Makes sense. Yeah, I’ve been slowly realizing just how automated the Airbus really is. But, it’s definitely a fun plane to fly nevertheless.
Like I said, I just need to spend more time practicing and flying test flights when I have the time. But. I’ll use you and Neo’s advice and continue watching more videos.
As I said its to do with the new calabration settings on the flypad. I dont need help on youtube… Cheers
I don’t think it’s related at all. A lot of people using SimBrief with A32NX, and they seem to be okay. I don’t use SimBrief at all. I can see the appeal, but it’s too complex for my need. I find point and click on the world map is easier to do for my flights and have everything loaded.
You don’t need to increase the airspeed. When you’re on managed mode, it does it on its own automatically. It’ll keep itself on 250 knots under 10,000 and automatically targets a higher climb speed above it. Same goes for descent, keep it on managed mode, and it’ll keep the descent airspeed, once it passes through 10,000 ft. It automatically targets a slower 250 knots. And once it passes the DECEL point, it automatically switches to Approach phase, and targets the green dot speed. You don’t have to do anything on the airspeed knob at all.
The only thing I can think of for switching to selected airspeed is for these reasons:
If you use selected airspeed on cruising to speed it up, when ATC tells you to descent, switch it back to managed airspeed mode and set the new altitude target and push the knob again. And the aircraft will do the optimal calculation to control the throttle and slow down before starting the descent.
If you watch my A320 Full Flight series on my YouTube channel, you’ll notice that I keep everything on managed mode from the gate all the way until I arrive at the destination gate without changing anything (in most cases), the FCU is showing (- - -) for airspeed, heading/nav, and it’s only showing numbers on the altitude. And even so, whenever I do a climb or a descent, you’ll notice that I only select the altitude knob, and I press the top part of the knob to engage the LVL/CH. I don’t set any V/S or FP Angle. (Unless I’m doing RNAV non-precision approach).
Well, since you said you don’t know what the LVR CLB is I assumed you don’t know anything about the Airbus, hence the video materials could be helpful in understanding what’s going on.
In that case, the LVR CLB flashing would still mean the throttle inside the cockpit is at the wrong position. There has to be something that’s conflicting between your hardware input and the A32NX mod itself.
You just need to set the new calibration setting again. But the video thing still applies, 320 Sim Pilot has made a tutorial on how to use the new calibration setting.
You shouldn’t start flying until your throttles are properly calibrated at the gate. Once you have all the detents working and lined up properly, your flying should be good.
For my yesterday flight I can say everything worked as expected in the A320 experimental version, with the exception of transition altitude advise in the PFD. I saw that was not flashing when reaching the TA. I checked the MCDU and I was entered correctly in PERF page
but think of the mess all of that virtual carbon might make of the virtual real weather. 
Agreed with you there on SimBrief. I’ve tried it out before and I know people will say it’s not hard to use, but I just don’t see the need for it. Yes, it obviously adds a bit more realism by creating a dispatch release, but it’s too much time for me and the world map feature basically serves the same purpose. I also just like searching for my waypoints and selecting my SID’s, STAR’s, and runways. Glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t seem to use SimBrief, but I also agree I don’t think that’s an issue here.
As far as airspeed goes and managed vs. selected mode, that all makes sense. I always wondered what the Decel point was and I even tried looking it up a while back, but that makes complete sense.
Another questions though. Since you say to keep it on manage mode for the speed all flight, the aircraft just knows what speeds to target or those are values you have to enter into MCDU beforehand?
And yes, I’ve watched a lot of your videos and I’ve noticed that myself and always wondered how you were doing that. See, I guess that’s always been bad habit of mine from my early days of FS. I always just used the selected modes when I used to fly in the older versions, but I’d like to learn the correct way.
Basically everything that I put in the MCDU is the data I give to the aircraft to tell it how to fly it. Particularly in the INIT and PERF page.
Cost Index tells it how fast you want the aircraft to reach the destination. Higher value means you want to fly as fast as possible by burning more fuel, while lower value means you want to fly as efficient as possible, saving fuel at the expense of slower flight time.
Cruising Altitude tells the aircraft at which altitude you’ll be flying so it can mange the airspeed and fuel consumption better based on the cost index.
ZFWCG/ZFW tells the aircraft the balance as well as the total payload weight. Again, this is crucial in calculating the take off and landing weight.
With the Block is the total current weight of fuel. This added with the ZFW/ZFWCG calculates the total weight of the aircraft, both static weight as well as the dynamic weight since the longer you fly, the more fuel you burn, thus making the aircraft lighter.
All of these, gets calculated by the MCDU, so that when you open the PERF page, it can calculate the V1, VR, and V2 correctly, while also taking into account the fuel burn, the flight time, and weight, which will give you the Approach Speed before landing.
I guess this is the beauty of the Airbus, All you need is to input raw data into the MCDU, and it’ll do all the calculations for you and also fly it the way that it’s supposed to when using full managed mode.
So I understand the cost index. I assume for the sim’s sake, it’s okay to just use 100 every time? I’ve watched your videos and you always seem to put in 100 for cost index and I’ve heard other say 99. But also, so say I used 100. My cruise speed would be around Mach 0.78 and then I could increase the speed if I wanted to in selected mode?
I’ve been watching your videos and trying to watch carefully how you put everything into the MCDU and how you set it up. I guess finally after all this time, I’m wanting to actually try to fly the aircraft correctly, especially with the new custom AP.
As for ZFW/ZFWCG, how do you actually find that out? Would that be something you have to use SimBrief for, but I know you said you don’t?
