FlightFactor A320 Ultimate

My first ever payware aircraft was the FlightFactor A320 Ultimate. It was also the first Airbus i ever had an experience with. Till then, i was flying most of the time the two free Boeing aircrafts in X-plane (the 737 and the 747) plus the free Zibo 737 mod. As always before i buy an aeroplane, i read reviews, i watch youtube videos and always i read the official forums, user opinions and support are always important. For the flightfactor A320 the opinions were divided. So from one side i was excited to try my first airbus and on the otherside i was worried if it is (or it is not) good.

Verdict

the FlightFactor A320 as it is now, on the stable version 1.1.5 is extremely good. i think the best airbus somebody can buy judging by the price and the quality. Yes the FlightSimLabs A320 is better but only for somebody who wants to try every little detail an airbus a320 has to offer. to complete a normal, everyday, fast flight, as a real pilot does, i think it is more than sufficient. Also flightfactor has often discounts in the X-plane store so you can get it in the half price (or less) of the Fslabs A320. The graphics are good, the flight dynamics are good, the sounds are good, the procedures are correct, the night lighting is very good. Also there are frequent updates that improve it more and more. It is compatible with Navigraph data. I was getting in average around 50fps which is good.

Cold and Dark

this is a typical airbus startup procedure:

1. overhead panel – Batteries 1 and 2 on

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note: when you press the left battery switch, the right one gets an off value. you press on it to switch it on (the off value goes away). that means the battery is on.

2. Apu section, master sw on, wait for 3-4 seconds for the apu flap to open and press the start button. it goes to ON state, the apu starting procedure begins (we can monitor it on the ecam apu screen) and after 1-2 minutes the start button condition changes to avail.

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3. Nav lights position 1, strobe light to auto, emergency exit lights arm, seat belts auto, no smoking on, the 3 adirs to nav, prob/window heat on, apu bleed on, the 6 fuel pumps on, crew supply on, hot air on and aft isol valve on.

note: the most important are the 3 adirs to be in the nav position, these are our gps (the will blink align for sometime-don’t mind it), the fuel pumps to be on so fuel can go to the engines and the apu bleed to be on so we can start the engines. everything else can be adjust as we want.

4. efb tablet, fuel section, call, we add 7000kgr of fuel and press set

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5. press on the pax section, call the stairs and arrange the number of passengers. then press set

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note: we can call one or more stairs. if we are on an airport with gates, we press on the stairs and it changes to gate. then we can use the gateway of the airport. there are also preselected passenger loads, like 1/3, 2/3 and full so we can choose one fast

6. press on the cargo section, then call on the two baggage loaders. set the cargo amount with the sliders and press set

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7. perf data section – check the total weight to be in the limits and press set

note: you have to check if the blue part of the graph is inside they grey area. if it is not, you have to go back to fuel, pax and cargo section and rearrange the loads there. then you recheck the graph and if everything is ok you press set

8. program the fmc. to get a general idea how to do that, read the airbus fmc tutorial.

super sos note: wait till the gps primary message appears at the bottom of the fmc screen. also the flight plan will appear on the navigation display. you can monitor the time needed for the gps to be calibrated on the upper ecam screen. do not call the pushback track to move the plane. do not start the engines to move the plane. if you do that, then the irs coordinates will change and the alignment will fail.

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9. waiting for the gps gives us time for some preparations: remove the utility vehicles we have called before to load the plane. go to the efb tablet, select the service tab, then press fuel and remove the fuel track. next, press on the pax section, remove the stairs. then, cargo section, remove the baggage loaders.

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note: in case you chose a different cold and start method, for example using the ground power unit or chocks etc, don’t forget to remove also these utility vehicles, so the plane will be free for the pushback. or the engine start in case you are in a parking spot where you don’t need pushback. in case you have used the chocks instead of parking break, make sure the parking break is set to on before you remove the chocks. also after the last updates of the flightfactor a320, the speed brake is set at 1/2 when we load the plane. retract it to ret.

