It’s a learning curve for sure, the 737 Max has OCD - you have to do certain things in a certain order or she won’t play the game. It’s a challenge, but all the more rewarding for mastering it.
This plane behaves in so many strange ways I don’t know where to to begin . Also can’t even turn off the cabin lights nowhere on this plane . Absolute disaster.
I keep getting a nosewheel and gear malfunction now as it seems that it thinks that the GSX tug has damaged it. The aircraft then won’t steer properly and needs ridiculous amounts of breakaway thrust. Asobo have simulated something but it’s not an aircraft and it’s not a 737. Just quit for the night. I’ll stick to Airbus for a while. The Fenix runs well and the ini A330 is not bad at all. I’ll wait for iFly before going back to the 737.
You lasted a couple more tries than I did. I gave up, went back to FS2020 and made 3 flawless flights in the iFly MAX instead. The casual simmer doesn’t need that level of cabin modeling and systems depth, but they do need something that flies at least generally as well.
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So, glutton for punishment that I am, I gave the MAX another chance. Unlike last time, I was actually able to make a full flight, but it was not without its (significant) challenges. I flew from FlyTampa’s KBOS to Drzewiecki’s KDCA. Both of these are 2020 Marketplace sceneries, streamed from the cloud. More on that later.
First, still no way that I can tell to call a ground power unit, so I had to start the APU on battery power, and then use that while I preflighted the plane. I tried to use the new FS2024 flight planner tool but there doesn’t seem to be any real equivalent of Simbrief’s profiles. Although the aircraft was able to be selected for the flight and I could get a route, I didn’t see any obvious or plain way to get the tool to give me any kind of planned fuel burn. After futzing with it for a few minutes I went back to Simbrief instead.
Second, on departure I was given a clearance direct to a waypoint that bypassed a big chunk of the planned climb out procedure. I put the direct to into the FMC but the plane didn’t recalculate the route. Instead it wanted to continue flying the entire SID. Since I was taking off into heavy clouds and icing conditions, I just followed the flight directors and didn’t try to fight the box.
Third, during the descent into DC, there are several hard altitude constraints. The plane managed the first (at 11,000’ I believe), then about 22 miles until another hard constraint (10,000’), then 8 miles to a third (also 10,000’), then several others heading onto the downwind for runway 01. The plane managed the 11,000’ fix, but was slow to descend for 10,000’ at the next fix. After that segment, it was very slow to descend in order to make a 7,000’ hard constraint later on. Admittedly, winds were pretty gnarly and so far as I can tell, there’s no way to import winds data into the FMC for this aircraft. Maybe the flight planner tool is supposed to do that?
Fourth, during cruise as I neared TOD, I looked up weather for DCA and wanted to preset the altimeter. Suddenly the MCP altimeter knobs didn’t work. They rotated left and right, but the set altitude could only be changed from 29.91 to 29.93. Further, pressing the MCP button would not switch between STD and local pressure. This was the same on both sides of the flight deck. Ironically, I had no trouble setting the altimeter on the standby instruments. Even keyboard shortcuts (which I verified in the controls menu to be sure I remembered right) would not toggle back to local pressure. Oddly, the minimums knob worked fine.
Fifth, at some point, my right mouse button stopped letting me free-look around the cockpit. WTH?
Sixth, although the FMC let me enter a fix, that fix and the range rings I defined were not displayed.
Seventh, upon landing, thrust reversers did not work. I was using the same controller profile I had been using with the 787-10 where those bindings do work, but the Max may be coded differently. This one may be on me. I don’t know yet for sure.
During my descent into weather, alarmed that I couldn’t set local pressure (which was 29.64, so significantly different than standard), I went into the Controls settings again and set custom controls to increase and decrease the altimeter setting. That let me set the correct pressure. Then miraculously, having done that, the MCP button to toggle between local and standard started working again, as did my right-mouse button free-look.
Lastly, although my speedbrake control was bound to the first axis of my Boeing throttle quadrant, and moving the lever extended and retracted the spoilers in external view, the lever in the cockpit did not move. My throttles moved, but not the speedbrake lever. Again, WTH?
Anway, that’s the last I’ll be flying this one absent some real, intense development work.
NOTE RE SCENERY: I have loaded into both of these streamed 2020 Marketplace sceneries before today without issue. This afternoon, however, it took a solid 5-7 minutes for the scenery and local terrain to load in when I was attempting to start the flight. The runway textures and Boston coastal terrain never did really load in clearly in the world map. One I did select a gate to start from, it again took several minutes more for the aircraft and scenery to render in sufficient for me to start. Several times during the flight I received the low-bandwidth warning as well. None of this creates confidence in the streaming paradigm chosen for 2024, folks.
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