The 145's Honeywell is definitely more user-friendly than the Universal, and I love the scratchpad. It's much easier to find what you want in the Honeywell, and the Universal's "fuel required/remaining" computations will scare anybody who's not used to it (they go solely off current fuel flow, so when climbing out they're always in the red). However, once you get used to the Universal, it's a much better box. The problem is remembering how to do what you want.
As far as the 145's climb schedule: 270/.56M is what you'll get if you climb out in FLC mode. I have done that exactly once, and it scared the heck out of me.

that it does, and also differentiates between fly-over and fly-by points. shows you the missed procedure (before you go missed) as well, if you choose to show it.

I hope you have stayed true to your TSA roots and fly your visuals with no FD or A/Ts, mainline boy. ;)

i have to. there seems to be a disconnect between what the FD tells me to do to stay on the GS, and what the GS is telling me. so i just look through it. (the box DOES NOT like you to turn the FD off.)

and the autothrottles are horrible if it's gusty. they overreact to every little gust (we're slow, FULL THROTTLE. oops, too fast - IDLE), so i go old school in those occasions.

Chautauqua Mainline, baby!

Curious...how so?? I haven't used the FD since IOE at TSA...boggles my mind that it would limit you like that.

It's your lucky day. That phrase is back in style. It's now used to describe E/CRJs :D:D:D

Being a mostly fly-by-wire airplane(all but the ailerons), the 170 is very dependant on the flight guidance panel. Turning off the FD often ****es off the airplane resulting in the loss of the autothrottles and generally other annoying alerts. Should be no problem to continue flying the airplane, unless you decide to turn the flight guidance back on. Then it requires a lot of button pushing. I have seen on several occasions where the flight guidance seems to be driving me counter to what I would normally do on a glidepath. The way it has been explained to me is that the FD doesn't want you to climb or level off, so it creates small flight path angle modifications to get you back on glidepath. The 170 was designed to be flown by the computer, it has more in common with an airbus while the 145 has more in common with a Learjet. Not saying one is better than the other, just different animals.

On another note, I understand flying raw data to keep fresh, but shouldn't we all be using the highest level of automation available to us on a regular basis? Its the turboprop mentality that has people driving jets around at high subsonic speeds with 50+ people and hand flying. When the crunch is on, give the jet to george and free up the brain bytes. That's why the engineers and test pilots put him there.

I learned the CRJ then the ERJ. The best thing you can do is dump everything you know about the ERJ except for basic stuff like how a pack works, swept wing aerodynamics, turbine engine theory, etc. Everything else like flows, profiles, callouts, system and company specifics need to go.

Edit:
Sorry things didn't work out for you at XJT, best of luck in whatever you pursue next.

My 20 year old King Air's are being flown 30% over their designed MTOW and still handle like a champ. Sticking B1900 engines on a BE200 turns it into a nice little sports car. And using the same INS as the Concord lets me actually do a little real life pilot work up front rather than just reading the news paper.

But for some reason I still want to fly those fancy jets.

You're right. I love following Citations. It's great. Nothing says good times like dropping gear and flaps 15 miles out for separation into CMH on the go-home leg.

And I use the alternate climb profile :D