How an A318 became an A007

[EHM-2765 Luis]

Hi guys
Just want to share with you what happened during the Leg 3 of James Bond event. The flight was a very calm one, the weather was fine, clear, and nothing seemed to go wrong until I approach San Francisco. After obtaining landing instructions and checked auto pilot, fine, auto throttle, fine, glide slope alive, approach button on, and full landing configuration I decided to change to spot view for some screenshots of the approach. And then everything went wrong... Unexpectedly the a318 began a furious descent straight to the ocean like goldfinger plane. if you saw the movie ,diving like a kamikaze plane. After the surprise of that behavior I change to cockpit view as fast as I could, disengage auto pilot, auto throttle, full throttle and hard back on the joystick  . As you know an A318 takes some time to respond (except in James Bond movies  ) and before I could go up I even touch the ground somewhat like a touch and go situation fortunately with full landing configuration and so I was able to climb again and after a couple of stalls( yeah I'm not that good as 007  )I manage to get it under control and fly the rest of the approach manually and landed safely at KSFO  . I don't know if this has ever happen to you but I don't think I did anything wrong on the approach and may be this is another of those strange things that happen with FSX or may be FSX, Fraps, FDC,Flight logger and scenery settings were just too much for my machine at that occasion because normally it performs very well but what it seems was that auto pilot suddenly stop functioning though it was engaged and the plane was just on his own, naturally heading down. Any comments will be appropriated and after all we have to fly the event with a James Bond spirit so some surprises are welcome.(I did have Fraps in movie position so I have a film of the all situation. If one of these days I manage to get the time and knowledge I' ll try to make a movie of it and uploaded here).
Anyway just keep enjoying your flights 

[EHM-2758 Peter]

Hi Luis,

What did happen exactly, I don't know, but from my own experience I can do some guessing: first of all... you survived and I hope that your passengers did too! When this kind of occurences take place when I'm flying, it usually has to do with moving the yoke by accident, what results in a disengagement of LNAV or VNAV, which depends on the move you made on the yoke. Another problable cause can be the use of the keyboard for other objectives, like you discribed in your message. You just have to try it out if yo really want to know what caused the dive!

On the other hand those situations make clear that the roll of a pilot, especially during approach, is to keep highly concentrated on the movements of the plane. It's not that odd to imagine that most crashes and nearly crashes happen during landing procedures.

Peter

[EHM-2765 Luis]

Thanks Peter I think you probably right about those two things first we all did survive and for the second one may be trying to take good screenshots while landing going in and out of the cockpit and having to push keys on keyboard certainly is not going to be compatible with a good landing. I' ll keep your advices in mind next time.

[EHM-1465 Dominic]

Peter's absolutely right here Luis - there's no easy way to know what caused the sudden descent other than to set it up again and see what happens. The likely candidates are loss of airspeed leading to a stall - perhaps the autothrottle was switched off without you realising - or a sudden change of elevator trim. Either of these could be caused by accidentally hitting the keyboard while doing other tasks

[EHM-2097 Andrei]

Yes, that happened to me too a lot of times, and I finally changed all the keyboard shortcuts in such a way that no single key pressed means anything to FS. Typically, on PP flights I used to type something into my FMC (actually just BELIEVING I was typing into the FMC), something that contained a "L" => lights go down and I get a penalty that is zapping the entire flight.

Also it depends on the very aircraft add-on you use. The Wilco Airbuses have a rather bad record when it comes to following the glideslope, especially when confronted to wind changes.

Andrei

[EHM-2765 Luis]

Thanks for your advices. I find very interesting the change of the keyboard shortcuts but I'm afraid it will be a very consuming time task so I think I stick to the common advice from you and that I think I can resume "Keep focused on a good landing(specially this phase) rather than on a good screenshot".

[EHM-2387 Eric-Jan]

Tip: I use FS recorder to record my FSX flights, so I can replay my position (and throttle settings, yoke settings, flaps settings, etc.) afterwards for screenshots / movies. That way you don't have to have fraps running during those critical phases of flight (with the bonus of killing your frame reate), and you get to focus on the actual flying.
FS Recorder even records AI traffic, so you can replay your online session including your fellow pilots.

