767 Pilot In Command Review - By William “BBall” Ball Page 1 of 4
God I hate early morning departures! No wait, let me rephrase that...I’d rather spend the night in a Turkish prison, then fly the 0605 launch from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Detroit (well, maybe a Turkish women’s prison ). All right, Captain BBall enough whining, you bid the trip, now you have to fly it. Here we go, ... 0330 wake up, massive amounts of coffee, do the “three S” thing, don the zoom suit, 0415 back out of the driveway, 0440 haul my gear onto the crew bus, 0505 sign in at Pilot Check-in, 0520 at the gate, "wind the rubber band", and finally…... 0605 pushback for the dawn patrol departure. It simply amazes me how many people want to go ANYWHERE this early in the day.
O.K., it’s early, WAY early, and I’m sitting if front of all these funny clocks again. What the heck is that? Something is licking my hand…. I knew these NWA ticket agents were friendly, but HOLD THE PRESSES! Huh? Oh heck, I’m not at work; I’m in my boxer shorts sitting in front of the trusty computer, and my golden retriever Cassy is saying “good morning”. Now I remember…. I’m here to put a Microsoft Flight Simulator add-on through its paces (I obviously haven't consumed the required copious amounts of caffeine yet). This program is a little piece from the folks at Wilco Publishing with the cool title of "767 Pilot in Command". The first time I saw this baby advertised, it more than picked my interest, and I felt that someday we would surely have to meet on the field of P.C. play.
My thinking is to challenge that age-old Microsoft Flight Sim axiom, "As real as it gets..." by (as my teenage son is fond of saying) "keepin' it real". With that said, I thought I would add my share of reality by "simulating" one of Northwest Airline's first daily departures from the Twin Cities. This is a flight that I avoid like the plague, for I am most assuredly NOT a morning person. It’s the most hated "o-dawn-thirty” launch, and in terms of difficulty it's actually a milk run, just far too early in the day to be doing anything but snoring. All right, so far the "real" part about getting my ass out of bed too early is ringing true.
Beautiful KLM Boeing 767. No, I’m not out in a farmer’s field, just a bad screenshot
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For a few years now, a number of folks have been throwing the idea at me to do a "review" concerning the relationship (if any) between the cyber version of the Boeing 757, and the version that rolls out of the hanger in Washington state, costs somewhere around 75 million dollars, and will make you the envy of your entire neighborhood. It’s always been a great idea for at least two reasons. 1). I’m an avid flight sim fan, and 2). I have roughly 4000 hours logged in the left seat of the 757. I’ve tried several of the 757 add-ons for the MS series of flight sims, but they didn’t seem to be what I was looking for. They were good at making something LOOK like the 757, but "the feel" of the jet wasn't there.
First important note; I am by nature a big fan of military flight sims (motto being: "if you can’t blow something up, why bother?"), and I have logged some quality time in the MSFS family of 2000 and 2002 (mostly in the helos), but I would hazard a guess that my ratio of military sim time to civilian time would be about five to one. Meaning of course, that I am by no means a wizard concerning all the ins/outs, tweaks and add-ons for the flight sims from Willy Gate’s team. I like them (especially FS2002), but again I spend the majority of my sim time flying titles such as Falcon 4, Jane’s F/A-18, IL-2, CFS3 and even some of the old classics like Jane's Longbow 2. For that reason, this review will center on the “stock” 767 PIC software, not some “tweaked to within an inch of its life” version of it. The one major exception is that I have added the FSUIPC utility to remove some joystick spikes that were plaguing me.
Back to the business at hand. Again, this one caught my attention when it hit the streets some many months ago; mostly because of the gentleman that was the driving force behind it. It seems that Mr. Eric Ernst is (or was at the time) a line 767 First Officer for American Airlines. “Way cool” I thought, if Mr. Ernst and Company did this thing right, I could literally fly a line trip EXACTLY as I do at work, plus I could fly a trip loaded with “abnormals” and/or emergencies just like in the multi-million dollar simulator at the Northwest Training Center here in St. Paul. So if Microsoft likes to spout their little mantra of “As real as it gets”, let’s see just how close Wilco Publishing’s version of “real” can be.
Second important note; NWA owns exactly zero Boeing 767s, however we do own roughly sixty 757s. Since the cockpits are almost totally identical (the FAA considers the type rating to be valid for both jets), and I have lots of hours flying a wide-body aircraft (the DC-10), then I considered myself “qualified” to make any and all judgments concerning the “reality quotient” pertaining to this software. No, I've never flown an actual 767-300, and not many simmers can say they have, but I guess I've flown the next best thing. My aim here is not to attempt to make everyone that reads this a competent 767 pilot, that's simply not possible without lots of actual flight hours and about six weeks in an FAA approved ground school and simulator training course. My aim is to shed some light on what a "real" 757 aviator feels when he sits down to fly this title.
