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Found 18 results

  1. Ratty's Ramblings - Remember Me? By Ian Radcliffe 2021 was a strange year for just about everybody. For me it was made additionally interesting by our move from a house in California to a condo in Florida, with the associated sorting, downsizing, packing and shipping, and a six-day drive across the continent with our two cats. And then, after we moved in and were beginning to impose order, we found ourselves the owners of a second, larger, condo that also needed a fair amount of TLC. All of which is really just a long-winded way of saying: I've been busy, I'm sorry I haven't written sooner. Here's some stuff. Test Pilot There she stands, gleaming on the ramp. Your newest aircraft. Time to read the READMEs and the manual, and then venture inside and begin your cockpit familiarization. Or, alternatively, time to jump in, fire this baby up, and take to the skies! Wherever one is on the spectrum, we're all test pilots. Although the latest addition to your hangar may already have been flown by thousands of others, this is your first time, and you don't have a check pilot sitting beside you. Regular readers will probably not be surprised when I admit that I lean towards the "Get up there NOW" school of thought, but there is benefit in approaching the early flights with deliberation, and taking time to note some of the unique characteristics of your new mount. Before you fly, set up your plane. Load fuel to half tanks or less, and load the airplane to the middle of the CG envelope or slightly forward. Set the weather to something benign. Choose a long runway; a bit of extra width might help, too. Start up, run up, and check the controls visually. As you taxi, check the brakes, the direction indicator, and the turn coordinator. Before you start your first takeoff roll, check that everything in the plane is set the way you want it. WW2 ace Douglas Bader's brief first flight in a Spitfire ended in a prang off the end of the runway when he tried to take off with coarse propeller pitch selected. Check your mindset and put aside your expectations. There is a recording of Bader describing his first experience with a jet, the Gloster Meteor. He talked about how sleek and fast it looked and how, when he pushed the throttles forward for takeoff, it "rumbled off down the runway like an old lorry". Approach your first takeoff with caution. My favorite plane of all time, of which more anon, is A2A's Civilian P-51. The flight model has been endorsed by several real-world Mustang pilots, but posts will appear from time to time on the A2A forum that each say, essentially, "I just bought the P-51 Mustang and there's something wrong with it: every time I try to take off it flips upside down". Line up your plane and open the throttle, not too slowly but not too quickly either, managing the torque with steering, brakes, and rudder. Watch the airspeed and very slowly lift the airplane off when you think you are fast enough. It may be nose heavy or light. Climb straight ahead to at least 3,000 feet and make sure there are no significant controllability issues. Find the stall speed. Apply carb heat, if you've got it, and throttle back gently, noticing the tendency of the nose to rise or fall. Apply back pressure to stay level and reduce your speed. Don't use the ailerons, keep the wings level with rudder. Watch the airspeed and the horizon. Notice the stick back pressure, any buffeting, and oil-canning or other noises. In the A2A fleet, both the Comanche and T-6 make very distinctive noises close to stall that have saved me more than a few times. Most well-designed aircraft will have a gentle stall, though one wing may drop before the other. At the stall, note the indicated airspeed then release the stick pressure to increase the airspeed and get the wing flying again. Smoothly apply full power and climb at 130 percent of the stall speed. Trim, and note the setting. You now have your takeoff trim for this configuration, at this weight and CG. Now that you're up here, check out how your plane flies. How does it roll, pitch, and yaw? How are stalls with power on? How much power does it take to maintain altitude with gear and flaps hanging? What happens when you raise and lower the gear and flaps? Experiment and explore. If you're really daring, on subsequent flights you can go into extreme test pilot mode and try some "out of the envelope" stuff. Is it possible to get into an unrecoverable attitude? How much can you actually load on board and still take off? How does she fly loaded outside the CG envelope, both forward and aft? And be ready for the unexpected. Flight Simulator 4.0 allowed users to "build" an airplane by tweaking the parameters of a basic airframe. Inevitably, at one point I tried a canard arrangement, moving the wing to the back and the "tail" to the front. Although the runway at Meigs was a bit less than 4,000 feet I was pretty sure my little jet would take off easily in that space. But, racing down the runway on the first flight, I discovered that pulling back on the stick produced no result at all. Just before the far end, on a hunch, I tried PUSHING, and the plane leaped into the air. It was tricky but, mumbling "The stick is backwards, the stick is backwards . . . ", I actually managed to lurch around the pattern and land again. Apparently I was not the only one thus endangered; the next edition of the program included a "canard switch". B and D I was prepping the Comanche for a flight and, as I do, I tapped the B and D keys prior to taxiing. In FSX and P3D, the B key sets the altimeter to the local barometric pressure setting, and the D key sets the directional gyro to the magnetic compass heading. But this time I paused a moment, and pondered what I had just done. It has become my habit to tap the two keys from time to time during a flight: when making a heading change, for example, or when approaching an airfield, or just whenever I happen to think of it. But I realized I've become a bit casual with my use of these shortcuts because in real flying conditions it isn't always easy - or, sometimes, even possible - to reset these instruments in real life. The altimeter works by comparing the atmospheric pressure where