flying the Boeing 747 or a Boeing 747 flight simulator becomes a lot easier
when you understand when and why to use the buttons on the flight deck the
most-used panel is called the MCP the mode control panel and I'm going to
explain how that works coming up Hey 74 Crew what's
going on if you don't know me my name is Kelsey I'm a 747 pilot my channel 74
gear is all about aviation so whether you're a pilot or an aviation enthusiast
consider subscribing the MCP is the panel you're gonna want to get very
familiar with whether you're flying any Boeing aircraft they're all relatively
similar but today I'm covering specifically the Boeing 747 MCP in this
video I'm going to break down what each of the buttons do and when I use them
let's get into it there's an art to flying and Boeing allows its pilots a
little bit more control over how they want to accomplish their end goal so in
some cases you'll see multiple buttons that do very similar or the same things
in this video I'm going to tell you how I go about each of the different ones if
you end up becoming a Boeing pilot you're going to spend hours if not days
covering this one specific panel it is going to be something you're going to
use all the time when you're out flying now I don't have hours or days to cover
it on this YouTube channel or everybody would unsubscribe but I'm going to cover
the buttons and when I use them to accomplish the goals that I want when
I'm flying flight director this is a switch you're gonna flip as one of the
early pre-flight things that you do when you're getting in your plane and getting
everything settled and when you hit that flight director switch on your primary
flight display you will see this there's one for each side so the captain and the
first officer are both going to have that switch and you're gonna hit that as
one of your primary things that you do once you get settled into the plane
autothrottle arm that is a switch it's gonna be flipped when you're getting
ready for takeoff there's not a lot to explain about it an auto throttle is an
auto throttle and that switch is when you turn it on and you don't turn it on
usually until right before takeoff the thrust switch the thrust button we call
dusty thrusty and that's because it's not something
that's commonly used the only time that I've ever used that is in a flight
simulator in training when we have an engine failure and we need to clean up
the plane and we decide not to clean it up all the way you'll use that thrust
button but for 99% of the time for 99% of you that are watching it's not
something you really need to worry about but that is what the thrust button is
the speed button is another button that is used but I rarely use it that way by
hitting that button but that speed button will open up the speed window but
there's a more efficient way to get that window opened up which I'll cover a
little bit later the IAS / Mach selector is what I use usually when I
open up the speed window earlier I was saying I don't use that speed button and
that is because if you hit the selector you will open up that speed window and
from there you're able to then dial in what speed so you might have a scenario
where air traffic control says to you hey we want you to maintain 280 knots
what you'll do is you'll hit that button it will open up the speed window and
since your hand is already there you dial in 280 knots and now it's the most
efficient way in order to get that speed the alternative would to be hit the
speed button then bring your hand over to the selector and then dial it in so
this is just a more efficient way to get that done hey crew there are two parts
of this video when I originally recorded that didn't get recorded correctly so
this one and there's one later on that are going to be interjected in the video
just so everything is complete the IAS / Mach SEL button is used when
the speed window is open and you want to switch from indicated airspeed to the
Mach number LNAV LNAV is the lateral navigation of the aircraft the easiest
way can explain it to you is if you gave your car a route that you needed it to
drive and you programmed it into the computer and then you hop then it would
follow that road that essentially is what the L nav is doing it's keeping you
along your course that you programmed in the computer and it's telling you left
or right how to get there VNAV is your vertical navigation now
your LNAV doesn't care about you going up or down just like your VNAV doesn't
about you going left or right on your course so your VNAV is going to control
the path going vertically up or descending and your LNAV is going to
control your left or right of your course as an example if you were to have
LNAV and VNAV engaged on a ball that you were throwing to your friend what
that means is every time you threw the ball it would go in the exact same
lateral path in the exact same vertical path that it was going to reach to your
friends glove or to his hand so that LNAV VNAV is a very precise way to get
from one point to another point the FLCH button or the flight level change button
is used in a few different scenarios one very common scenario that you would need
this button is if you were engaged in VNAV and climbing up and then you had to
descend you would use that flight level change button to get it to go down again
another scenario that you might use flight level changes if you're not on a
VNAV path let's say you were flying at 6,000 feet and you wanted to descend to
5,000 feet you could select 5,000 feet in your altitude window hit flight level
change and the plane would descend to 5,000 feet there are a lot of different
scenarios which you're going to use these buttons but those are two scenarios
which you could use flight level change even though the name flight level change
indicates that you're at the flight levels you can use that flight level
change button at any altitude all right back to the regular video now so in
using the example of the ball that you're throwing to your friend let's say
you threw that ball to your friend and while that ball is going up in the air
you decide no I want it to come down earlier then I'd programmed in the Box
what you would do is use that flight level change button and what that's
gonna do is now the plane is going to be while it's climbing up let's say you
have it set to go to 10,000 feet and while it's at 8,000 feet you decide no
no I want it to come down to 5,000 feet you would spend the altitude selector
down to 5,000 feet and hit the flight level change button and that's gonna
disengage it from the VNAV and have it start coming down again so if you were
throwing the ball to your friend and you while it was going up the side no I
wanted to go to a friend of ours that's in between both the bus you would use
that flight level change button to get it to come down
now the heading selector is used to fly on a specific heading kind of like what
it sounds like what you'll see is when pilots are flying on a Boeing product
that heading does not automatically sync to the direction that you're flying so
you'll hear pilots say heading to course so as an example if I'm the pilot
monitoring and the other pilot the captain is flying and a plane turns to
the left that's engaged on LNAV it automatically turns to the left because