One might ask the question: "Why has it taken you so long BBall...this thing was released many moons ago?" Quite frankly, I’ve been waiting for them to make it compatible with FS2002, and since they released a patch to do just that several months ago; here I am. Let me mention that this thing was coded for FS2000 and with the patch, it (mostly) works in FS2002. The one big exception to that statement is the “adventure scenarios”, they only work in FS2000. “Adventure Scenarios”, eh? I dare say that blown tires, engine failures and the like wouldn’t be my (or any other airline pilot’s) idea of an “adventure”, I would more likely to call them “emergencies” or “abnormals”. By the way, the text on the box that reads “Experience the thrills of an airline captain” pertains to those “adventures” awaiting you, and not to the bad hotels, ugly food, odd hours, gray hair, wrinkles, and the lurking divorce lawyers that sum up some of the “thrills” we real world airline captains experience (at least I don’t think it does :) .
At the gate in KSFO.
For anyone mildly curious, here are the numbers for my rig: AMD 2100xp, 512 mb PC133, 128 mb GeForce 4 Ti4200, SB Live!, Thrustmaster Cougar HOTAS with CH pro pedals.
I’m going to skip the obligatory “here’s what you get when you open the box”, plus the “here’s how easy (or not) the installation went” parts, and get right down to business. How well did Wilco Publishing simulate the Boeing systems (including system failures), the flight model (insert the 767 statement from above), and VERY IMPORTANTLY, how well did they simulate the heart and soul of Mr. Boeing’s big twin-engine wonders: namely the Flight Management Computer and how it relates to the APFGS (auto-pilot/flight guidance system)? I will tell you that on the CD, they provide you with LOTS of homework in the form of PDF files, and I do highly suggest you spend some time reading these. In fact, if you don’t, most of this will be like trying to master Chinese arithmetic.
You can peruse the above mentioned “Adventure Scripts” (giving you a glimpse of what is in store for you concerning the failures that lie ahead), or you can dive into the “Normal Checklists”, “Non-Normal Checklists”, “Panel Ops and Systems”, or lastly the “FMC” files. I breezed over the checklists because I plan on using my airlines versions as part of the “reality yardstick”, but I spent some quality time with the “Panel Ops and Systems” and found it quite good. However, the jewel is this crown is the file on the FMC and its use. I recommend clearing your schedule before attacking this file, it might take a while.
I remember sitting in initial 757 ground school (almost six years ago) sporting a BIG question mark above my head. They were rambling on about the “FMC this”, and the “FMC that”, and I had the “Homer Simpson staring at a doughnut” look on my face. I had never flown a glass cockpit airplane before, and this was starting to feel like I was trying to take a drink from a fire hydrant (I was coming from the 727, and the most automatic thing on that machine is the mirror light in the bathroom that comes on when you go in and lock the door behind you). Fortunately for me, they also started us from day one using a table-top FMC simulator and the famous line “one button push is worth a thousand manual dissertations” was hammered home loud and clear. Within a few days, the “doe in the headlights” look on my face was replaced with something vaguely resembling a hint of knowledge. The rest of the training was actually quite fun (except of course for that pesky part about one’s job being on the line).
Active data base info.
All that is a long-winded version of me saying that their explanation of the FMC and its usage is VERY WELL DONE. I only wish that I had read their little file before I had started my ground school on the 757. I will caution you however, the first several times you read it, don’t be at all shocked when you go to the mirror and see the “Homer Simpson face” staring back at you. This stuff is best learned by having a working version of the FMC in front of you while reading the file. I HIGHLY recommend printing the file and just sitting in the sim “cockpit” punching the buttons while reading. Again, the FMC and the relationship to how it works in conjunction with the APFGS is the “golden chalice” of 757/767 flying, so take the time to read and understand it.
Here’s my plan for "767 Pilot in Command". I’ll show up to the "jet" parked at the gate. Use my NWA flow patterns, checklists (both normal and abnormal), Northwest Airline's SOPA and SMAC procedures (Standard Operations and Procedures Amplified and Standard Maneuvers and Configurations), and conduct one flight from MSP to DTW as a “normal” flight (abnormals may or may not appear), and then one with LOTS of abnormals and/or emergency problems. By this yardstick, we’ll see just how close this piece of software comes to replicating what “yours truly” does every time he dons the zoom suit and walks out the door headed for the airport. Also, simply due to the sheer volume of things that I’m tasking myself with reviewing, the only reasonable way to do this is with two installments. The first will be looking at the “normal” operations; the second will be “abnormals”, or those “adventure scenarios” I spoke of earlier. If I didn’t split it into two reports, then I’m afraid by comparison, “War and Peace” might look like it was written on bar napkin. Ready? Here we go.
