It'S done, the second flight has just been conducted - successfully. I started in Vienna, and it started not too well with 12 planes waiting with me in the cue for the runway.
While my fuel was flushing away, it gave me a lot of time to get more familiar with the various switches and the FMC especially. There are so many pages that I have never seen before. However, taxing with this plane is a great joy, it is not so hectic and agile, but feels more calm, allowing smoother taxiing and less oversteering that was not intended at all.
After takeoff, my first surprise was that I just could not engage LNAV VNAV directly, and needed to struggle a bit with the FMC while steering the plane manually, then via Heading Hold. Finding the TO/GA button also was a bit tgricky, but it is there. While the takeoff thus was anything but ideal and the pilot trying to make sense of what was not going on (and why not), the plane nevertheless climbed steadily and reliably without jumping up and dpown or making any experiments. I then understood that I need to manually catch a valid vector to an FMC waypoint, and then it it allows to engage LNAV. So, in details, the 737 works differently a bit, also with the autothrottle.
The flight to Muenster then was smooth, and again I discovered the many new pages in the FMC, don'T ask me what all of them do mean, I just don'T know it, but there is a thick manual that waits to be red. The functions I wanted however, were all there, accessed in the familiar way - the Honeywell FMC CDU that Boeing uses in the 737, 747 and 767 all seem to work pretty much the same way, differing only in details.
In midair, the TCAS reliably warned me twice of proximity alerts. Short beforte beginning the decent, however, I got a sudden "adjust vertical speed - adjust" message by HAL, followed by "climb, cliomb" and "clear of conflict" - although I had not doen anything and the plane was not maneuvering. This was the only event that I cannot make sense of, but despite the aural presence it had no other perceivable consequences.
During decent, all manipulations on the front panel and new settings for the autopilot, worked well both from 2D and 3D cockpit. Only the sink speed the püane choose by itserlf when you help byx engaing spoilers, is a bit high for my taste: top speed of decent was 4200 feet/min via LEVEL CHANGE, which I doubt the passengers would welcome with enthusiasm. Maybe sinking via V/S setting is more appropriate, but I wanted to test the automatism. Final approach was in foggy weather and low clouds, I could not see the runway, not even the ground, but the ILS was caught and followed reliably, just do not forget that here you need to engage VOR G/S before you can engage APP directly, which is possible in the 747 and 767 moduels I use. Hitting APP directly, leads you nowhere. Sppoilers got armed and automatically deployed, but no reversers. Then, taxiing again, which is a joy with this plane, again, it is not so hysteric in steering than most other planes for FS9.
I see no real disadvanatges or weaknesses in this package, indeed I think this one plays in the top group of plane addons for FS9, surpassiong both the older Level-D 767 and the also older PMDG 747 in several aspects, while offering compoarable reliability and good features and documentation. I am willing to beolieve that some details regarding procedures with the FMC and APFC maybe are even simulated more detailed and more realistically than in the other two packages.
As an FS9 user, you cannot go wrong with this one. If you have FSX, you maybe want to wait for the new PMDG 737 and then compare and then see if they really do it better - but iFly has delivered a pretty good job on the FSX-737 meanwhile, too and it is likely that this win of the release race already has costed PMDG customers.
No technical failures, no problems, no functional inconsistencies or needs for workarounds. For FS9: highly recommended! Get it. This belongs to the top group of the pack. Maybe it even is the best.
I just can say: I like this package very, very much.
Rating: clearly above the 90% mark.
Also, get the DVD version, it comes aleady patched with the SP 2.1, so you do not need to struggle with the Flight1 installer and re-registration in case of reinstalling your system.