that's a rat that's programmed in there that heading selector will not
automatically move to that direction so you'll hear a pilot say heading to
course that's my way to tell the captain you're heading selector is not matching
the course that we're flying on so that heading selector is not automatically
going to be matching the direction that you're going it's important that you
keep that on the course you're going for a few different reasons but one of the
scenarios could be ATC could say maintain your current heading at which
point all you have to do is hit that heading select button and now LNAV is
disengaged and heading is engaged now the autopilot is gonna fly that specific
heading because you push the button l nav is disengaged heading select is now
engaged and will start flying that specific course more often you'll start
using that as you're getting closer to arrivals or departures when air traffic
control wants you to fly a specific heading to intercept to come into land
or on departure they want you to fly a heading to get onto your course that
heading selector is used to hold a specific heading the bank angle is a
selector that you can pick when you're in heading mode only and it will allow
you to limit the angle of bank that you'll have while you're in a specific
heading it's not something that you'll commonly see pilots using while they're
out flying but that is what that means and now similar to the speed button
there's this heading button if you hit the heading select knob you'll be able
to engage heading mode just like I talked about with the speed button you
hit that speed selector it will open up that speed window the same for the
heading so usually if I'm asked to hold a heading I'll hit this heading selector
instead of the heading button if you're in a climber descent air traffic control
may ask you for a vertical speed of 1500 feet or better in that scenario you're
gonna want to hit the vertical speed button and roll the knob until it's
showing 1500 feet in that window and you can move it
up or down by a hundred feet as necessary now this is a less common way
to get vertical navigation because you lose some protection with it
however in a scenario that you need to reduce your rate of climb or your rate
of descent you will use that so some pilot don't like to use it but as long
as you understand the logic behind what the computer is doing it's very easy
the altitude window is pretty self-explanatory it is basically telling
the aircraft this is the altitude that you're authorized to climb or descend to
so you're gonna use this selector and choose an altitude again it's by
hundreds of feet that you're able to pick this altitude now the button below
that says hold that's an altitude hold button a
scenario that you're gonna use the altitude hold button would be something
like this let's say you've programmed the aircraft to go to 10,000 feet and as
you're climbing through 8,000 feet air traffic control says stop your climb in
that scenario it's gonna be faster for you to hit the hold button and that will
tell the computer hey stop at this altitude obviously it's gonna be in the
climb so it might go up and then come back down but that's gonna be a lot
faster than dialing in 8,000 and trying to hit the flight level change button to
get back to that altitude so that whole button tells the computer stop here so
that's when you're gonna want to use your altitude hold button is if it's
going climbing or descending and you want it to stop what it's doing at that
specific altitude your LOC button is your localizer button so if you're
coming on to an approach air traffic control may say something like
intercept the localizer which means you are not cleared for the actual ILS or
the approach but they just want you to intercept the course that you're going to
be lining up onto the runway with so that localizer is what you aren't in
that scenario localizer or if you're doing a localizer approach you would
armed the localizer the reason you wouldn't armed the button
below that which says approach is that the logic computer would tell you once
you hit your glide slope the plane would start descending and you haven't been
authorized to descend so as you come in and you get told intercept the localizer
you'll arm the localizer button once you get told you were cleared for
the approach you'd hit the button below that the approach button that approach
button is what's going to allow you to come down on the glide slope if you're
doing an ILS the command button arms the autopilot generally the captain will use
the left autopilot the first officer will use the right autopilot and the
middle autopilot kind of like a middle child it's ignored but it is used if one
of the two other auto pilots aren't functioning it is used then and there
are a few other times when it's used in flight for auto lands or things like
that but generally speaking the captain will use the left and the first officer
will use the right side so I'm sorry middle children but it's just not a
commonly used button the disengage bar is a way to disengage the autopilot
there's a bunch of different ways to do it but that's the one on the MCP that
allows you to quickly disengage the autopilot if it's not doing what it is
that you want it to be doing you just want to turn it off I remember a time
early in my aviation career when I was flying regional jets and the auto pilot
wasn't doing what I wanted to do now I didn't understand why because I was very
new on the aircraft it was my first week actually flying it but the captain said
if it's not doing what it is that you want it to do stop staring at it
disconnect it and fly the plane so that's one way to disconnect it there's
one on the yoke as well and there's a few other ways to disconnect the
autopilot but on the MCP that bar is a way to disconnect autopilot now
something that's very important with Boeing aircraft is whatever you doing on
that MCP you want to look at your primary flight display and make sure
that the thing you have selected is actually showing on that primary flight
display you may have thought you hit heading select but heading select did
not show up on your primary flight display and that's your flight mode
annunciator that set of three bars along the top there is going to tell you what
mode of flight your aircraft is in so it's important that whatever you select
that you look there and verify if you selected a new altitude you want to look
at it if you've selected a new heading instead of being an LNAV you want to
look and verify it there that is going to tell you what the plane is actually
doing so in some cases you may have thought you hit the button but the
button didn't actually get hit and therefore the plate is not
going to do what you want or you thought it was about to do so it's important
when you hit that button that you look at your primary flight display and see
that it is doing what it is that you thought you selected
all right crew that's everything they have on the Boeing 747 MCP in the
comment section below let me know are you watching this video because you're
planning on being a Boeing pilot or are you planning on using this for your
flight simulator I look forward to hearing from you until then keep the
blue side up