No support anymore? Looking for answers before buying.

Emi

Hi everyone,

I sent a ticket to justflight asking some pre-purchase questions 5 days ago but never got an answer.
Did anyone have the same experience? The 146 looks promising, but without support I'm definitely not going to buy it.

Maybe someone can help me in here if support doens't answer tickets. Here's what I wrote them:

Dear sir or madam,

I'm considering purchasing the 146 Professional for P3Dv5. I did have a chance to try it on a friends computer where I flew 4 sectors and while it was a visually impressive model which flew pretty nice as well there were a couple points that concerned me which I'd like to hear about from you before I decide whether to purchase or not.

Anytime I activated MACH hold the aircraft just dived towards the ground, going up to 35° nose down.
The HSI did not work correctly in RNAV mode. It should match the course with the flightplan course and the deviation indicator should show the lateral deviation. However it did not do that.
It only pointed towards the next waypoint while LNAV mode was engaged in the AFDS.
That does not match the working principle of an RNAV equiped HSI.
The FMC does not computer any T/D. I entered the angle and rate but it does not come up with a T/D indication.
Sometimes the 146 crashed to desktop which I clicked the PERF button after a flightplan was entered. It never did that before a flightplan was entered.
I was never able to select any transition in the FMS. Only SID and STAR. On the arrival page I entered the runway, then the STAR but then no transition is shown. Or sometimes (eg. EDDF) it showed the same runway over and over again but not any transition.
Once the engines start all other flightdeck sounds, like the ambient noise of the panels, stopped. After flight when the engines were shut down it went completly silent and not even the ambient sounds played until I clicked the reload sounds button. Surely that can't be intended?
The TCAS often showed phantom targets and overreacted to any traffic.
Often I saw other traffic which simply did not exist in the sim (no AI traffic turned on!)
When we did a flight on VATSIM it gaves resolution advisories when other aircraft passed several thousand feet above or below, without any actual danger of a collision.

In the meantime I could fly a couple more sectors over at my friends place (thanks Corona) and those items appeared over again. Didn't seem to be one offs only.
I'd apprechiate any feedback before I descide whether to buy or not.

PeteFly82

I can confirm the problems with the TCAS.
It is overreacting and sometimes showing already passed aircrafts still as dangerous for some time.

mikewings

All of those are similar to what I have experienced at least once as well. It is a great aircraft and I expect further updates will come

mikewings

One other thought . The FMS was developed by a third party for this aircraft. I just did a flight only using NAVaids (VOR/ADF) and everything functioned pretty well. So there are some integration issues that show up if you try to use the FMS as your primary mode of navigation. Hopefully this gets addressed also..

Emi

Thanks for the replys everyone, the total lack of support will make me refrain from buying this addon.

Never recieved an answer to my e-mail (sent on the 14th Jan, that's one week ago!) nor any official reply here.
I'm not buying a non supported product that has this many bugs.
I'll keep flying the Qualitywings then.

Derek

@Emi

In terms of support for the software, we have provided a number of updates and enhancements since the product launched.
Details here:

https://support.justflight.com/support/solutions/articles/17000111833-146-professional-changelog

For your detailed question to our Support team you can't expect a snap answer. You should have had an automatic acknowledgement and a ticket number.

issues such as the plane diving towards the ground are something your friend should contact Just Flight support about. It's not something we've been able to replicate when putting together a detailed reply to your questions.
Rest assured someone will reply in detail in due course, but I am afraid a fast answer to questions about the product and also issues with flying it is not possible.

Emi

Hi Derek,

While it is absolutely understandable that things take a bit longer these days we do seem to have a different understanding of "in due course".
For me that means a couple days. Not a complete week or longer. I've sent my ticket on the 14th. It's now the 21st and I haven't got an answer.

If I buy the product and run into crashes to desktop or stuff like the AP diving to the ground or similar I would expect to get timely support as well, not wait for a week.
I am sure you can understand that from a potential customers perspective it is not very encouraging to spend almost 80€ if I have to be afraid of waiting for such a long time.

I'll standby for the answer to my query before making my final decision whether to buy or not.

Martyn

@Emi said in No support anymore? Looking for answers before buying.:

Anytime I activated MACH hold the aircraft just dived towards the ground, going up to 35° nose down.

We couldn't reproduce this so will collect more information via the support ticket so we can investigate further and address any bugs.

The HSI did not work correctly in RNAV mode. It should match the course with the flightplan course and the deviation indicator should show the lateral deviation. However it did not do that.
It only pointed towards the next waypoint while LNAV mode was engaged in the AFDS.
That does not match the working principle of an RNAV equipped HSI.

Thanks for reporting this. We are working on a fix.

The FMC does not computer any T/D. I entered the angle and rate but it does not come up with a T/D indication.

We have asked the FMC developer to investigate this.

Sometimes the 146 crashed to desktop which I clicked the PERF button after a flightplan was entered. It never did that before a flightplan was entered.

We couldn't reproduce this so will collect more information via the support ticket so we can investigate further and address any bugs.

I was never able to select any transition in the FMS. Only SID and STAR. On the arrival page I entered the runway, then the STAR but then no transition is shown. Or sometimes (eg. EDDF) it showed the same runway over and over again but not any transition.

The FMC developer is currently addressing this.

Once the engines start all other flightdeck sounds, like the ambient noise of the panels, stopped. After flight when the engines were shut down it went completely silent and not even the ambient sounds played until I clicked the reload sounds button. Surely that can't be intended?

We couldn't reproduce this so will collect more information via the support ticket so we can investigate further and address any bugs.

The TCAS often showed phantom targets and overreacted to any traffic.
Often I saw other traffic which simply did not exist in the sim (no AI traffic turned on!)
When we did a flight on VATSIM it gaves resolution advisories when other aircraft passed several thousand feet above or below, without any actual danger of a collision.

Thanks for reporting this. We are working to improve the TCAS TA/RA logic now. We couldn't reproduce the issue with it showing non-existent traffic and it's using SimConnect to show only SimObject's (i.e. AI traffic). We'll continue to investigate.

Thanks for your interest, and hopefully you can see from our involvement in other threads and the regular updates that we are committed to providing support and improvements to features.

Emi

Thank you Martyn - I purchased the 146 Professional now. I'll give it a couple turns on VATSIM this evening and I'll let you know if I get the same issues I've seen on my friends system on my own computer as well.