After Several Years/Months/Hours Of FS2002 Can I Fly This Thing?

By Dennis Schagen

So there you are, right beside the Piper that will serve as your first training aircraft, keys in your hand, waiting for your instructor to start the first lesson after he has refuelled the plane. He removes the hose and tells you he's heading for a lavatory while you should wait for him to return and in the meantime, don't touch a thing! He'll be right back...

But he isn't right back. You wait for a couple of minutes, then the fear of what might have happened to him is replaced by curiosity. Would it really be so difficult for you? You, who have trained and trained in Flight Simulator in the most realistic planes, who have memorized the startup procedure for this Piper Archer, would you not rather creep into the small cockpit and start the lesson by yourself?

This little story will try to find an answer to that question. It is based on my own experience. Once the decision had been made to take an introductory lesson, I started flying the Piper Archer II in FS2002 until the plane needed a virtual engine overhaul. I wanted to get as much as I could from this single lesson! And afterwards I asked myself the question, would I have been able to do this without an instructor?

OK, your patience has run out, you decide not to wait any longer. You open the cockpit door, get into the pilot's seat, plug in the headset and start a scan of the instruments before you. Hey, that's familiar to you! The controls and gauges are about in the place where you expected them, and although most of the switches are a bit more worn than the ones in your virtual cockpit at home, you understand what they are made for.

Adjusting the seat is no problem, either. You've been in plenty of cars and know where to find the levers that put your seat in a position that is comfy for you. Still no sign from the instructor...

Oh c'mon, let's get on with it! Latch the door, your POH talks about two latches, you will find them both by just looking at the door. Time to crank up the engine. Again turning to the POH, you perform the cold start engine checks, put the switches into the desired positions and then you turn the ignition key, just like in your (or your father's) car. The engine rumbles a bit but refuses to come alive. Now this is where your car experience once again turns in handy. Playing around with throttle, mixture and the engine primer will make you start the engine. A final look from the windows: nope, the instructor must have met someone far more important than you...

OK, off we go. In order to start taxiing in FS2002, we would advance the throttle control to about 3 / 4 and the plane would start rolling, so we do the same. But WHAT? Are we on a racing circuit? We didn't want to taxi at a 40 mph pace, did we? Slide the throttle back, about 1000 rpm will do the trick to have you gently rolling on the taxiway. Steering with your feet on the rudder pedals will look as if the local police had better take a breath sample from you, but who cares for now :-)

Right, assuming that you can visualize the taxiways and runways from the maps you have been studying, you will eventually find yourself on the takeoff runway. You look around carefully if there is other traffic (for the sake of the story, there is none at the moment) and then line up on the runway. A deep sigh passes your lips: wow, this is exciting, complex, heavy! A last doubt passes your mind as your right hand grabs the throttle, but the doubt is smothered in the rumble of the engine. You advance the throttle to the max, and off you go! The airplane quickly gains speed, and as you learned from FS2002, you pitch the plane up at about 60 mph...the nose rises...and you fly!

Now comes the fun part. As soon as you have a lift off, everything becomes different. A wind gust banks your plane, requiring correction. The climb rate is not high enough and you definitely need to gain some altitude or those cows at the end of the runway will stop your small experiment prematurely. Pulling the yoke, your nose raises and your climb rate increases, only to get the stall horn mowing... yes, controlling the airplane with both feet and hands is quite different from how you fly at home. Even if you don't use your feet to control the rudder, using the yoke in two dimensions is rather different from playing with a joystick or a wheel (as I prefer), let alone a keyboard. But alas, after a few minutes you get the hang of it and you are able to fly the thing in a reasonable straight line. You even accomplish a bit of a level flight, remembering the thing called 'elevator trim'. It turns out to be the wheel between the seats and is quite easy to operate.

Since airports rarely lie in a straight line from runway to runway, you will have to turn, eventually. In our case, it would be wise to return to our airport of departure since that's where this plane belongs. Yes, I agree, it might be better to pick another airport to land on in order to avoid a furious instructor who undoubtedly has returned from the toilets by now, but let's return.

