CRJ-700 Wow!

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Well, I spent the afternoon getting somewhat up to speed on the aircraft–enough that I was able to fly the tutorial flight successfully-ish. The picture above is proof that I got the thing in the air :rofl:

I wanted a highly realistic airliner and that is what I got. Meanwhile, I bet over in the Aerosoft forums Mathijs is telling people that they should have been careful what they wished for! I’m going to have to watch The Dude’s videos and do the tutorial again; I definitely missed some stuff when I got busy with the descent. I was high initially because I couldn’t get VNAV working to give me the TOD and descent numbers, so I had to go around. That said, I did complete a successful landing. In any case, this aircraft is the real deal and it is going to require some serious study to get fully comfortable with it.

The first part of the afternoon was spent trying to get my Thrustmaster Airbus TCA Throttle Quadrant working. If you need help see here and the tutorial.

Next, I ended up having some issues entering stuff in the FMS. I mistyped and Clear didn’t seem to be working. If that happens to you, it is likely because the sim is interpreting your attempt to press Clear as trying to manipulate the speed brake lever. You may need to deploy some speed brakes to get the lever out of the way in order for Clear to work. In the process of learning that lesson, I managed to hang the sim and had to start over. But that was good because repetition is necessary to learn the aircraft.

On attempt two, I got to the runway, took off and couldn’t climb above 10,000 feet even with the engines at max power. Tried turning anti ice on, but that didn’t help. Honestly, I have no idea what the problem was. No flaps were out, the gear was up, the speedbrakes were retracted. So I bailed because something was badly wrong. It was almost like the aircraft was overweight and out of CG, but according to the EFB it was fine. The MSFS weight and balance page was another story though.

Anyway, third time was a charm and everything was fine climbing up to FL180. From there, things went a bit south as I couldn’t get VNAV figured out, and as I said I ended up high and had to go around. I never did figure out how to display the ILS (though the localizer was programmed) so I flew the approach on the PAPI and landed without incident. Reversers worked fine.

So as I said, Wow! My airline captain buddy calls the A320 an old man’s aircraft because it is “so easy.” Compared to the CRJ, I can totally see why. After flying the CRJ, the A32NX feels like a Cessna 172; it truly is “so easy.” The CRJ has way more going on, way more stuff to keep track of, and extreme workload when you are a single pilot. Which is to say, the CRJ is incredibly fun to fly.

That said, the Aerosoft CRJ is the real deal. Flying this aircraft requires putting in quite a bit of time to get up to speed on systems and procedures. There is no “I just want to go flying” option for this aircraft. While it is a fantastic product, it is most definitely for serious simmers only. People who aren’t willing to put in the time and effort will be extremely frustrated and disappointed by this aircraft. Those who are willing to rise to the challenge are going to love it.

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I agree, a great addition to MSFS!

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Are you familiar with the PMDG renditions? If you are, would classify the CRJ to be in the same/similar league?

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Btw you forgot the amazing Framerates and yes it is difficult!!! To fly so many buttons but I am glad I got the plane amazing job

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I watched The Dude’s entire video series straight through…twice. And some of the videos several times. My first flight attempt took forever to get off the ground because I was reading manuals, watching videos, going back into the sim, rinse & repeat. It seemed to go okay though, until I bugged the sim and had to reboot.

Second flight attempt was a bit of a disaster, lol. First off, something was up with the ejectors showing in amber, and I couldn’t figure out what I did differently that caused it. Then, I couldn’t get VS mode activated for some reason. That was bizarre. Then when it came time to activate the ILS, I switched the NAV mode to LOC, everything looked good, then I hit the APPR button and the plane veered off and almost into the Great Lakes. Turns out on my Bravo, when I pushed the APPR button, it deactivated the AP at the same time, so that’s a problem. I have a lot to learn with this plane, but ■■■■, I love it.

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No kidding! :rofl:

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I’m starting to be convinced I want to buy this plane.

