Take-off proceedure - flying manual with FMC/FD

[cwr777]

Ok, I just spent a very frustrating half hour trying to get this proceedure down, with no success. What am I doing wrong. Here's what I did:

1. Set LAX as the POSINIT airport, the loaded up the FMC with a flight plan from LAX to LAS. Ensured it was active - map active. The plan is solid, nice easy climb to 8,000 to waypoint exert, then a turn back to shore and up to cruise altitude around the Pomona VOR.
2. In the climb page of the FMC, set the climb target at 250, (becuase the 250/10000 limit does not seem to work).
3. Set the OAT in both the N1 Limit Page and the Perf page
4. Set V Speeds
5. Set the TO thrust end altitude at 1,200, down from 1,500 on the N1 limit page.
6. Set a speed of 250 on the MCP and armed AT
7. Set an altitude of 8,000 on the MCP, the alititude of the first waypoint. The set runway heading on the heading bug.
8. Taxied to the runway, cleared to go.
9. Throttles to around 50%
10. TO/GA button pushed, AT engages, FD active, off we go.
11. Rotate, follow FD to keep initial climb speed at V+15 (I think that's right. So far so good. Nice stable climb, plane likes flying at about 16 degrees nose up.
12. At 1,000 feet, hit the LNAV button and it engages and starts directing the FD needles. Again, so far so good.
13. Then, I hit VNAV and it all falls apart - and instead of getting it to engage and direct pitch for flap retract and acceleration, the MCP drops to 110, throttles retard, a white ARM appears above the artificial horizon in the top left corner and the plane noses down and wallows in the sky. Passenger or two in the back lets out a scream.

What am I doing wrong that's keeping the VNAV from engaging?

The AP won't engage either, even though the manuals all say hit the AP at 400 feet above the ground.

I really wish someone would write an addendum for this plane that outlines a proceedure for flying the plane manually to cruise. I didn't buy the plane to hit LNAV, VNAV and AP.

Many thanks for your help.

Colin

This is my first time on this forum, so, if I've asked a question that's been asked tons of times before, please just point me to the threads.

Again, many thanks.

[drhaynes]

Colin,

Peter McLeland has written an excellent tutorial which you may like to follow to see if that gets rid of your problems. This is the link

http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/dcforum...rum=DCForumID3

Regards

David

[doncarlos]

I think you answered your own question.

If you want to manually fly to cruise simply do a MS flight and edit that plan to go to the way points you want and load that into FMC with nothing but cruise altitude and you are
done. PS if you use 1000 or 1200 as your initial climb rate in
the AP ATC will leave you alone as you increase that to 1600 and
then decrease it to say 1000 at higher altitude IF YOU FOLLOW INITIAL ATC INSTRUCTIONS AFTER TAKEOFF WITHOUT A REPLY UNTIL R AP HAS SETTLED IN AT THE INITIAL CLIMB RATE.




doncarlos