Eurocargo Meljet 747-400F Unflyable for me

[EHM-0695 Scott]

At the expense of a crash on ProPilot, MelJet's 747-400 Freighter is unflyable. My first flight from Lisbon to New York showed first symptons with the aircraft experiencing jitters and poor turning performance both on and off autopilot. Using an autoland feature, I was able to set the aircraft down safely however, while bouncing down the runway even at slow taxi speed made this flight (over 8 hours) very disappointing.

For the return flight, I restored the default base installation from Meljet and added Eurocargo's livery. This flight was worse. In an effort to avoid the poor autopilot approach control performance I elected to fly the airport into Lisbon (on my return Propilot flight now) manually. This was a mistake. Not only was the aircraft jittery but, uncontrollable at slower speeds (between 170 and 200 KIAS). It was very difficult maneuvering the aircraft to the runway and unfortuantely, the elevator control was non-existent on short-final for runway 3, plummeting the aircraft into a stall and crash onto the field.

I have flown many times with Meljet's (with Euroharmony main division 47) without any performance issues and the aircraft flies beautifully.

I have since (the crash at Lisbon) drawn on my stable 747-400 passenger version and documents from Boeing (for the 747-400F) and "tweaked" EHC's 747-400F to a stable performing freighter.

If anyone else has experienced this bizarre and tragic anomalies with the -400 Freighter let me know. You may have more success with my version.

For those of you that have flown the 747-400F by the numbers with no problems, disregard this message. Perhaps I had a corrupted install file - though I doubt it. It was my fault for not flight-testing this model before making any official flights.

Ciao for now.

[EHM-1821 Javier]

I had the same problem with the 747-400 Pax. while flying rhe europe tour, landing at EDDT, the plane wouldnt turn quickly, ATC even asked me whats wrong with it :$  First attempt on the flight, the plane wont turn onto finals, after lots of confusion, i decided to end the flight and i tried it again, second attempt my plane got clipped by a plane taking off, crash:s   and on the third try i changed to the tri-jet!;D No more  turning problems with the MD-11;D

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Hi folks,

I am sad to hear this. The problem comes from the fact that this plane was optimized for FS2002 and not 2004. Although I mentioned this issue in a previous post, a possible solution to fix the problem is here: if you do no more than copy the default FS2004 747 AIR file over your EHM installation, it will probably fix the most problems. This is because the MelJet dynamics are based on the default 747.

If you feel the banking is still bad, you can copy all the "empty-weight-xxxxx-moment-of-inertia" values from the default 747 to the EHM plane's CFG file.

My next task is to fix and repaint the Division airplanes, so this aircraft and all the others will be fixed soon during the following monthes.
Javier, did you have problems with the previous 747, or the new one with the new livery ?

[EHM-0948 Bruno]

Hi Scott,

First all of thank you for your kind suggestions .

As Robert said we are starting the improve the division airplanes. So, give the guy a little break .... He is working a lot on improving the airplanes, and if you see how the new main division airplanes are, then you can expect the same quality and improvements for the division ones.

I flown the 747-400F some times on the FS2004 and I never got that behaviour that you tell here. So, all we can do is to accept your comments and double test the airplane to see if that happens or not. But, anyway, we are re-structuring them so expect a new brand model on 2007.

And more thing, I strongly suggest that you don't test new airplanes using ProPilot because normally is a good probability to crash ... When you are certain that you handle the airplane good (in this case the airplane dynamics fromt he installed model) you can use it on ProPilot

Regards and safe flights!

[EHM-1821 Javier]

Originally posted by EHM-1001 Robert
Javier, did you have problems with the previous 747, or the new one with the new livery ?

Old Livery 747-400 Passenger, didnt try Cargo before and i havent tried the new livery 744s yet