Having had a great time flying small aircraft, I decided to tackle an airliner. As years ago I had made some progress with the Flight One ATR, I thought the MSFS ATR would be a good choice. It wasn’t.
The main problem is lack of documentation about the MCDU. I’ve worked everything else out more or less but the MCDU is driving me nuts. Yes the flight plan integration with Simbrief is helpful, but it still leaves fields to be filled in and some of these need explaining to me. I don’t learn well from videos (I know there are some excellent ones around) and I don’t have the background understanding of airliners that many people have clearly got.
So my question is do I just cut my losses and move on to something else (I have dabbled with the FBW A320 and the documentation looks excellent) or can anyone point me in the direction of (written) resources about the ATR’s MCDU that explain what to do (based on how pilots of ATRs do it) and give some background about the instrument rather than simply telling you to type X into Y?
I hope that’s clear. I have searched online but haven’t found anything that exactly fits. I found a very old manual for RL ATR aircrew but it is pre-dates glass cockpits and in any case is very skimpy on the subject of the MCDU. I assume the MCDU is taught by instructors on courses. The checklists people have drawn up are helpful (some more than others) but tend to be abbreviated. I’ve tried to relate what is in the Flight One manual to the MCDU but there seem to be some differences.
As a general principle I don’t think complex aircraft should ever be put up for sale without a full manual. I would be willing to pay for a manual separately: the ATR was a very reasonable price and perhaps its profitability would have been negated by having to produce a manual, but economizing here is just a bad idea for people who haven’t had much experience of flying airliners. I guess I should have been more cautious when in the store! Unfortunately my finances are not quite healthy enough to buy one of the high end simulations by e.g. Fenix or PMDG.