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10. at the flight control unit, we are going to set the altitude, 21000ft using the knob under it (note the inner switch at the base of the knob that help us change the altitude with steps of 1000ft or 100ft) and the speed at the v2 value plus a little more, using the knob under it. in our example set it to around 140 (v2 is 131).

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11. we are going to use the radio now, to get the barometric value for the altimeter. there are many ways to get it, but we will do it through the radio and the atis, so we will have an example how to use the radio. at the radio panel, at the left of the throttle, we see two values, set by default at 118.000. the active and the standby value. under it there is a knob with two levels: if we leave the mouse pointer on the upper level of the knob and we use the wheel of the mouse, we can change the 3 digits after the point. if we touch the outer part of the knob with our mouse pointer, and we use the mouse wheel, we will change the 3 digits before the point. in our example, i will use the atis frequency of ActiveSky Xp, which is set at 122.000 and it informs us about the weather in the currect airport. so at the stb/crs frecuency we set the frequency at 122.000 and we press the green arrows at the left, to change the values between the active and the standby frequencies.

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12. listening to the Atis, we get the barometric value of 1008 inHg. but the current indication is 2992 Hpa. to change the metering system we left click with the mouse at the inner side of the knob. we convert the value to 1013. we use the mouse wheel to make it 1008.

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13. now we are going to setup the isis, the second altimeter of the plane. we will insert also there the value of 1008 inHg, so the two altimeters will be showing the same indications

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14. one more thing we can do before we start the engines is to setup the transponder. we set it to on and to ta/ra mode. the by pressing two times the clr key, we clear any old values there. by using the transponder keyboard we type in the new value that we get from the atc. if we don’t use atc, we type whatever we like. i used the 2121.

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note: by this time, the gps should be ready, so we can call for pushback and start the engines after permission or start the engines at once, in case we are at a parking place where no pushback is needed. don’t forget, to start the engines, we need the apu bleed to be on (remember the note of step 3)

15. up to overhead panel, seatbelts on and beacon on, to inform people around, that the aircraft is going to move

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16. ignition switch to start, the indications at the upper ecam, change from orange to green. that means we can turn the engines on.

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17. move the engine no 2 lever to the up position. on the upper ecam, the N2 will get a grey background, all the values will start going up and of course you will hear the sound of the engine spooling. when the grey background goes away and the sign Avail appears on the top of the engine indications, the engine is ready.

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18. now move the engine no 1 lever up. same as before, the N2 will get a grey background, values go up, spooling engine sound. after some seconds the engine will be ready

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19. now we have electricity from the engines. we don’t need the apu anymore. so we go to the overhead panel, we switch off the apu bleed, and press on the apu master sw to turn it off. don’t mind here that the avail sign will remain on for sometime. you don’t have to do something for that. it will go off after sometime. also set the taxi lights to taxi position.

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20. we can move the plane now and we go to the runway we want. we stop the plane at the … stop spot before the runway. we look at the upper ecam and we have some new… tasks to fulfill. our goal is to make all the blue indiacations, green

a. we set the auto brake at max.

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b. we go to the efb tablet, fab tab, and down left we press on the cabin ready button.

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c. spoilers arm, we left click and hold the speed brake lever and move it up. a white spot will appear at the bottom of the lever and

d. flaps at position 1.

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e. set the trim wheel around to the value we used at the fmc. for our example it is 0.7. the arrow on the right side of the trim wheel shows us where we have to target

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*f. in case there are high mountains around, turn on the terrain radar by pressing the terrain on nd button. south of chania (lgsa airport) are mountains of 2454m (around 8000ft). so we turn it on

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g. put the taxi lights to take off position (to) and both the land lights to on

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h. between the two fmc there is the to config button. we press it. checking now on the upper ecam, everything is green.

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21. move the plane to the runway and we are ready to go … have an interesting flight !!!!