Trans-Atlantic Problems

[tommchowat]

Hey chaps,
I've just got enough hours to fly the 744 for BA Virtual. So far I've done two transatlantic crossings, both using the PMDG 744 and Activesky 6.5. My problem is (sometimes anyway, it doesn't happen constantly) the wind. As anyone who has crossed the Atlantic knows, it is mostly in your face, and if you've had really bad luck, it's going at about 120mph giving you a pretty pathetic groundspeed. Anyway my issue is that, when it's blowing in my face say at 60kts, then it starts to slow down by about 1kt every two seconds, my IAS starts to decrease. Fair enough, that's correct. However, the autothrottle has trouble catching up with this. After a late reaction, the N1 increases to try and match this, but I discovered that it couldn't actually reach enough power to counter the speed bleed off, so I had to disconnect the AP and AT, put the nose down, full power and it was fine. If I hadn't have done that, we would've stalled. So after that happened, I changed the thrust limit from CRZ to CON, which allows for a much larger amount of N1 and EPR (more power). This seemed to work well enough. It's not just when the wind dies down, but it can pretty rapidly change direction, and at one point it was literally running circles around me, changing from a headwind to a sidewind, then to a tailwind within the space of 30 seconds. CON on the thrust setting works good to counter this, had I left it on CRZ then we would have had a stall. I'm definitely not too high or heavy for my flight before you say that might be the case, I work all of that out beforehand However, sometimes, if the wind is changing speed and direction pretty rapidly and constantly, even the CON thrust setting has trouble keeping up. I again have to disconnect everything and put the nose down with full power, which works fine, but results in a loss in altitude and is not really ideal.

Thoughts, comments?!

[zacharace]

From a fellow BAV member, congrats on the promotion.
I've had this problem, and still do occasionally, just using FS Real-World weather. It can be really annoying going from an 80kt headwind to a 60kt sidewind and having A/T try to catch up. I've never had a case with your severity (having to disconnect the A/P to prevent a stall) though. Have you tried playing around with ActiveSky settings?

[JSkorna]

Hi Tom,

Please post your ASV6.ini file or post a good s.s. of your AS Options screen.

[tommchowat]

Thanks you two chaps, sorry for the late reply. Jim, here's a picture:

[JSkorna]

Hi Tom,

Your settings are fine. Now what I want you to do is go into FSUIPC and click on the default settings button and on the weather settings Off button and then try a flight.

[tommchowat]

Yup I did that, and I'm not sure if things were better or not... went over to Boston yesterday to give it a shot, and I still had to have the thrust setting on CON, but this time there were no occasions where I almost stalled.