Abnormal items are reflected on the right hand EFIS tube (the EICAS or Engine Indication and Crew Alerting System) in yellow or red. The EICAS also summarizes the condition of your aircraft with data on the engines, gear, flaps, spoilers, trim settings, pressurization and other items.
The ERJ is equipped with an audible voice warning system that uses a pleasant female voice to tell you when you are doing something stupid. USAF tests confirmed that hearing bad news from a pleasant sounding female is far less stressful than hearing R. Lee Ermey shout in your ear. Therefore, when I slightly oversped my aircraft during cruise, I didn’t jump out of my skin when the warning message was annunciated. The CRZ (cruise) setting for the throttle gives a target cruise power setting but you are required to manually set the proper cruise speed (throttle setting) that may be lower than the allowable highest cruise power setting to avoid overspeeding the aircraft. In a nutshell, the ERJ-145LR does have FADEC, but does not have auto throttles.
Once we are established in cruise I take a look at the FMS and see that the winds aloft forecast for the area up around Portsmouth was a bit off the further southwest we head. The FMS indicates the winds are out of the west at 103 knots and it further breaks down the wind velocity and direction into side and headwind components showing that I’m battling against an 86 knot headwind component; fairly typical winds for the northeast in the winter. It isn’t unusual in real life to see winds out of the southwest at 140 knots in the winter while flying the northeast corridor; good if you are heading from Charlotte to Boston, bad if you are heading the opposite direction (and you ALWAYS have to return from whence you came!)
The virtual cockpit for the ERJ is nicely done although I found it exceedingly dim (as are most VCs). The lighting problem isn’t unique to the feelThere ERJ, most VCs, however good they may be modeled, seem to suffer from the inherently poor design of the VC lighting scheme that Microsoft used in FS2004. The switches and knobs are clickable in the VC for those that prefer to fly from that view, but I personally find it agonizing to use VCs in most aircraft with the exception of planes like the Decathlon and J-3 Cub.
The cabin is rendered, and if you have the ability using Active Camera or the freeware F1View utility to move about the cabin you will find that your 30 passengers must have all crammed into the lavatory in some college prank gone horribly wrong. I thought I felt the CG shift through the yoke!