… but IRL I frankly think I will avoid getting flown on them when I can !! :wink:

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I haven’t flown any PMDG products, but according to Mathijs over at Aerosoft the primary difference between Aerosoft and PMDG approaches is that Aerosoft is focused on normal operations, while PMDG goes for a total implementation that allows for abnormal operations as well. So for example, the circuit breakers aren’t implemented in the Aerosoft CRJ and there aren’t options to set up failures (because you won’t get them). But it appears that other than weather radar (which needs WASI IPC support from the SDK), pretty much everything a pilot would expect to touch on a normal flight that would actually be involved with flying the airplane is implemented and working.

EDIT: Oh yeah, at at $50.00 it is less than half the price of PMDG. :slight_smile:

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I own PMDG’s 737 and 747 and this is pretty much spot-on.

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I mostly fly “casual” (from the runway, not from cold and dark) but I enjoy the process of flying a nice IFR journey in an airliner or private jet, and I’ve been quite enjoying the CRJ 700 with the caveat that I have to do a few steps manually for now that I’d usually automate (like inputting flight plan).

The manuals look large, but lack a lot of detail – I couldn’t find any information about the cabin pressure controls other than their location in the cockpit when I was having an emergency with low cabin pressure – and I hope to be able to fill some of that in watching the tutorial videos. :slight_smile:

The CRJ 700 feels really nice, more of a “serious vehicle” than the private jets but more nimble in the air than the bigger Airbus or Boeing liners. I love me some autothrottle when I have it, but I don’t mind going manual – since I have to run throttle manually in GA planes anyway I already do that for my casual VFR flights, no biggie. :smiley:

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This reminds me of my P3D PMDG days. Spend an hour to flight prep, then 5 min into the air CTD.

If MSFS2020 will get the CTD issues put behind us, sounds like a truly wonderful jet to fly.

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If you are possibly experiencing them frequently then you have other issues to deal with since the update I have only one CTD and it was due to a bad OC on my GPU.I can fly for hours without a CTD.

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I’ve flown the CRJ in both FSX and MSFS as well as PMDG’s 737, 747 and JS-41. All aircraft are incredibly realistic, highly functional and though I think PMDG is slightly ahead in many areas, Aerosoft is certainly in the same league and they produce top notch level products.

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I can’t fly this plane for toffee. It’s going to take years to learn but I’m going to love spending every minute of it in this fantastic plane. Worth every single penny.

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Well, the last few days have been busy ones as I’ve been learning flows, but I finally felt comfortable enough to start flying the line with it today. All in all, I continue to be very impressed with Aerosoft’s implementation. I’ve definitely encountered some bugs here and there, but the plane is a quantum leap forward with respect to the airliners.

So far, I can confirm that VNAV advisories generally work, though on my first line flight I was flying at FL370 and the TOD was calculated at a SID waypoint that had a crossing restriction. Not sure what the deal was, but as a result I had to manage the first part of the descent myself. I can also confirm that holding works, which is awesome. That is a feature I’d been waiting on A32NX to deliver, but it hasn’t made it to the top of the stack and I haven’t felt like trying to implement it myself. Anyway, you can set up the holds in the FMS and the autopilot will fly them. I tested this tonight while practicing approaches at KDEN.

I’ve also managed to hang the sim a couple of times while inputting stuff in the CDU. Fortunately, this has been fairly rare.

The parking brake is a bit wonky–sometimes you can’t set it and sometimes it won’t release. There is definitely an issue where it won’t release if the chocks are in-place (I found this out when I was doing a quick and dirty startup to test something else). It looks like the logic might be inadvertently coupled to other things, so beware. I just slapped the chocks in when I couldn’t get it to engage.

I’ve also encountered an issue several times where the aircraft will not climb, despite being in weight and balance according to both the EFB and the sim. I now think it may occur as a result of forgetting to set the trim on takeoff and engaging the autopilot when the aircraft is nose-heavy. On that note, it is important to click the “Set Payload In Simulator” button once the payload is set.

