Jimi,
Did a few passes at the boat, and tested some things.
NWS is my bad...Sorry I said that. I would rather have the old NWS back (the NATOPS spec version) and just get used to it.
Overall handling characteristics feel very different now. The thrust feels much better, but roll rates seem a tad slower, and rate of turn (i.e. rate of heading change) seems slower as well. Also, when entering into a bank from level flight the vertical speed should slowly decrease (i.e start going negative) and the velocity vector should sink slightly and visualize that decreasing sink rate. From my flight, it doesn't appear that is the case, but rather the jet is attempting to maintain level flight. Maybe I'm incorrect in this, but that is the way the previous iteration of the 2014 flew, as well as the 2012 and the Superbug. It made passes at the boat a bit difficult. I can try to explain this in better detail if needed. Or maybe tomorrow after I get home from work I'll try to make a quick video showing what I'm talking about.
ATC now works in UA and PA mode, however it didn't disengage when I trapped and I rolled right off the end of the deck after letting off the brakes. I'll have to try it again at an airfield, and then make a few more passes at the boat with it engaged. I also noticed it's no longer mapped to the carb heat, but to Ctrl+R, could that be causing FSX autothrottle to interfere with your custom autothrottle.xml? EDIT: Flew another pass at the boat using the ATC in PA, I think it's holding the airspeed I engaged it at, as opposed to trying to maintain on speed for the given trimmed AoA.
And a question about the AoA trimming. I believe I read that once in PA mode, trimming the pitch is done by hand to 8.1 AoA. It seems however that in the 2014, trimming doesn't work at all in PA, and that it's automatic? Is this as per NATOPS?
I think that will be it for tonight....sometimes I wish I didn't have to work so early.
It's loads of fun flying around in this jet.