Real 747 Pilot Plays Xplane 11 | Flight Simulator

When I did that flight sim game on my iPad last year, I had one or two people leaving comments saying, can you please play X-Plane 11? So, Kelsey plays X-Plane 11. Coming up. Hey, 7-4 crew, welcome back. If you don't know me, my name's Kelsey. I'm a 747 pilot. My channel, 7-4 Gear, is all about aviation. Last year, someone had left a comment asking if I can download this app and play this flight sim game on my iPad. And I thought, yeah, it's five bucks, why not? And after I did that video, I had a lot of people commenting asking if I could play a bunch of different games. One of the ones that I got a lot of comments on was X-Plane 11. So I jumped online for the 7-4 crew, ordered all the different things I thought I was going to need in order to make this video. So now you're going to see my first few landings on X-Plane 11. Let's get into it. I downloaded everything and I've set it all up and I believe I've got it set up to do the ILS. I'm flying on a six left into LAX, which is going to be actually my new base. And I have loaded everything up to, oh, it just grabbed the localizer, I guess. I've loaded everything up so that way it will come inbound and I don't know if this thing can auto land like the normal plane that we do. I'll be honest, I put it on a 10-mile final. It took me so long to figure out how to get it on there, I actually went into the X-Plane forum to ask someone how to get it out here because I didn't want to keep having to do a pattern work on this. So I've got it set up there and now I'm going to come in on the autopilot and we're going to see if it's going to grab everything and actually take it in and land it. I have, so far it seems to be doing a pretty cool thing. I should tell you, I'm not sponsored by X-Plane or anybody else. I bought this yoke and if you're curious to all the different things that I got in order to play this game, I'll put a link to it in the description below so you guys can check out what I got and so I don't have to explain it here while I... This looks like it's lining up on actually the wrong runway. Yeah, this looks like the wrong runway here. I'm starting to get some of the flaps out. I am really high. This is not the right runway. This is not coming down. All right, so let me get everything configured here. This is totally not a stable approach. Oh man, this is like a face full of the sea as you're coming in to land. Let's go ahead and roll it out here, take the autopilot off. All right, so that's definitely the wrong runway and we are definitely low. I'm going to have to get it over here. This is not ideal. All right, now I got this. Come on back. Come on. Nope, that's going to be a wing strike. Oh, you can steer on the ground with your yoke. Just for all of you that are wondering, that's not how it actually works in real life. All right, let's see how this looks on the replay. I don't think this is going to be a very good landing. That looks good. I'm fully configured for totally the wrong runway. And then sliding over. Now in real life, sometimes they'll actually have you slide over. Usually not that close, but I've had them do it. Usually not in a 7.4 either, but on smaller jets, I've had them ask to slide over a runway, so that's not too uncommon. But whoa, that right wing tip is way too low. Yeah, that's definitely, I'm pretty sure I would have struck an engine if I did that. One thing about flying heavy jets is you always want to have the wings level, always when you land, because obviously if you have a pod strike, that's going to be a big deal. All right, well, at least I finished in the middle of the runway. Let's see a different angle. Let me see a different angle from the runway, see if I can low that up. All right. This is actually pretty cool, you get to see all these different angles. At least I made it to the runway. This is a better start than when I played that other sim game, so this is pretty cool. Yeah, no, that's way too heavy of a bank coming in. But that's a really cool shot, though, isn't it? Let's see if I have a... Oh, it doesn't show, but I'm pretty sure that would be an engine strike for sure. We call it a pod strike. I'm sure that's what would have happened. All right, so since that didn't work really well, I'm going to try to just hand fly it in and see if that goes better, because for some reason it was lining up on the wrong runway, I don't know why, and it didn't catch the glide slope. I know how it works on the real plane, but for some reason I couldn't get it to activate on here. I don't know if it does auto land. This is like my second day messing with this, so I got to see how it all works, but it's pretty fun actually flying with this yoke and stuff. It's pretty cool. All right, let's do it again. I'm going to hand fly it, and let's see how it goes this time. Messing with all these different settings, and I found this one where it takes you around the whole plane. It's pretty cool. I'm all configured up, ready to... Well, I'm not configured, but I've got the gear down. I'm rain bound. I set it on a 10-mile final coming in, and while most of you know I don't fly for United, I have flown some of their 747s, so it's actually pretty cool. I have a little bit of a different setup than some of the other planes that we fly. Let me get us back in here. All right, so there's been some things on that last one that didn't seem to work out quite right, and the reality is I don't know if it's me messing up how it's supposed to be done, or it's actually the game isn't set up for all the same features that we have on the actual plane, so we'll just do a little hand flying here and see how this goes, and hopefully it