NOTE for readers: The videos that go along with these blog posts are now available as YouTube live streams on the weeks the series blog posts are posted. This week’s air systems demo will take place on Aug 24, 2022. Watch for the scheduled stream to post on Talking flight monitor’s YouTube channel soon.

 

 

Five weeks have passed since we had a blog post, and the PMDG 737 series is now behind schedule. Many things have happened since the last blog post, and we will catch you up on things before getting into the new addition to the PMDG 737: The air systems panel.

 

Life is priority

There is a saying in the BVI pilots community: ‘Life is priority’. Life should always take priority over simming or gaming, unless they are involved in your career, job, or work. For the past five weeks, life has put me in a few different predicaments. First, the pharmacy messed up some prescriptions I needed. I had to keep myself motivated with other things for part of the time. Then, my guide dog got sick, and I had to take him to the vet ER to get help. Lastly, Microsoft released a preview feature update into the world of production versions of Windows. That forced me to reinstall everything again. Thanks to the people at PMDG support who helped me through the licensing problems with the 737 base package, I am back up and running again. As an extra slow-me-downer, I had to ask PMDG some questions about the air systems panel, which are now resolved issues. Now that we are caught up, I would like to introduce the air systems panel.

 

Air systems panel

 

The air systems panel is self explanatory. However, we will go through the keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts access groups of controls because there are too many controls for individual shortcuts.

 

ALT+D – Displays. Includes flight altitude and landing altitude.

ALT+S – Selectors. Includes air source selector and pressurization mode selector.

ALT+P – Packs. Includes left and right pack selectors.

ALT+B – Bleeds. Includes left/right bleeds and APU bleed.

ALT+C – Recirc fans. Includes left/right recirc fan switches.

ALT+V – Valves/trim. Includes air trim switch, outflow valve selector, and isolation valve selector.

ALT+1 – Zone temp indicators. Includes flight deck, aft cabin, and FWD cabin.

ALT+2 – Bleed indicators. Includes dual bleed and left/right bleed trips.

ALT+3 – Ram door indicators. Includes left/right ram doors.

ALT+4 – Pack trip indicators. Includes left/right pack trips.

ALT+5 – Wing/body overheat indicators. Includes left/right wing/body overheat lights.

 

The air systems panel is located in the center overhead. You can access it while TFM is running by pressing left bracket ([), then by pressing CTRL+P. When the panels treeview appears, open the center overhead and navigate to air systems.

This has been an adventurous five weeks. I don’t foresee getting behind this much for the rest of the 737 series. As a reminder, when the overhead panel is finished, we will release a new preview build. More will come soon, since the only portion of the target goal left is the bottom overhead. See you Soon!