cshark172

I just reflew this 2 more times and the only box that is having any effect on the Heading bug is Cloud turbulence. Each time, I have left all the boxes in wind page unchecked. It seems wind turbulence has no effect, since I flew through the layer with Wind TURB 3 and there was no problem with heading hold. Also, I do not have random icing set, so ASX is still setting it with the slider set to 0.

Pete, I looks like Cloud turbulence is causing the heading issue. I did some quick testing, flying out of San Francisco with the latest in the PMDG 747x, using ASX weather from today at 1900Z. I took off and dialed in various headings to circle the field up to about 12000' then climbed on course to FL380 to CYVR. Wind smoothing is at 3 secs per deg/knott, temperature at 50/pressure at 20. Here is a summary of my analysis (reloaded flight and weather each time): Left all boxes unchecked (including the new variance) - Heading wandered aimlessly above about 3000'. Checked supress variance only from wind tab - no change Checked variance and cloud turbulence - Heading held Unchecked variance - Heading still held I then loaded up Weatherset2 and noticed the following for clouds: layer 0 - 2100' - 2598' - Turbulence 2/Icing 1 layer 1 - 3301' - 7300' - Turbulence 2/Icing 1 layer 2 - 27100-27300 - No turb What is interesting here is I had cloud turbulence at 10% and icing off in ASX. I wonder if there is something in the way ASX generates the low level weather that is causing this. My heading hold issues have always been at the lower flight levels. The winds on climb were very smooth. I had some IAS issues between 10k and 12k feet, but wind turbulence was at 3, so that was expected. As a reference, here are the wind layers I passed through (some significant speed changes in there). 2989 185/9 5991 238/25 8990 260/23 11991 276/21 - Turb was 3 here 17898 304/49 23990 304/65 24006 308/68 29990 300/69 33990 320/96 38990 322/98 I am about 45 minutes into the cruise now, and have not seen any rapid TAT changes or violent wind shifts. Things are looking very good with this version. Really appreciate all the hard work you are putting into this. Microsoft should give you a cut of the profits :roll: Kyle

Did you have suppress turbulence for both clouds and winds on as well? I was having the same heading problems until I suppressed gusts/turbulence from to winds page, and supress turbulence from the clouds page. With all these suppressions on, the PMDG 747x held heading for me. I can report that the winds appeared to stay steady. I had smoothing set to 3 seconds per knott/degree. I am having some problems now with TAT changes of 5-10 degrees C during cruise---really causes the Airspeed to fluctuate significantly. I have the temperature smoothness set to 50, but there doesn't seem to be much difference. One thing of interest is that the HDG problem was there in 4.217, seemed to be OK in 4.218 and is now back again. I missed the betas between 4.218 and 4.231, so not sure when it reappeard. Kyle

That is the setup--Date/time was 21 Jan @ 2350Z. I used to use autosave with FS9 due to frequent CTDs. FSX has been real stable so far, so I have not turned it on yet. If you don't get a chance to look at the flight setup I mentioned--no worries. The shifts that I noticed were still much less than default. Kyle

Pete, I do have a save of the flight at the moment before takeoff. I can send it to you if you think it may help. I am using weather from ASX from a couple of days ago at San Francisco in the rain and some windy condtions on climb. The shifts I mentioned were climbing out in a northerly direction from the airport at 18k and 24k feet. Kyle

Hello Pete, Same results here with the PMDG 744x and 4.218 smoothing. I just tried the climb out with the flight I was using earlier, and had no problems with HDG hold, and the winds were fairly smooth from surface to 34000'. A couple of abrupt direction changes, but these were at the wind layers 18000 and 24000. I was watching Weatherset2 and the winds were consistent with what it was reporting. Those layers had 30 degree direction changes and the wind direction jumped immediately at the wind layer altitude. The wind speed was smoothed out all the way up. I was very happy with the results compared to no smoothing. Thanks for all your efforts, Kyle

It sure appears to be the way PMDG is calculating heading. I tried the same situation with the LDS 767, and Wilco 737 PIC and had no problems whatsoever. Fired up the PMDG again, and the problems came back. Next time I have a chance to do some testing, I will check things out with WeatherSet, but it could be a while. The variance and turbulence is a nice touch. Kyle

I can confirm the same problem with PMDG 747x and 4.217 wind smoothing. Of interest, it is only a problem at lower altitudes (below 12k'). There were no problems during intermediate climb and cruise. I thought all was ok until descent, and on radar vectors below 12k the plane stopped tracking HDG, and went crazy. I turned off wind smoothing and all was fine. Maybe a hot key to enable/disable? Kyle

Yep, everything is working fine now. Thanks, Pete.

Hi Pete, When I performed an Aircraft specific calibration in the interim 3.705 and 3.706 versions of FSUIPC, the program always saved the calibration as Cessna Skyhawk 172SP, no matter what aircraft I tried. I would change some calibration items, and the updates always went into the Cessna section. The title bar did show the name of the correct aircraft. I went back to the official 3.7 version and all is well. Thanks for your excellent support to the FS community. Kyle