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DC-8 Jetliner Series 10 to 40 Nov4 sticky

Patience my friend, patience.

When a developer builds under contract for a publisher, conditions apply. Costs, timing, specifications, QA and many more. This means different projects have different outcomes. Personally I find the process refreshing and would not have it any other way.

You would like PMDG? Thankyou that will be 3 Years.
You would like a "CntrlE" package? Thankyou that will be 3-4 months.
You would like 32 different versions? Thankyou. My sons are fully trained to take over when I die so continuity should not be a problem.


Glad some of you are enjoying it.

:engel016:

CEO Aeroplane Heaven UK, Europe, US and East Asia divisions.
 
? for the JF and or Design Team Re: Beta OS. Can anyone tell me if any test where carried out under Windows 8 system. I am looking for a FSX native DC8 and JF pricing is in my ballpark.
 
Just posted this on the Just Flight forum

I want to preface this by saying that I like this product. It just needs more work. I also want to state that I have a lot of knowledge on this subject as I flew them for 20 years. Both as a Professional Flight Engineer and a First Officer. I also worked as a mechanic on them for 5 years. These are all problems that should have been caught by beta testers. So here goes, it's long list.

Initial Observations on the DC-8


Enginners Panel:



  1. There is an apu position on the volt/freq selector. Very few DC-8's had an apu installed.
  2. Hydraulic system selector lever should normally be in the middle position. The lower position is an emergency position. This lever should be left in the middle position for normal ops.
  3. Cabin pressure control is shown in the manual locked position. The knob should be rotated
    90 degrees and colored yellow.
  4. Fuel temp selector- Usually there is no selector, fuel temp is read from the number 4 main tank only.
  5. The N1 and N2 gauges are reversed. Normally N1 is on the engine indicating panel up front. Howeverer, I have seen one airplane with the N1, N2 gauges in this configuration. It was originally ordered by Swissair.
  6. Ground cooling/bloway jet switch is labelled but not installed.
  7. Your fuel panel setup for the engine start is really incorrect. Engines were never started feeding from the center main tank. When you think about it, a lot of flights were done with no fuel in the center tank. The normal start configuration was all crossfeed levers up, the fuel selector levers (white levers) feeding the engines from their respective main tank. All main boost pumps on. After each engine was started, it's boost pump was shut off to check the engine driven fuel pump pressure. A negative pressure indicated a failure. The boost pumps were turned back on during the before takeoff checklist.
  8. The Aileron and Rudder manual reversion lights should come on when the hydraulic power levers are placed in the down position. These levers are normally down when the aircraft is shutdown. They shutoff the hydraulic fluid to the aileron and rudder power packs when you have a hydraulic leak. They are placed on during the after start checklist.
  9. Cabin VSI indicates a climb of 1500 fpm all the time.
  10. The hydraulic aux pump should read 2800 to 3000 psi, not 1600 psi.
  11. When the engine hydraulic bypass switches are placed in bypass, the only thing that should go down is the hydraulic pressure.
  12. No sounds for the turbo compressors or recirculation fans. You really hear them when you
    put them on.
  13. No bell with the fire warning test.


Overhead:



    1. The fire shutoff switch cover should have a white dot about halfway up from verbage to the beginning of its travel. This indicates at what position the generator field trips.
    2. The standby magnetic compass is normally mounted in the ceiling behind the captains seat. The pilots normally viewed it using a mirror in front of each position. The navigator could look up to his right and view it. The pilots usually adjusted these during their preflight and then folded them down.
    3. The engine anti ice lights were normally out. They were disagreement lights. If the valve position disagreed with the switch position, they came on. When the switch was placed either open or closed the light would flicker briefly for 1 or 2 seconds.


Main Instrument panels:



