OnCourse Software

I have had these problems more than once with PMDG MD11/747 (not noticed it with other a/c) - any ideas how to prevent them?

1. At engine startup I get the callout 'Start Engine 1" and then 'One stable' as usual ... but the two phrases go into a kind of loop and are repeated several times. Then the same thing happens with Engine 2, 3 (and 4).

2. When I come in to land I also get a loop with the phrase 'Arm Spoilers' continuously repeated (without a breath in between!) until I disconnect FDC - no other way to stop it.

Any ideas what is causing this please, and how to fix it?

Thanks,

Martin

... meant to say, re. 2, spoilers are already armed - unarming and re-arming doesn't stop the repeated callout

martinlest wrote:

1. At engine startup I get the callout 'Start Engine 1" and then 'One stable' as usual ... but the two phrases go into a kind of loop and are repeated several times. Then the same thing happens with Engine 2, 3 (and 4).

I don't have this aircraft but have one or two that do the same - I think it occurs when an aircraft has a very long spool-up setting in the aircraft.cfg. There is a setting that allows adjustment:
Flightdeck Calls > Delay 'Engine Stable' calls by this number of seconds
but whilst it will reduce the number of repetitions I don't think it is completely effective for aircraft with really long engine startups. I set mine for 12 seconds (the timing of my slowest-to-start aircraft) but I suspect such an extreme figure is out of range of its abilities. However, it does reduce the calls to just twice for me.

John

Thanks for the reply - I had actually tried that (set to 10") but it seemed to make matters worse if anything. I'll give it another try just in case..

M.

This time, after adding the 12" delay again, things were better - I only got the engine start callout repeated once. It seemed that if you start up the next engine a little before the last 'engine stable' call, there are no repeats (have to experiment with that a bit more to be sure).

Still get 'Arm Spoilers' repeated ad nauseam on approach though - they ARE armed, as I said (and disarming/rearming still makes no difference). If I can't solve that I will have to replace the wav file with a silent blank..

M.

Fdc obviously can't detect the spoilers on that aircraft

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S

OK Dave, will turn off that callout in the relevant PMDG performance files (much more sensible option than replacing the .wav file!). Thanks.

M.

martinlest wrote:

Still get 'Arm Spoilers' repeated ad nauseam on approach though - they ARE armed, as I said (and disarming/rearming still makes no difference). If I can't solve that I will have to replace the wav file with a silent blank..

Not sure if this idea will help, Martin, because I don't ever fly aeroplanes with spoilers (!) but I do have one that has spoilers automatedly built into the flying characteristics to give it drag and that used to cause FDC to call spoilers at intervals.

I got round this in the FDC Performance editor by setting "No Spoiler/Speedbrake calls" and its never uttered a squeak on that front since.

Might that help you?

John

Hi John, Thanks, but I think there's a better way - now I've had FDC installed for several weeks I am beginning to find my way around it and often edit the files directly with Notepad rather than search the GUI interface (I only do this when I am 100% certain I know what I am editing!! - and I have a backup of the FDC folder too, just in case). Since I now have dozens of aircraft profiles and load those before a flight, to stop the Spoilers callout for any individual aircraft, I open the .pro file (in notepad - or 'EditPad Lite', in fact - SO much more useful than notepad) just change the entry "ArmON=1" to "ArmON=0". And that's it... Other a/c still have the spoilers callout.

(The .pro files are just a copy of the FDC.ini file, BTW - changed for individual aircraft. Quite a nifty little programme this!).

M.