ends better. I selected it again, same thing, six left, because we don't normally land this way. Normally we end up taking off this way, mostly because the noise abatement coming out, they want it to be as quiet as possible, and so we take off over the water, and usually we land coming in over the water. This is pretty fun, though. For any of you guys that play this, I mean, I got this yoke, and you know, I've been using this keyboard for the power settings. It's not quite as good, but I got this yoke, and you can do a lot of stuff. You can do the gear and flaps and all that stuff with all the different buttons on here. It's actually pretty cool, but it looks like, you know, I've got it trimmed out coming in here, and we're lined up for the right runway. Gears down, flaps down, and I'm sure there's a way to get the checklist out. Actually, I should probably see what the checklists are compared to what they actually are. The thing is, is every airline is different as far as for what your checklist will be, so there's no one standard for everybody. It just depends on each individual airline, but this is pretty fun. If you've never flown a 747 before, this is actually a pretty good overall image of what it looks like. I'll have to mess around with some of the features and get the...see how the...with the FMS and how all that stuff works, because when I was messing with it earlier, it wasn't doing what I want, and part of it, I don't know if it's the computer or just I don't know how to program it correctly for what this computer game wants me to do, but hey, this is looking a lot better. I don't know why it's showing me off track. This is a...you know, for those of you that get to play all these games, you guys can probably tell me how to do some of these things better as far as for programming some of the different things within the FMS and some of the computer or camera angles and things like that because I have not messed with that yet, but overall, this is pretty good, and power setting looks good. Usually it's around, depending on your weight, which I haven't quite figured out how to figure that out yet, but usually it's around 60-something percent is what you want to come in on when you're fully configured, and honestly, that works out to be about that for just about every plane. You know, you'll come in and you'll come in at about that power setting, so it's pretty nice. It keeps it standard. No. A little bit off the center line, and again, I'm steering with the yoke. I guess I need to get rudder pedals, too. I mean, I can't really do any, like, tight crosswind landings because of this. I don't have anything to do with my feet. I'm just doing it all with my hands. All right, well, that was better. Let me...let's check out that on a couple of replays and see how it went. I think it was better, though. It looks a little bit low to me, I think. We're a little low there. So low, we're blowing out some of the dirt on the approach, and...oh, oh, it looks like I maybe bounced it a little bit. All right, but a better start than the first one. Let's see about coming in over here off of the other runway. That looks pretty good, except I'm really low. I'm doing like a...like what you see some of the smaller aircraft do, where you land really close to the numbers. Normally, we don't land for that. We normally go for the 1,000 footers. This will be a better angle where you can see how it's coming in and where I'm actually landing at. I really like these different camera angles, though, because you can really see how did you do, and you could probably have a bunch of, like, competitions with your friends to see who can land...oh, yeah, though, I definitely...oh, and I bounced that a little bit, too. See who can land the best spot. But these different camera angles are really cool. I'm really having fun with flying with this yoke and everything. So I'm really enjoying this. And I'm going to stop in the middle of the runway. I noticed the speed brakes didn't come up. I don't know why they wouldn't come up, though. Oh, I didn't hit the reversers. What an idiot. Or armed them. I guess that's part of it. I mean, that's one thing when you have a crew, there's a normal rhythm and a flow that you get into. Normally, when you land, the speed brakes are armed. So as soon as those wheels touch up, the actual speed brakes will come up. Or if you put the thrust reversers in, they'll come up, and I don't know which button I'm supposed to do for the thrust reversers. So none of that came up. And I've heard some gamers say things like, oh, you need to have your thrust reversers and your speed brakes and all that stuff because it slows you down more. And it actually doesn't, especially on the Boeing aircraft. The auto brake system is actually what it is that slows it down. What happens is the thrust reversers and things like that actually help with not making your brakes do all the work. But as far as for your stopping distance, it's based off of your auto brake setting. It has nothing to do with your thrust reverse. So you could use no thrust reverse, you're just going to smoke your brakes. But you can land on a really short runway, use no thrust reverse, and your brakes are going to land in the exact same distance, or at least that's what Boeing tells us. All right, let's try this one more time. I've got two landings and I haven't crashed yet, so let's do this third one and see how it goes. All right, so I got everything set up here again for the third one. I brought up the FMS and it's loading up there, but for some reason I can't get it to go direct to Nathan. And that's really what you want it to do is you want to go direct to Nathan and then engage the LNAV