I’ve taken the long way around to get back to the first airliner that I purchased – PMDG’s 737-600. This baby version of the 737NG series is highly regarded but also a little complicated to approach at first. Fortunately, I’ve got some more experience now with airliners but not quite enough yet with the 737… as you’ll see at the end! Enjoy!
KOKC to KDEN
For this flight I selected the PMDG included (well… via their Ops Center software) Southwest livery for the 737-600. The “Desert Gold” or “Mustard Rocket” livery is an older scheme that has since been replaced by the blue schemes that are more common… but this one seemed fitting for a slightly rarer variant of the 737 NG series. The -600 wasn’t as popular as other NG variants and I don’t think Southwest had any in their fleet so this was a bit of a what-if setup. But it’ll do!
Our route would take us from Oklahoma City to Denver crossing over some of the flattest and most expansive areas in the continental United States.
Programming the FMC went far better this time than my first time around. Although the process is still a challenge for me in some areas (something that I hope PMDG’s forthcoming tablet can help provide some quick and easy reference info) I did manage to piece together my route more or less exactly the way I wanted it. I skipped a lot of procedures here, in keeping with my fast and fun airliner mantra, but I got enough in there to make sure that it was going to work.
Taxiing and departing on runway 17L, I made an immediate right turn and was on course for my route. I did much better this time too managing the autopilot with a far better understanding of how the systems work on the 737 and on airliners in general than the last time. Practice makes perfect!
Then we settled in for the cruise with ATC gradually stepping us up to 38,000 feet.
One worrying item did pop up, prompting a master caution alert, and that was fuel. Although I still had 16.5 listed on the fuel indicator, I assume that one of the performance entries or fuel weight considerations meant that the jet was concerned about low fuel state long before I really needed to be.
Landing and calamity
My touchdown was almost perfect with the aircraft gently touching down in the right spot on the runway. I had, however, make a critical error and skipped a key item in the landing checklist. As the 737 trundled down the runway I realized that the end was coming up and that my speed was not dropping. Full brakes were applied but at this point there wasn’t enough time and the 737 ran off the end and crashed…
Turns out I completely forgot to set the brakes before I landed. Ooops! Good thing this is just a simulator!
Back in the PMDG
It’s been many months since I last wrote anything about my own experiences with the PMDG 737-600. The aircraft was a leap into the deep end with the intention of learning as much as I could about flying airliners. A theme that I’ve been somewhat relentless on this year.
As fun as my first flight was, it was also overwhelming and I made a few aborted efforts to fly it again before I put the airplane down and turned my attention to other aircraft. The ATR came along and that served as an easier introduction to the world of airliners. Then I expanded my experiences and bought the FSS E-Jets E170/175, Aerosoft’s CRJ series, and the Fokker F28 from Just Flight. I also put a ton of time into the excellent freeware FlyByWire A32nx.
So, now I’ve come full circle with more understanding and more experience under my belt. And that has helped a lot! I’ve got more to do here but I’m having fun and learning new things and that is the point of it all.
Stormbirds 
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