TIPS

I thought it may be useful to share with you the odd tip or suggestion that comes my way.

Erratic pitch problem when engaging autopilot altitude hold.

When this happens, things can look a bit frightening - especially if you engage alt hold just after leaving the ground!  I have yet to find an aircraft in FS2000 that you are immune from this problem with, though the degree to which you experience it is certainly affected by a combination of weight (fuel load), speed and vertical speed.

The good news is that it is easily dealt with if you just follow a few simple steps.  I'll explain here how to smoothly engage the Project Freeware DC-9s' altitude hold, though you will need to experiment a little depending on your particular flight.

Before your take-off roll apply one stage of flaps and positive trim of 10, at rotation speed ease the nose up to 10 degrees.  Once a positive rate of climb is confirmed, retract gear and when indicated airspeed passes 200 retract the flaps, at the same time you will need to ease the controls forward to stop excessive climb.  On top of that, the effect of trying to get the vertical speed down to less than 2000 fpm will be for airspeed to increase so you need to gradually reduce power to stay below 250.

What you aiming for here is to get the aircraft settled at around 240 ias with a vertical speed of 1500 fpm - using the elevator to keep the climb rate down whilst the trim remains unchanged at +10 - then engage autopilot hold.  Believe me, you can do this before 1,000 feet agl.