I will strongly encourage anyone who isn’t a CRJ pilot IRL to read the manuals and watch the “Come Fly With Me” series by The Dude, where he flies the included tutorial. Take notes. It took me two full days to get up to speed enough to feel comfortable making flights on my own. I’ve got the flows down pretty well, but I’m still glancing at my notes occasionally. I still need to get the speeds memorized and I need to learn the abort take-off decision tree. Really, I’ve just scratched the surface and I have tons left to learn. This aircraft is fully VATSIM capable, but it may be awhile before I feel confident enough to fly VATSIM with the CRJ.

I’m using the Thrustmaster TCA Airbus Throttle Quadrant and the throttles seem pretty sensitive. I’m still getting the hang of dialing in the speeds. The airplane flies great and handles well. It is also relatively easy to slow down. The tutorial arrival into Munich is easy to fly without speedbrakes and The Dude demonstrates how to do just that.

Hopefully, folks are digging into the available documentation and getting a handle on the CRJ. I’m having a great time flying it and I can say it definitely is living up to the prerelease hype (at least with respect to what I was hoping it would be).

Tomorrow, I’m going to start flying with my ATC add in and see what happens when I have to switch the approach at the last minute. The one thing I’m worried about is that setting the MDA takes forever and a day with the rotary knob. But that will be a small annoyance assuming the autopilot works correctly. I am optimistic that there will be no sign of the dreaded “U-Turn” bug in the CRJ.

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It is definitely ‘hard mode’

I’ve been doing flight sim for 35 years, I’ve owned some high-end add-ons. But ultimately they all hold your hand a little. This one doesn’t.

I don’t have too much trouble with programming the thing or flipping all the right switches to get it to be happy… I can get departure and cruise flight pretty much working right…

But 4 flights into owning this thing, it has task-saturated me on the descent every single time. One time resulted in a gear up landing. The other three got down alive, but not in a way that anyone would have enjoyed in real life. No, it would have been a class-action suit against my airline.

But we did survive every outing.

I like it, but it’s a lot to manage. I look forward to a day in a week or so where I can fly it and actually be a little ahead of the plane. Right now, I’m just reacting and chasing settings. Reminds me of learning to fly for real.

Soon enough the magic will be gone, I’ll have it mastered and it’ll just be another bird in my hangar. But for now, it provides a real challenge.

And to any of you out there that don’t like reading and screwing up and reading and screwing up and so on… It’s not for you. So don’t buy it and then complain about it being as hard to fly as an airliner.

Because it’s not kidding about being a lot to learn. But it flies lovely. you can hand fly it for days, its really nice. The tricky bit is getting it to work in a realistic airliner sort of way, with a flight plan, and rules and what not.

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Hi, that is a great point, and one I made in response to someone asking about it. I’m enjoying flying it around, and at this point not doing too much to learn about how to operate it in real life. I may need to work on that, however, as my son’s first plane as a commercial pilot was the CRJ700 :slight_smile:
Mark

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Yeah, if you choose to not learn the systems, its just another airplane for pretty screenshots. The real love on this one is learning how to make it do what it was designed to do in the proper way. Those lightbulb moments when you finally get it right are very rewarding.

And as someone pointed out in the other thread, its your money, fly it as you like. But to really get the value out of it, you should learn the whole beast. It’s really pretty interesting.

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I’ll get my son to give me some real life lessons on it one of these days. I do find it interesting that some want to criticize (even though its gentle or implied criticism in some cases) a person’s choice to just play around with a plane, as opposed to really getting into the details of what it can do. I completely understand pushing back on someone who buys a plane like the CRJ, and then complains about ‘it’s too complicated… too expensive, etc.’ Or expressing an opinion that its a complicated plane and may not be for you, in response to someone asking about that before they buy. But for those of us who aren’t complaining about it, and are just enjoying it to the extent we want to, I fail to see the need for some of the comments. By the way, I don’t take your reply to be in the gentle or implied criticism camp.
Best
Mark

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IRL I actually prefer this plane over 3x3 airbus / Boeing I’m 6ft tall and have always had a comfortable ride in the back of the CRJ700/900 on AA and DL. I expected to hate it and did not. I’m sure the -200 is a different story.

I bought the CRJ day 1 and love it. You will not regret your purchase.