Pyro,
It's a straight vanilla install of P3D with only FSUIPC, AIShips and vLSO installed. No sound changes; everything is output to my default Windows device (speakers).
Looked at it again, and realized that I can put the hook down with the 'SHIFT+E, 4' key combination as you suggested, so I'm sure you're on to something.
I'm going to try and fire up FSX and see if I get the same behavior there. If not, it's likely another occurrence of P3D breaking something that worked fine in FSX (like.. say.. carrier FLOLS?) and I'll just live with it.
Thanks!
~Matt
UPDATE:
I'm an idiot. I forgot about 1 very important add-on, because I hardly ever touch it. Accu-feel. Sure enough, with Accu-feel turned off, I don't experience this behavior. Accu-feel sees the hook down as an open exit, and increases the volume. My bad! Sorry, guys!
Move along. Nothing to see here. :-)
~M
(Edited. Reason: corrected info. 1D10T error.)