from the flight screen. By flight screen, I mean a view with the control panel on the bottom and the top half looking out the plane's window at what's ahead. It's the main screen I use when actually flying the plane. The program is in Full Screen mode. I have a menu in the upper left, but there doesn't appear to be any close or minimize buttons on the upper right. So I have to hit Escape, go to the Opening Screen and then I can minimize that. I shouldn't have to go to all that trouble just to minimize FSX to the taskbar. How do I fix this?
  3. No. I can't change it. Haven't gotten to the Save issue yet. So what should I do about being able to change it in the first instance?
  4. I recently installed FSX (Steam Version) onto Windows 11. It works fine. But I am trying to configure FSX to my liking and one of the first things I want to do is configure it so that it opens directly to my default flight screen. I don't want to have to go through the opening screen. I have spent over an hour trying to do this and have run out of gas. I am able to access the FSX.cfg file in my Users/appdata folder. I have located the Show_opening-screen=1 file, so let's not worry about all of the steps leading up to that. My problem is EDITING the Show_opening-screen=1 file to change it to Show_opening-screen=0, which will achieve my desired result. How do I edit that bad boy? There are all kinds of solutions on Google, but none of them seem applicable and/or flat don't work.
  5. Fully understand and much appreciate the "beyond the call" instruction you have given me here. Thanks.
  6. So how do you get to the starting point of a STAR? In FS, do I have to be using ATC and have them vector me to that point? How do I know when I am there, at the starting point for the STAR?
  7. Thank you. I will try and digest it all. One specific question about an Approach Plate. It is hard for me to read and understand an Approach Plate. So much information and a million abbreviations. But I know enough that you have to go to the starting point to begin a STAR approach, right? My question is - how do get to the starting point? How do you know when you are there?
  8. (1) I understand that there may be a number of different approaches to any given airport and that each of these approaches may not have the same number of pieces (or segments). (2) I'll fly the thing again. I am approaching the Reno-Tahoe airport at 18,000 feet, 75 miles out from the airport in a stock, Boeing 737-800. I am flying a heading of 330 with GPS in control of the plane. I am not using ATC. As I begin the descent, I load an approach plan by doing the following: PROC/SELECT APPROACH/ILS16R/VECTORS/ACTIVATE. i notice that now, when I go to the alternate page of my flight plan, the various "pieces" of the approach have appeared: Approach ILS16R; TAKLE;RW16R; 6500; FMG; NICER; There is more, but it is off at the bottom the screen and I don't know how to scroll down to see it. (Question: What is all that other stuff doing in there below RW16R? I never use it. The only "pieces" I use are TAKEL and RWY16R.) So, having activated my approach.I continue my descent. As I do so, I notice that the GPS line of flight (in red) no longer appears on my main, flight plan page. Descent continues. I continue on a heading of 331. (I have leveled off at 12500 ft. because there is a mountain in the way of my descent path and I have to hold the descent at 12500 in order to get over the mountain. After leveling off, I am on a heading of 338.) As soon as we clear the mountain, the descent continues to 6,600 ft., which is 2000 ft. AGL. Note: The NAV/GPS switch is on GPS and the NAV HOLD switch is ON. Descent continues. I am now 6.8 miles out. The RWy16R ILS frequency is on. The airport is ahead, on my left at an estimated angle of 20 degrees. My heading is 331. My approach plan says I am heading for TAKLE and that is 17 miles away. I am now at 9,000 ft., flying right by the airport on a heading of 331. (I know, I know .... I started my descent a little too late but it is what it is.) Once I reach TAKEL, the plane begins a left turn. The next point of the arrival plan is RWY16R. I began the turn at a heading of 336. At the end of the left turn, the plane levels off on a heading of 128, 8 miles out from RWY16R. I switch to NAV and hit APP. The plane immediately begins to turn left - I assume to pick up the localizer. The plane then descends and crashes into the ground - I guess because when I activated NAV and hit APP, it deactivated ALT HOLD and I didn't notice that. If I had not crashed, the plane would have picked up the locaizer and I would have done an ILS landing on RWy16R. (3) See above for a description of the turn. So - that's it. Is this the way an Approach is supposed to work, because it seems to me there is an awful lot of unnecessary flying around the airport before landing. And what about the crash? Are we supposed to immediately re-activate the ALT HOLD, once we switch to NAV and hit APP?
  9. Will do. SB - going to dinner right now, but will get back to you ASAP. And thank you!
  10. I am having some trouble utilizing the PROC function of the GPS in the B737-800. I want to fly a standard approach to the destination airport/runway, but I don't seem to be able to push the right buttons. What happens is, I press PROC, and then SELECT APPROACH. I next then ILS28 because I plan to make an ILS landing on RWY 28. I then must choose either VECTORS or HRV under "Trans." Here, I don't know what to do, so I have been selecting VECTORS. I don't know what HRV stands for or what it does. Next, I either select LOAD or ACTIVATE, depending on how far out I am. As I get closer to the airport, I will ACTIVATE if I have previously put the approach into LOAD. I have no idea how far out one should be before ACTIVATING the approach. OK - with the approach activated, and the airport coming up, I can zoom out on my Flight Plan view, and see a dotted white line (which was not there before) winding around the airport. It will have a hold circle in it and will appear to be the approach that I have selected. The problem is, the aircraft will never coincide with the dotted white line. It will generally fly over the airport and then begin a turn that will ultimately get it lined up with the intended runway, but I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work. What am I doing wrong? I keep the plane in GPS mode during all of the above.
  11. I did as instructed on a flight from LAX to Sacramento. Worked like a charm. Thank you so much. Although, I will say, flying that way is a little boring. I think I prefer to make vector adjustments from time to time and do the other things necessary to fly the plane myself. But, at least, thanks to your instruction, I have added a new factor to my flight arsenal.
  12. I'm not at the point yet where I can have the GPS guide the aircraft. How do you do that? I think I am loading the flight plan properly. Could that be the problem? If not, what?
  13. Great stuff, as usual. Read and acknowledged. I will do as suggested and learn from it. One thing, though. I have not been able to figure out how to get AP to automatically follow my flight plan. It seem that whicheveer I have the GPS/NAV switch set to, I have to manually set the new vector when I come to a waypoint. Any thoughts on this?
  14. Thanks. Yes, I did notice that so long as I am in GPS mode, with an ILS frequency on Nav1, if I have Nav1 activated, the morse code comes on, but that's all that happens. No indication of distance from the airport and no interception of the localizer. Thanks for the link. I'll sure take a look.
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