  1. Standby airspeed indicator. Never saw one. It wasn't needed because the DC-8 had two independent pitot static systems.
  2. #1 VOR omnirange indicator should not be there. #1 Vor is indicated on the captains HSI and the #2 VOR is indicated on the FO's HSI.
  3. The RMI should read both VOR and ADF selectable by a pair of two position switches located on the bottom of the RMI. These were called the suicide switches.
  4. Standby attitude indicator not installed until the 1970's.
  5. The airspeed indicator is too modern. The digital readouts did not come along until the 2000's when aircraft were made RVSM compliant by replacing the air data system.
    The maximum airspeed pointer was not hooked to the autothrottle. It was used as a ref bug for threshold speed (Vth) and V2+10. It should be orange/red.
  6. Autothrottle-No autothrottles were installed on the early aircraft. They weren't installed until the 60 series. And then were not used much. It was found that they didn't work well and were disconnected.
  7. The altimeter with a digital readout wasn't used until the aircraft were made RVSM compliant. In any case your altimeter does not indicate the altitude correctly.
  8. Altitude Selector/Alerter (In the center top part of the glareshield.) Should not follow the
    altitude. The pilot not flying selects the altitude that they are cleared to. At 800 ft below the target altitude an aural alert is sounded and an amber light is illuminated. Once leveled
    off, if the aircraft deviates +- 200 ft from the altitude indicated in the selector window, the warnings occur. The same thing happens in reverse when descending. 800 ft above the selected altitude the warnings come on.
  9. Slot light. No slot light installed. An amber light, usually on the FO's panel that illuminates
    when the flaps extend past 7 degrees and the slots are not open. It will also come on when the flaps retract past two degrees and the slots are not closed. When flaps are extend or retracted it normally comes on for one or two seconds as everything cycles.
  10. Flap position indicator has two pointers.
  11. The autopilot warning lights and position indicators are normally on the captains side. The aircraft only has one set installed. They can be on the FO's side, but then they wouldn't be on the captains side.
  12. Auto pilot servo switches are normally on the captains side only, if they are installed. Not every aircraft had them.
  13. PTC indicator is on the FO's yoke only.
  14. Parking brake animation is backwards. To set the parking brake, you pull up.
  15. Hydraulic brake pressure gauge should read a max of 3000 psi.
  16. The full flaps placard should not be there on the early aircraft. Flaps 50 was a normal landing flap position. Flaps 35 became the normal landing position when the hushkits were installed and the aircraft had to be stage 3 noise compliant. By landing at flaps 35 versus flaps 50 it lowered the power setting required and hence the noise. In fact when I flew the 61,62 and 63 aircraft we quite often had an "emergency" landing. Flaps 50 is still the normal landing flaps for the 70 series as they have cfm-56 turbofans installed and are stage 3 compliant.
  17. The autopilot turn knob should not be hooked to the heading bug. If you were flying along in heading select and wanted to turn the aircraft for a deviation of some sort, you rotate the turn knob out of it's center detente in the direction you wished to turn. The autopilot would snap out of heading select.
  18. The vertical speed wheel function is incorrect. The white index mark should be the zero fpm rate of climb position. When there, it is also the altitude hold switch. There is no separate altitude hold switch. When flying the aircraft on autopilot, the pilot places a fingertip on the VS wheel and keeps it there while rotating it towards the rear to climb, and forward to descend. When approaching your target altitude you would slowly reduce the rate of climb to zero. At that point you could feel the feel settle into its altitude hold detent.
    Those aircraft that did have a separate altitude hold switch, it was a flight director function.
  19. The flight director does not work properly. The switch should definitely have separate detentes for each position. The FI position will follow the heading bug. The other functions will follow the nav sources.
I think that if these are corrected a good product will turn into a classic outstanding project.
 
Comprehensive feedback John - well done!

Baz, wasn't trying to sound "down" about there not being a '50 - something about those gills in the engine nacelles - really like that version. ... but I'm still happy that there is the '40. I understand these are big complex projects - I know you have to "peg" a set of variants, and on such a diverse model family like the '8, the number of iterations is enormous. It's not for no reason that Dee Waldron took as long as he did on the HJG family, and that was with VC-less models.

Anyone who has this can comment on the FPS? Say, using the JF Comet as a benchmark? Hope it's not like the CS 707 and 737. Those are completely unusable on my current rig. If they're good, I'll be picking this up on the weekend when I return home ....


DL
thanks!
 
Indeed not down at all. In fact Iam grateful for the input John and much of it will be extremely useful for the next update. We do use official manuals and some of these do differ from your descriptions so i guess it is going to come down to finding some middle. For example, the fuel setting is setup from the chart in the official United ops manual. Please also remember that FSX was not designed for many of the systems code demanded by today's simmers so compromises and workarounds are inevitable.

If it can be done witin a reasonable timeframe, it will be.
 
Phantastic input by both bazzar and John!
Thank you...!

I would like to point out, that I think Dax Sweetmanns repaints included in the package are fine pieces of work!
Have many of his repaints for the CS aircraft and admire his work!

Cheers...
 