[EHM-2765 Luis]

Thanks for the tip Eric, I just downloaded FS recorder and by what I saw on the first time I ran it, this is really quite an interesting program. First it almost has no impact on frame rates and it will consume much less space than frap files. But the most important feature is that you just press record key and you are actually recording not only what you have on screen (like Fraps does) but also at the same time spot views, tower views, cockpit views traffic views and all these features become available for screenshots and movies AFTER you finish flying. You don't have to worry about going inside and outside cockpit and moving eye point while you're flying and choosing the best view, you do that only afterwards and that allows you to be concerned about flying which must be your main objective. Also another advantage of this tool is that you can learn a lot about your performance when you playback your movies and you can choose all the available views you recorded, you can see your climbing from cockpit, from tower, from spot view one after the other, approaching an airport seeing your alignment your descent your landing and so on, lots of other possibilities. This tool has offers you the possibility of seeing clearly your pilot mistakes and try to improve and eliminate them from your next flight. Finally you can also use Fraps for making a movie if you want to play your flight outside FSX. A very good tool in my opinion and I do advise everyone reading these posts to give it a try specially if you are a fan of screenshots/movies and post your comments cause certainly there's much more than this, when you begin to use the program and last but not least it's free.
Good flights

[EHM-2387 Eric-Jan]

Absolutely right, Luis!
An ideal tool. No noticeable impact on framerate (!) during the actual recorded flight, and just replay from a couple of different viewpoints, while recording with Fraps. Then edit all fraps captures (I use Pinnacle Studio 14), and that is exactly how I made (for example) the 10 year anniversary video.

The taxi / take-off of the V1-livery Beech1900D, I did only once, and recorded with FS Recorder. Then, with fraps, I recorded spot view, wing view, even recorded while playing back as AI traffic while flying a helicopter in 2D cockpit view, without the main panel (SHIFT-1).
See if you can spot all the different viewpoints I used in the first couple of minutes that depict the taxi and take off of the first flight of EuroHarmony

[EHM-2765 Luis]

Hi Eric
 Just came back for a short holidays period and it seems I can´t get flight logger to assign me the next flight of the James Bond event. Is there any problem I' m not aware of? I don't think it's a software problem so maybe too much time without flying? I red somewhere that I was expected to fly once a month but I also think I red I was expected to fly every 15 days is that right or no? I'll be waiting for your reply . Thanks in advance

[EHM-1465 Dominic]

Hi Luis,

Every leg of a ProPilot Event has specific dates it must be flown between which you can check on the Event page. It looks like your last Event flight was to KSDF on 9th June?

I'm afraid the next leg to Iqaluit had to be flown by the 22nd June so you've missed it by a week.

This is purely a requirement for ProPilot Events so otherwise we only ask pilots to submit a Pirep every month.

Sorry

[EHM-2765 Luis]

Hi Eric I'm very sorry i can't complete the event. This was my first event and I was excited with it, but I guess you're right rules are suppose to be followed and no one is to blame but me. I'm sure it won't happens again. Changing plans I'm going to try to complete the Tour of Sweden but by the description of it, you mention that some third part downloads scenery can be downloaded but I think the link is broken because nothing happens when I press it. Can you please confirm that? Even without the link I think I'm going to start it anyway (holidays make you hungry to fly  ). Thanks

[EHM-2387 Eric-Jan]

You are right Luis, the link seems to be missing from that tour page.
I believe it was linking to FSNordic in the past (Dominic can you confirm that?).
They "live" at http://www.fsnordic.net/
Have a look around their site, and you will find loads of downloads for Scandinavian airports. And best of all: good quality for free

Sorry too hear you had to end the 007 tour this way. But there will be other tours, I promise you

Happy landings!

[EHM-1465 Dominic]

Hi Luis,

E-J is quite right about the scenery link - you should find all the sceneries you need at FSNordic. I know that Alexander is working on the downloads page so that we can reactivate the links in certain Tours.

Enjoy the Tour - it's beautiful up there