weaklink

I wonder if it is inadvertently re-triggering a Wasm compile on every load. Maybe something about the cache isn't working right? Does anyone know if this has been reported on the official Aerosoft forum? If not, maybe the dev isn't even aware if it's not triggering on their system.

I think the OP may mean the runway length category from the ICAO Reference Code. Category 3 is 1200 to 1800 meters, and category 4 is 1800 meters and above.

Since you say you have Vancouver and are asking for a "no brainer", I would start by flying between Vancouver and the default version of Seattle (if you haven't done so already). A nice short route with beautiful scenery, and the default Seattle isn't half bad. Calgary As the next airport to buy, my "no brainer" would be Calgary CYYC by FSimStudios: I don't have this addon myself, but people here on the forum have been saying good things. Again, a relatively short flight from Vancouver, with beautiful views of the Rockies. You say that you're open to flying anywhere, but for many people, flying in their own part of the world does have a particular appeal -- hence my Canadian recommendation. Oslo - Stockholm Once you do want to explore further afield, let me suggest the city pair Oslo ENGM and Stockholm ESSA. There are several versions of Oslo available. I would recommend the Aerosoft version by renowned developer Jo Erlend Sund: Stockholm has a nice rendition available by Orbx: Oslo - Stockholm is a nice short route, and there's lovely scenery in this part of the world. As additional destinations from Oslo, I would recommend two freeware sceneries, Bergen and Stavanger. These are among the best freeware sceneries available for MSFS.

Hehe. Same.here, I guess. I bought all of the airliner addons I fly, so obviously that means I'm flying them under Part 91, right? 😉

Pretty sure it did/does have turbulence? From the documentation: "You can set turbulence in wind layers or cloud layers, or in both. If you have wind and clouds set at the same altitude and you set turbulence in both layers, the turbulence you define for the wind layer will take precedence."

Sorry, I still don't understand. Shouldn't we expect gate positions, for example, to match within 50 meters and 10 degrees, even if the work was done completely independently? The addons reproduce the same real-world airport, and there is only one correct real-world position and orientation for each gate. Presumably both you and the other developer wanted to be as faithful as possible to the layout of the real-world airport, so I think it should only be expected that the end result would be very similar?

Looks like it:

Yes -- and not just in level flight. (See below.) But... No, and you don't need one. (I'll explain in a minute.) Besides, you'll note that the trim indicator doesn't even have a scale -- the only markings (on the Caravan) are a range for takeoff trim position. The idea is this: Provided that the loading of the aircraft and its configuration (gear and flaps) don't change, a certain trim setting always corresponds to the same airspeed, no matter if you're level, climbing, or descending. (There are certain secondary effects that can cause small variations, but these are small enough that the general principle is still useful.) Try this: Establish yourself in level flight with the aircraft trimmed out. Note your airspeed. Now take your hand off the yoke. Reduce power. The airplane will start descending. Initially, the pitch attitude and airspeed will probably oscillate (this oscillation is called a phugoid), but the oscillations will gradually become smaller. (If you like, you can use the elevator to help damp out the oscillations, but don't make any trim changes.) At some point, you should be established in a stable descent. Note your airspeed. It should be close to the airspeed you had in level flight. Now try the same thing again, except add power. The airplane will start climbing. Once you're established in a stable climb, your airpseed should again be close to what you had in level flight. This is what's meant by trimming for airspeed. What this means for an approach is that once you've trimmed for your approach airspeed, you won't need to touch your trim again. If you need to make adjustments to your approach angle, you'll change power accordingly, and you may make momentary elevator inputs to "help" the airplane adjust to the new approach angle (i.e. to avoid oscillations), but you won't need to adjust trim. The reason that the trim setting isn't displayed on the PFD (and that there's no numerical scale on the trim indicator) is that you don't need it. The only thing you need to know whether you're trimmed correctly are the control forces on the yoke. If you're holding a sustained forward or backward pressure on the yoke, trim until you have eliminated that pressure. That's just about all there is to it.

Yes. If you take your hand off the yoke, the position that it moves to depends on what the pitch trim is set to. If you're in trim, the yoke should not move if you let go of it. Well, the same concept applies: It's fatiguing to hold the yoke against control pressures, whether in level flight or on the approach. And it doesn't really add a lot to the workload -- trimming becomes something that you do unconsciously: You feel that you're holding forward or back pressure, so you trim to eliminate it. Whether you're doing a power-on or power-off approach doesn't really make a difference here. In each case, you're trimming for the airspeed you want to maintain on the approach. (Glider pilots do this too.) Maybe the issue here is the concept of "trimming for airspeed" -- are you familiar with the idea that a certain position of the pitch trim corresponds to a given airspeed that the aircraft will settle at (once it reaches steady state)?