"For example, the fuel setting is setup from the chart in the official United ops manual." There is your problem. United has a reputation for doing things their own way, regardless of what the manufacturer does. Especially in the old days. Most of the changes brought out in the DC-8 were because United crashed one here and ran off the runway there... We had a bunch of ex United 71's that had things on them that were really wrong. Like digital fuel gauges that didn't work, because a captain ran one out of gas in Portland Oregon. Rather than fixing the captain and their training, they "fixed' the airplane. I could go on for hours. Any procedure you get from United I would treat with a grain of salt. Just think about it in a nice logical flow of events. Does the United procedure make sense? Why would you start using fuel from a tank you don't use all the time? Why would you use fuel from alternate tanks that may not have fuel in them all the time. Your procedure for putting all the fuel control levers up for start is wrong as well. All the fuel control levers should be down in the cutoff position. You place the fuel lever for the engine being started up at 15% N2, you then have fuel flow and ignition. The pilot starting the motors is looking at all the engine gauges during start. Otherwise the engineer, if the N2 gauges are in the back is calling out 15% and 35% N2. The 35% is for starter cutout. Unlike the newer jets were the starts switch opens automatically, on the Jurrassic Jet, you had to hold them until you hit 35% or in the case of the 70's,you hit 50% N2. You held those switches for a looooong time on the 70. So long that UPS put switches with longer levers so their pilots wouldn't get tired cramped fingers.
 
:icon_lol:
That is one cool bit of trivia...!
Thank you for your inside view on how the DC8 was operated...:salute:
 
bully707 said:
:icon_lol:
That is one cool bit of trivia...!
Thank you for your inside view on how the DC8 was operated...:salute:
Click to expand...


Here is a link to a website with info about the accident: http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/ua173.shtml

United's fix was to replace the Douglas fuel quantity system which worked quite well with a system with large digital readouts that the captain could see that was problematic at best. I can't tell you how many times when trucking across a large body of water I couldn't get a fuel reading using the gauges. It was good that the jurrassic jet had a magnetic drip sticks that could read the fuel quantity. We used to stick the tanks before every flight and then use a fuel log for every flight over four hours and every over water flight. You get real good at doing fuel burn calculations in your head on the fly so to speak. You can never have enough fuel, unless you are on fire.
 
Calling JF Tower.

Just bought the DC8 and reporting it works on Windows 8 64. However a minor issue. Windows 8 is coughing on the pdf and I had to refer to my hand down Air Canada DC8 manual to start the bird. Please advise with re PDF W8.
 
Hello all,

@johndetrick;
I'm able to nose up this DC-8 at around 58-60 Kias, either half or full load even over GW!
Is this a normal attitude for a DC-8 knowing that the V1, Vr and V2 are between 120 till 152 Knts ?
thanks in advance for your lights and clues:salute:
:icon29::icon29:
 
yankeeromeo said:
Hello all,

@johndetrick;
I'm able to nose up this DC-8 at around 58-60 Kias, either half or full load even over GW!
Is this a normal attitude for a DC-8 knowing that the V1, Vr and V2 are between 120 till 152 Knts ?
thanks in advance for your lights and clues:salute:
:icon29::icon29:
Click to expand...

The simple and short answer is no. In the real world,the pilot flying at 80 kts will do an elevator check by pushing forward on the yoke and bringing it back to neutral. The nose dips a little, but not much. This is to check that the elevator is not stuck. The elevator on this airplane is unpowered and takes a bit of force on rotation to lift the nose up. A crash of a -63 at JFK caused by a jammed elevator caused this procedure to be added to the checklist as well as a new elevator position indicator, which is checked on the taxi checklist. That reminds me of something else missing on the new model is the lack of the gustlock on the FO's side of the cockpit. A long lever with a big yellow knob on it. It locked the elevator and rudder in place when parked.
 
johndetrick said:
The simple and short answer is no. In the real world,the pilot flying at 80 kts will do an elevator check by pushing forward on the yoke and bringing it back to neutral. The nose dips a little, but not much. This is to check that the elevator is not stuck. The elevator on this airplane is unpowered and takes a bit of force on rotation to lift the nose up. A crash of a -63 at JFK caused by a jammed elevator caused this procedure to be added to the checklist as well as a new elevator position indicator, which is checked on the taxi checklist. That reminds me of something else missing on the new model is the lack of the gustlock on the FO's side of the cockpit. A long lever with a big yellow knob on it. It locked the elevator and rudder in place when parked.
Click to expand...

I thought also it was not possible, so a little of FD tuning is necessary:pop4:
Thanks for your answers.
:icon29::icon29:
 
Enjoying a lot this plane. Thanks JF!
There is a ISG panel available in flightsim.com if anybody is interested. And of course, it deserves a sticky as everybody else :salute:
 
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