You have learned the traffic pattern of this field, and remembering it's a left hand pattern you decide to turn 90° left to get on the crosswind leg. So you give a good swing on the yoke, the plane banks 10 degrees, then 20 degrees... yes that's what you want so keep the yoke in this position... oh no! The banking becomes worse and worse! And whoops, check the vertical speed dropping... things get a bit scary here. Violently, you yank the yoke back into center position and pull it backwards to regain height. Does that help? Yes, partially. As expected, pulling the yoke raises the nose and therefore the plane starts to climb, but you're still in a 20 degree bank. Swing the yoke right and back center to get a level flight again.

Wow, that was heavy. So where are we? Instinctively, you check your OBS as you realise you forgot to calibrate it during the preflight checks...when you remember that there is also an old-fashioned compass mounted on the window stile. OK, you know your heading, now let's find out where we are. You do that by doing something that is relatively unusual in FS: by looking out of the windows.

As you locate the airport (hopefully it is on your left hand now), you realize it's time for another turn, to enter the downwind leg. As you are a keen learner, we will assume the 90 degree turn succeeds quite well.

That was easy, after all. Now we fly straight and level until we pass the airport (should be on our left). Then another turn; you are really getting the hang of making turns now), a short straight called the base leg, and then you turn on final. Lining up with the runway is easy now; if you can see it. But as you might recall, the runway is actually on the ground, and you are up in the air. You need to get down, how?

OK, ease back on the throttle. That helps, speed drops as the airplane's nose sinks a bit. In your flightsim, you would now start your normal approach procedure by using flaps and so on. But, there are no F7/F8 keys in the plane, no programmed joystick buttons, and the DreamFleet Archer has a representation of the flaps control that you can't locate anywhere in your cockpit. Would it be the handbrake between the seats? Ah no, that's a handbrake, what does that have to do with flaps? Just try it, you'll never know...

Pulling the lever up until you hear a click, you start thinking 'See? I'm really smart, I found it!', and just when you think this, you notice the aircraft start climbing rather severely! Hey, I thought these flaps were meant to get me down, not up! Right now, you might be so smart to relax on the throttle and push the yoke a bit, but the runway keeps getting closer in a rather fast pace... you trim the nose down more and more... less throttle, even less throttle... BEEP! The stall horn! Fast, more flaps, we're crossing the threshold and we're still 100 feet too high... down, plane, down!

You now have a problem. In FS, you would either get the thing down anyway since there aren't that many buildings and trees to crash into, but in real life that will be impossible. You could also try to push the nose down very fast now and hope for a 'lucky flare', since a crash in FS is bad but hey it is still a game. As you are not playing on your computer but with your life at the moment, you realize that both options will not do. You decide to keep flying, instead of landing the thing. So you pull up again, throttle full, flaps up and there you go, towards the horizon, hoping the ground will come to you rather than you will go to the ground...

Conclusion: When I compare FS to real-world aviation, I notice a few remarkable things. One, controlling the aircraft with a yoke is different than at home on your PC, but it is reasonably close. Two, banking a real airplane is totally different from what normally happens in FS2002; while an FS2002 plane tends to roll out of the bank when you hold your stick/wheel in a certain position, the banking in a real aircraft increases with the time you hold the yoke in a certain position. Three, a real airplane reacts rather differently on flaps than the FS models. And finally four, the most important: no matter how many times you have flown the Archer in FS2002, the sim gives you plenty of time for easy flying while out there, you don't get a minute of rest or enjoyment of the scenery. Probably remarks two and three are a factor in this, but the fact that you are playing with your life might very well add to the stress you might feel when you waved your flabberghasted instructor goodbye on the runway. My advise is, therefore: you'd better wait for your instructor before attempting your first take-off, because eventually you will have to land. And that is still the most difficult thing to do.