and it would actually come in and then on the altitude it would grab the glide slope. So I'm going to get some flaps out. I pulled the speed brakes and I tried to arm them. It's showing fully extended, which is not good, but you see them and they're fully extended there. And I've got the auto brakes set, but I tried to arm the speed brakes, but I don't know if maybe that showing is armed. In real life, it's just you pull it up and back just a little bit and it sits in this spot and it shows armed. But the way it is right now, it's showing it's fully pulled back and it would also show on this screen right here. If that was actually happening, it would show on that screen speed brakes. So that, I don't know if that's me or it. I'm not quite sure. And you know, I know this is not, this is a $60 game and it's not meant to be the same as a couple hundred million dollar aircraft. For the most part, you're kind of, you're getting a pretty good idea of overall kind of what it looks like in there. And actually it's pretty realistic. A lot of the switches are all in the right spot. So for me, I'm pretty familiar and comfortable with everything as far as for what, where to look for the things that I need. So there are a few variants on different 747s, but overall, you know, this is actually pretty good and it's kind of cool flipping through these different screens here. Now see, again, it's lining up here onto six right and I'm not sure why it wants to go to that. And that's honestly probably something that I'm doing, but it looks like everything's set up here and that's got the auto brakes to max. And then yeah, see, it's not, it's not continuing on. I didn't know if maybe it would just take a minute to process, but I don't. It's pretty cool. All these shortcuts you can do on the keyboards to get the different screens and the mouse. I mean, I got a lot going on. I guess it's time to head towards the runway we're supposed to be on since I'm going to be that guy landing on the wrong runway. One of these days, I'll have a party and get my friends over here, have a landing competition and see who can land better. I think I need to practice a little bit more at least so I don't embarrass myself, even though these are like my first couple of landings ever and I'm putting them on the internet, but you know, I don't know, 747 crew loves me, so. I'm actually headed up to Recurrent next week. So if you guys are on the Instagram, I'll show you some pictures of the simulators that we fly on. It'll probably be on my stories more than anything. So this is not going where I want it to go. This yoke is pretty cool. I mean, the plane responds a little bit differently, obviously like every plane and obviously they can't make the game respond exactly like the plane does. But I'm going to get here and land and where's the key for the speed break thing? Oh, look at me going off. I think that's it. And now I'm almost going off the runway. Come on back to the runway. There we go. Well, we landed all three landings. None of them were really good, but let's see what some of these look like on the replay though. I'm kind of curious to see how this one looks like. I think this is honestly one of the best angles. I think it's so cool to be able to see the plane from this angle. Obviously you can see I got flaps all the way out to 30, which is nice. And it looks like, oh, I didn't pull the power back fast enough. I really think I need to get one of those throttles because I floated that thing, but I made it into the touchdown zone and that's the rule, into the touchdown zone. And then obviously I'm going way off of the center line here because I'm looking for the button. What actually happens in real life there is when you land, the speed brakes will come up, right? Because they'll be armed and you'll have the thrust reversers out and the other pilot will look down at the screens and say, speed brakes up, reversers normal. So that way, you know, without having to look away from what you're doing, which is land and maybe keep your crosswind component in and keep yourself going down the runway with the pedals, the other pilot will let you know exactly what's going on. So that's what actually happens in real life. You wouldn't be looking down if you were ever flying the plane by yourself, which I don't know what scenario you'd be doing it in. All right, let's see how the rest of these replays look. I think this is a pretty cool angle to come in from the other side. I'm pitched up a little bit high, a little, it's a better descent rate. Yeah, that's definitely a better descent rate than what I did on the second one. But the, but I floated, I kept the power in too long. Yeah, you can tell I'm kind of rocking the wings a little bit. You don't really want to be doing that. You're just trying to maintain the center line. But you can see I'm at a better descent rate and that's probably why the plane didn't see if I pulled the power back at about 50 and I cut off all the audio. So that way I could talk to you guys. I wasn't talking over it. But normally what you hear is about 50 and you pull the pull it back a little bit. And then at about 20, I like to start pulling the power all the way back. These landings weren't that great. And I think part of the problem was is that on one, I pulled the power back too soon. And the other one, I kept it in too long. But as far as for maintaining center line and things like this, this yoke does a pretty good job. And obviously it's a lot better than moving around on your iPad. But if you've ever wondered why pilots have hard landings in real life, I'll put a link to it right here. I look forward to hearing from you. Until then, keep the blue side out.