Congratulations to his son. When I started flight simming, I could not land perfectly with almost no knowledge and training, and I doubt that many simmers could.
If the basic flight-sim game is too boring for us, we can use easy ways to make our flight simming more challenging, enjoyable and rewarding. Most of these opportunities are already available to us, and some might require additional software.
1. Simulate flight under various light conditions. Fly visually during the day, during dusk and during the darkness of night. Flying is more challenging when the needed visual clues appear differently or not at all.
2. Fly under various visibilities. Fly visually with your visibility reduced by haze. Then fly visually with your visibility obstructed by broken clouds. Avoid the temptation to rely on your instruments during these flights. With reduced and/or obstructed vision, simulating visual flight is not so easy when we cannot see everything we need to see when we need to see it.
3. Vary the weather. Simulation is more realistic, challenging and interesting with different weather conditions. Set your weather for one set of wind, cloud and visibility conditions at your origin, another set of conditions en route and still another set of conditions at your destination. Forcing ourselves to adjust our altimeters for local pressure makes our landings more interesting, and forgetting our altimeters can make our landings very challenging, indeed. Vary the weather each time you flight-sim. Model your weather on conditions reported in your daily newspaper. For cross-country trips, try using weather conditions for different cities as reported on Internet weather sites. Facing the different challenges of various weather conditions makes our flight simming more stimulating.
4. Simulate flight against winds. Using various winds directions and velocities makes our flights more challenging at the airports and en route. Set a mild crosswind of about 5 knots, then take off and maintain a track along the runway centerline as you climb out. Fly a standard airport traffic pattern with that crosswind and see how different your turns are when winds are altering your track. Then land with that crosswind and be sure to touch down on the centerline and straighten out upon touching down. Do all these maneuvers again with a higher crosswind of about 10 knots, then 15 knots. After successfully maneuvering around an airport in crosswinds, fly cross country in a crosswind. Set a visual course for your destination airport, fly your course, then see where you end up in relation to your destination. After that, maintain an instrument course in crosswinds of various velocities. You will be continually challenged to maintain your course as your crosswind constantly blows you off course.
5. Add turbulence and hold a specified course and altitude without your autopilot. That should keep your attention for a while.
6. Fly to a different airport each time. Simulated and real flights are more interesting and challenging when different courses are plotted and followed, different active runways are identified and used, and traffic patterns with different scenery and obstructions are flown. Flying where we have never been is always more interesting tasks than flying to the same places over and over again.
7. Land on short runways. Special challenges face us when we land on runways barely long enough for a landing roll. Approaching at precisely the correct airspeed and descent rate, touching down as soon as possible then stopping before reaching the other end requires skill and close attention.
8. Use airports near mountains. Many airports that are nestled between mountains have high terrain very close to their climbout and approach areas. These conditions make taking off and landing at those airports more challenging than at airports away from hills and mountains.
9. Use various navaid types for navigating and approaching. Rely on VORs for one flight, NDBs for another and both for another. Use a VOR approach one time, an NDB approach another time and an ILS approach another time. You might need to use different airports to accomplish such varied instrument approaches, which also will make your approaches more interesting.
10. Vary the weight. Start your flights with various amounts of fuel and passenger weight (if your flight-sim program enables those variables), and respond to your aircraft's behavior under various weight conditions.
11. Use your aircraft systems. Engage the carburetor heat, the landing lights and other appropriate devices during your landing approaches, as real-world pilots do. These tasks will give you additional things to do (and forget to do) while you are approaching and landing.
12. Turn off the auto coordination and practice coordinated standard turns at various airspeeds. Working the control surfaces independently will provide good challenge.
13. Engage realism features for unexpected challenges. We have all the challenges we could want when forced to fly without certain instruments or with low oil pressure or with any other airborne problem. And we will feel a great sense of satisfaction when we successfully land at an airport under emergency conditions.
14. Induce stalls and recover from them. Stall recovery is a good flight practice so we can know what to do when stalls happen unexpectedly.
15. Use ATC. If your flight-sim program has inherent or add-on air traffic control features, follow ATC instructions and clearances. Working with ATC, listening for related conversations from other aircraft and filtering out extraneous conversations make simming more realistic and more challenging at the same time.
16. Do these things in various combinations. For example, fly to and from mountain airports with crosswinds and reduced visibility.
PC flight-simulation games can be much more stimulating, entertaining and rewarding when we use as many features as we can and deliberately make each flight different from previous ones. And we feel a sense of accomplishment when we meet these challenges successfully.
Bill Stack
Training Associates
http://www.topskills.com/flitsim.htm
fsbooks@topskills.com