Note that at 5:45, the airplane is not yet at the final approach speed, and the flaps aren't fully extended. The pilot will obviously have to make trim changes in response to the speed change and flap extension; this is complete at around 6:25. At 6:40, there's a caption that reads "use the pitch trim to adjust for correct speed". I interpret this as meaning that the pilot notices that he's still needing to hold some pressure on the yoke to achieve the correct speed, so he's using the pitch trim to remove that pressure. After this point, I see a few brief pitch trim inputs; these look as if the pilot is "tweaking" the trim because he senses that he's still holding some pressure on the yoke. At 7:22, the pilot starts trimming nose-up during the flare, a technique that @ATRguy has discussed above. Not sure what you mean by "using your thumb vs whole arms to feel the plane move", but it sounds as if you may be using trim alone to make pitch inputs. If this is the case, then note that this isn't correct real-world technique. To make pitch inputs, you should always use the elevator, and you should only use trim to eliminate any control forces that you're having to hold on the elevator. Now granted, doing this in the sim is harder than in real life because most sim yokes and joysticks (unless they have force feedback) will always return to the same center position. So when you're trimming away control forces with such sim controls, you have to slowly return the yoke/stick to the center position as you're trimming. In the real airplane (or with force feedback controls), the yoke remains in the same position that you had been holding it, and trimming merely eliminates the control forces. I guess my last question is, do you feel this is represented well in the Sim? Much of the discussion is around the real 208 technique, but does that translate to the Sim? And is it worth practicing? I'll leave it to @ATRguy to respond, but I believe that comment referred to the ATR, not the Caravan.

"Unique selling points" - things that only their product offers.

Presumably because that's what the real airplane does. The difference of course is that it's much easier to "bump" a flight simulator yoke to the extent that it will cause the autopilot to disconnect, whereas I assume this would require significant force on the real airplane.

Good point - this makes trimming with the trim switch extra finicky in MSFS. Not sure what you mean by being trimmed nose down. If you mean that you're having to hold back pressure on the yoke - that would mean that you're out of trim and should trim nose up to eliminate that pressure. And no, you shouldn't be "resetting" trim before the flare.

This certainly isn't what you'd do in the real plane. In the air, you don't set trim to a specific indicated position; rather, you trim until you have eliminated the control forces. If you're seeing real-life videos of pilots trimming during the approach, it's likely they're either making speed changes or lowering flaps. Or they're making small tweaks if they discover they're not perfectly trimmed out. In any case: Trim to zero the control forces. As for electric trim versus manual trim, I can't comment on the 208, but I fly a 172 that has electric trim, and I still prefer to use the trim wheel most of the time - it's just quicker and more intuitive. The exception are situations where I want to have my hand on the throttle - then I'll use the electric trim on the yoke.

I think that's not necessarily unrealistic though? I'd expect the system to provide more hot air to compensate, and within limits, be able to maintain the set temperature. That obviously breaks down at some point if it's too cold outside, but at 10 degrees OAT, still seems plausible to me? If this is modeled correctly, what you'd definitely want to see, though, is the Pack Turbine Bypass Valve on the BLEED page moving towards the "hot" side when you open the doors. (And to be clear, I have my doubts whether the default A330 actually models this correctly -- just noting that even if it is modeled, you wouldn't necessarily see a temperature drop if the OAT is moderate.)

Looking forward to hearing the results of these experiments. I definitely expect that they've modeled the fact that the packs require bleed air. It would also be interesting to see if they've modeled the effect of bleed air demand on engine parameters. AIUI, at a given N1, turning bleeds off should cause EGT to decrease. Toliss have created a custom engine model, so I would assume that they've modeled this too.

Interesting experiment. Agreed, that's some nice attention to detail! I don't believe any of this is modeled by MSFS itself - it's all custom coding. By the way, the town is correctly called Longyearbyen, which means simply "Longyear town". An unusual name for a place in Norway - it's named after the American John Munro Longyeat, who started coal mining operations there. (Sorry for the historical tangent - I just think it's a fascinating place!)

I think what @Speedbird193 is suggesting is that it's a bug that occurs exactly if the ILS frequency happens to be 110.5 - because that's what the airplane loads with. It may be that because the frequency never gets changed, some internal logic to query the ILS signal doesn't get triggered. A way to test this would be to intentionally de-tune the ILS to some other frequency, then set it back to 110.5 and see if it now works.

I've not used the feature myself, but this thread on the Aerosoft forum mentions that MSFS has an "unpause" function that is usually not assigned to a key. Try assigning that. Alternatively, they mention this second option:

I would echo @snglecoil's comments. I just did a takeoff with calm wind. I actually needed a bit of left rudder to stay straight on the runway. In reality, you would need a significant amount of right rudder. After takeoff, I climbed at Vx. I was actually able to take my feet off the rudder pedals, and the "ball" (slip indicator on the G1000) remained centered. This is definitely not realistic. You would need a lot of right rudder in such a low-speed, high-power climb. So, unfortunately, the left-turning tendencies are not well modeled in the 172.

It sounds as if, for some reason, the mouse is set up to control the yoke. Go to the control settings in MSFS and check the assignments for the mouse. You'll probably find assignments for the elevator and aileron axes - delete those. Control assignments in MSFS 2024 work a bit differently than in 2020, but there are lots of tutorials. Check out these two threads:

Regarding supplemental oxygen at night, I did find this in an FAA brochure: Obviously, this is not a requirement, just a recommendation in this particular publication, but the idea does at least have some official backing.

Do you get a glideslope indication (i.e. is the only problem that the autopilot isn't capturing), or do you get no glideslope indication either?

I'm not sure from your description - are you a real-world 172 pilot too? The power settings I would typically use in the pattern seem to give me the expected results. I can't recall any issues with approach speeds either. If your approach speed is low, can't you achieve the desired speed by pushing the nose down, adding power if needed, and trimming?

Hope I didn't cause anyone any lasting anguish! Apart from possibly a Rick Astley earworm - for which I apologize, but at least I've been dealt a fitting punishment, as I now have one too. Here's to a long life for MSFS 2020 and to Microsoft never giving it up!