Learning to fly

[Nsidious9]

hey all, when someone is learning to use flight sim, is it recommended that they get books like these http://www.asa2fly.com/Student-Training-Kits-C216_category.aspx to help them along?

[NikeHerk67]

My thoughts are, why pay for anything you can get for free?

Start by trying some simple flights, then take the lessons. Read all there is to read before taking each lesson and if you don't understand go to the Learning Center in the FS version you have for farther detailed explainations of everything from VOR to NDB, to using the GPS, etc. The lessons are both fun and educational and will teach you how to fly the simulator. There is no quick and easy way. The more you learn in the beginning about how to fly properly the longer you'll enjoy the hobby.

After reading and the lessons for awhile and you get bored, just take off from your favorite airport and just fly. After all, it's fun to fly, but I believe it's even more fun when you learn how to fly the simulator properly at first.

If you really develope an interest in flying lessons in the real world, you'll be one step ahead of most student pilots. There are also a lot of lessons available at the AOPA site and even in the FAA site which are free.

Good luck and have fun learning.

Regards

[xxmikexx]

And my thoughts are, Time is money, so why not spend a little money and save some time?

There are many free pubs out there but there are also many worthwhile not-free books, like Wolfgang Langwiesche's classic "Stick and Rudder". This is just one example of many.

Just to show what I mean, stacked immediately to my left are seven very nice for-pay books, most of them FS-oriented, with titles like "Microsoft Flight Simulator X -- for Pilots -- Real World Training".

[Tim_A]

Like many RW pilots, I'm always in favour of anything that's free (once you see what we pay for avgas, landing fees, parking, etc, you'll understand :eek:), and there are a lot of decent free resources available on the web, and even -- shock horror -- within FS itself!

The student pilot kits* are great if you are learning to fly, but there's a lot of stuff in there that's not particularly relevant to FS, or at least stuff you can do without. Things like Human Factors, Aircraft Technical, even Meteorology and Navigation to an extent. Which is why books like "Microsoft Flight Simulator X -- for Pilots -- Real World Training" exist, since they concentrate on things that are more relevant.

The first place I'd go though is the FS Learning Centre, and work through the lessons. They are all written by a well regarded professional flight instructor, and have practical parts as well as 'ground school' parts. For sure they don't cover the entire PPL syllabus, but you get a pretty good grounding, and you can always call on further resources later.



* Can't speak for the ASA one though, since it's tailored for America, and not generally available in this country.