And yes, it’s pretty nice that the Airbus just calculates everything out for you. It really is a very automated and advanced aircraft.
I don’t think the cost Index is fully implemented yet. so whether you use cost Index 1 or 100, it would probably end up burning the same fuel and speed. So I just use 100 every time. But other people sometimes use 99 or 20, while it matters irl. I don’t think it does in the sim (currently). Maybe it’ll get improved later on, but at this moment I don’t think there’s any difference between which CI you use.
As for the ZFW/ZFWCG, I just use the Default payload from the sim’s aircraft fuel and load settings on the world map. I move the Centre of Gravity slider to get myself at 28% (since that seems to be the absolute centre between the two CG limits) And on the MCDU, I just press the button next to the ZFW/ZFWCG twice and it’ll enter the values automatically.
Yeah, I didn’t think it was. It’s probably just easiest to use 100 in that case if it has no effect yet.
As for ZFW/ZFWCG, that makes sense. Didn’t think of that myself. Does it matter if you move the CG slider or does it not have an effect? I’ve seen you put that into the MCDU in your videos, so I would know how to put it in and the double click thing.
As said above the plane is highly automated. It helps that I have flown many hours in the Aerosoft version in FSX so adapting to this one was quite easy. Once you have asked ATC for permission it will tell you your initial altitude and departure runway. You set your altitude on the flight panel and press up for managed and leave the speed and heading alone. In the flight computer you enter your departure and arrival runways and match the fuel block to what is on the centre panel. The index I normally set at 40 but maybe it doesn’t work on this I don’t know. On the computer, Flaps normally 2 and ultimate cruising altitude I set depending on length of flight and can be changed in flight. After take off wait until you get the flashing CLMB and move the thrust lever to CLMB then at 1,000 feet press autopilot and leave the AP to do the rest. No need to touch heading or speed. Don’t touch the thrust lever or auto thrust button until you are ready to Retard. Increase altitude on the panel as desired. Flying the Airbus is more about learning what buttons to press and when !
Yeah, that’s my problem. I never flew the Airbus in previous versions of the sim. It didn’t help that the default A321 in FSX was pretty bad. I basically only flew the 737 and I was never into mods or add-ons in the past. I was always stuck with the default AP. Well, here I am again and the current default Asobo A320neo is bad as we know. I had no choice but to download the mod months ago. Now, obviously given that it’s more study level and has more realistic functionality, I’m slowly trying to learn the aircraft systems and how they work. Part of my problem is that I was always scared to rely on the AP a lot and I did a lot more flying by hand manually. This is a bad habit that I’ve gotten into. You gotta understand that the default AP has always been pretty bad and a mess and that’s why I always wanted more control myself over the aircraft, especially during crucial phases of flight.
Now, given that the new custom/experimental AP is much more realistic, I’m trying to move away from the unrealistic hand flying habit and learn how to actually fly the aircraft the way it should be flown. I’m realizing that the way I used to fly won’t really work with the more realistic AP system. It seems that the new AP system is much more reliable and behaves much more realistically.
So yes, it’s definitely a matter of learning the correct way to use the AP and as you said what buttons to push and when to push them. The Airbus is indeed a very automated and advanced aircraft.
Personally I don’t bother with very long flights because the middle bit is boring. The take off and landing is where you need the concentration. So I normally limit flights to about 90 mins. Say a UK Internal flight or maybe UK to France etc. I must admit I don’t even use written notes as it’s all just from memory (not acceptable in the real world of course!) so the more you do the easier it will eventually become and you will find it becomes second nature to to fire it up from cold and dark, load the flight and do the whole thing from memory.
Yeah, shorter flights are better in that sense. For me though, I’ve been doing a lot of “shorter” flights lately and I have been wanting to fly some longer flights to Hawaii, which is what I’ve been starting to do. So yeah, I understand about it being boring. For me though, it’s been kind of nice because I can just let my plane cruise for 5 hours while I go do other things and then land when it’s time to land lol.
But yeah, that’s why I keep saying I need to make time to do more shorter test flights so I can practice more, especially with takeoffs and landings like you said. Also, to get a feel of setting the aircraft up and letting it do its thing while I learn what buttons to push and when.
And yeah, hopefully it won’t take long before I get a flow and memorize the procedure. I’ve had to learn new ways before of setting the aircraft up, so it’s just time to learn a new way again.
Sorry for my ignorance, but being such an automated aircraft I’m sure there has to be a way to have it start the descent based on an automatic calculation of the ToD point instead of having to manually apply the times 3 rule. Or am I wrong? Also, in previous versions of the custom build (haven’t checked the latest one), I noticed that it has a mind of its own and doesn’t always adjust to the speed and altitude limits as instructed in the MCDU/charts while in managed descent. Or maybe there’s something I’m doing wrong?
I start my descent when the ATC tells me to.
Oh, ok. Somehow I thought I could manage to fly it without the use of ATC. I guess it’s not possible then.
Well it’s possible. You can fly without ATC if you want to go rogue. Lol. But no pilots IRL fly without ATC.
As for the constraints. I don’t think we have speed constraints in the mod yet. But the altitude constraints is there. Set the altitude and engage managed mode and if your altitude is set to below the constraints it will arm the magenta ALT mode as you descent and will always stop at the constraints altitude.
But the constraints itself tends to be overridden by the ATC anyway. Are you having any particular ATC issue? You seem to be avoiding using it.
ToD calculations are not yet in the FBW experimental model, but are coming soon.