Question About Cruising Altitude and Speed

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I am completely new to flight sims and am trying to get started in MSFS. In the installation process I chose the option with maximum assists to help me learn. I did all of the tutorials and then set off from Sydney airport for my first flight in the default turboprop.

I followed the ‘objectives’ to take off but can’t seem to get past the one saying to climb to cruising altitude. I ended up getting to 310,000 feet and couldn’t get it to go much higher. I realised that something was probably not right when I switched back to cockpit view and there were warning lights about being too high and to put an oxygen mask on which didn’t seem normal. My plane also seemed to be starting to freeze solid.

I also kept getting a message to stay under 110 knots while climbing. I switched to autopilot to see what the “ideal” altitude and speed were and it immediately sped me way up (to the point where the speed warning kept appearing) and started to significantly drop in altitude.

What is a normal cruising altitude and speed, and do you know what was I doing wrong that the game wouldn’t let me go into the next objective?

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hope you contacted Houston Center :sweat_smile:

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That aircraft can’t go higher than 31,500 feet, if I remember correctly. And you shouldn’t get at that altitude too fast, you need to climb slow to give it time to equalize the inside and outside pressure.

You can see the maximum speed in the cockpit, it’s that that red tape coming from the top of the speed indicator if you are too fast. And that depends if you have the flaps or landing gear extended. After you retract them you can go faster.

Also, the autopilot is full of bugs, so I wouldn’t rely on it, or the co-pilot. And I think the objective to climb to cruise altitude is bugged as well.

The cruise altitude is selected automatically when you plan the flight, you can see it in the NAVLOG section on the planning map/globe. If you don’t like what it selects by default, you can manually choose a lower one from there.

And if you enable ATC, they can tell you when to climb and descend, if you select an IFR plan before the flight, instead of direct/GPS. This doesn’t work perfectly either, but it’s a start.

Then in flight you can ask ATC to give you a different altitude, if they start telling you funny stuff, like descending into a mountain, or forgetting to tell you to descend. Which they will :slight_smile:

The thing is, there is a lot to learn, and unfortunately this simulator doesn’t come with a manual. The only thing that kind of helps a bit are the flying lessons, but unfortunately they are extremely limited.

So I guess you’ll just have to find answers / ask questions in this forum, and look elsewhere for information as well.

I would also strongly recommend trying finding some videos on Youtube, of other people flying the same aircraft in the simulator. Sometimes all the explanations in the world can’t replace seeing somebody else doing it.

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Thanks for the response. I’m getting the hang of it a bit more now. I found turning some of the assists off actually made it much better because it won’t let me do stupid things like keep climbing into space.

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Oh, one more thing. You said you got an warning to put your oxygen mask, that may happen if you forgot to enable a few switches in the cockpit that control pressurization.

If you start your flight from parking, with the plane turned off, you’ll have to enable those switches manually.

Fortunately that aircraft is one of the few in this simulator that has complete checklists, that you can perform with the co-pilot. You just need to enable from the AI menu before starting the aircraft the assisted checklists, then from the same menu open the actual checklist, and do it page by page, after pressing the “evaluate” button which will make the co-pilot tell you which switches to change, verify that you did it correctly, and also change the view automatically to the switch you need to change.

Those checklists are available in flight as well, for the aircraft that have them, which is one of the greatest things about this simulator. Too bad only a few aircraft have a complete list of checklists.

Also, I kind of doubt you actually reached 310,000 feet. Are you sure it wasn’t 31,000? If you actually did, that’s a bug, you shouldn’t be able to do that.

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There definitely appears to be an issue with the “climb to cruise altitude” objective. I’ve probably completed around 30 flights so far and have yet to complete that objective on a single flight. I’m just not sure what it takes. I’m reviewing the flight plan before takeoff and setting my altitude accordingly. Once I reach that altitude and ease the throttle, I figured it should trigger, but it never does. I’ve even tried using the ATC to adjust my cruise altitude in-flight to various levels, but still nothing. All of the other ohjectives seem to trigger fine. I’d be interested to know if anybody is getting this objective to trigger and how you do it.

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Thanks - I’ll look out for the checklists but I seem to remember having the setting on for the co-pilot to automatically doing it.

It is extremely likely that I either misread or misremembered the altimeter saying 310,000 ft.