you are with the atmospheric pressure at a reference surface - sea level or the airport of departure - or with the flight level standard of 29.92 inches/1013.25 millibars. But as you fly you will almost certainly be moving into areas of differing atmospheric pressure, and that affects the accuracy of your altimeter. For example, if you fly into a region of lowering pressure without adjusting your altimeter while maintaining a constant indicated altitude, you will be descending. How much? I took a quick look at weather systems and found an extreme example that in 300 nautical miles had a pressure change of 28 millibars or 0.8 inches. That represents an 800-foot altitude difference, which could obviously be an error of some significance if flying, say, on instruments at night. So if you're looking for verisimilitude (and a little more excitement), you should only reset your altimeter when you receive a setting from ATC, or when you can be sure of your altitude, as when you're sitting on the ground at the airport. Our primary instrument for telling which way we're going, the magnetic compass, is a quirky little beast. In anything but smooth air and unaccelerated flight it swims in its little tank subject to a number of forces. Of course, it doesn't point North (well, rarely), but we map the variation between True North and Magnetic North and pretty much have that handled, though a close look at a US sectional map, for example, will often reveal small areas of localized magnetic disturbance. Besides variation, we have declination and deviation. For many, "declination" has become synonymous with variation; it is, actually, the tendency of the compass to follow the curve of the magnetic field, which is most noticeable the closer you get to the poles, and so is also called "angle of dip error". Deviation is the phenomenon noted on the little card next to the compass, and indicates the effects that electronics and structure have on its accuracy in that location. Note that in the real world other things will affect it: a few tons of steel pipe in the back, or a headset on top of the panel. Acceleration/deceleration errors cause the compass to turn on easterly or westerly headings (and to dip on northern or southerly headings). In the northern hemisphere, acceleration gives a turn to the north and deceleration a turn to the south. In the southern hemisphere it's opposite: acceleration gives a turn to the south, and deceleration a turn to the north. In a coordinated turn, the compass dips to the low side of the turn, an error most noticeable when turning through headings close to north and south. Turning from a northerly heading, the compass will briefly indicate a turn in the opposite direction; from a southerly heading, it goes the right way but faster than the plane is actually turning. And then there's turbulence. Not really an error, but it makes the compass unstable, and therefore an unreliable reference. And so we have: the directional gyro. It's usually powered by suction. An engine-driven pump draws air out of the instrument's case, and a jet of incoming air strikes little buckets on the rotor to make it spin. Neat, huh? So after you set it on the ground to match the compass heading it is, for the most part, unaffected by the eccentricities that plague the compass. However, because the Earth is rotating at about 15 degrees per hour, the DG will, over time, drift and must periodically be reset, using the magnetic compass - with all its quirks. More sophisticated installations incorporate a solution for gyro drift. The directional indicator on the HSI in my A2A Civilian Mustang, for example, is slaved to a fluxgate, a magnetic sensor that continuously senses the Earth's magnetic field and causes a servo to constantly correct the indicator. I still press D. Travels with Miss Sheila The question came up on a Misfit Squadron flight a few months ago: If you could only fly one aircraft from your collection, which one would it be? My choice was the A2A civilian version of the North American Aviation P-51D Mustang. It is, for me, the ultimate personal flying machine. At 30,000 feet I can buzz along at light jet speeds for a thousand nautical miles, and stretch the range to 1,300 if I slow down a little. And when I'm done I can get into (and out of) a grass strip less than 2,000 feet in length. Like its equine namesake, this Mustang can be challenging; after around 2,000 hours I still find takeoffs and landings exciting. You can't master this one, only strive to master it, and that's a huge part of its appeal. With the A2A version I get the additional treat of having to be responsible for my aircraft. That means checking it in the hangar before flight, maintaining fluids, managing power, watching temperatures, and not exceeding the structural limitations. If I don't treat the engine properly, parts will need to be replaced more often, and it's more likely to fail. Of all the aircraft I've owned and flown in almost forty years of flightsimming, this is the first one I've been moved to name. I'm creating a series of videos, "Travels with Miss Sheila", to share this magnificent aeroplane and our experiences together exploring both the world and the world of flight. The first episode, featuring an initial look at the plane and some unusual geography, will be up on YouTube soon. Details to follow. I hope you'll check it out! Ratty's Ramble One of the flights I planned for the Misfit Squadron last year turned out to be more challenging than I expected. It was designed as a scenic tour of the Canadian Rockies, from Fort St John to Prince Rupert, a distance of 426 nautical miles through some spectacular mountain scenery. What made this particular trip so exciting was the weather on that particular day: there was just the right amount of low cloud to make it challenging combined with enough clear skies to take in the stunning terrain. Fly in any weather you like, but if you want to duplicate the conditions we encountered, set your weather to 0800 local, June 13, 2021 - and fly low. Skyvector Link
  2. Ratty's Ramblings - 'Tis The Season By Ian Radcliffe For the past few months the Misfit Squadron has been doing some long group trips, meeting on Fridays and flying legs for a couple of hours at a time. We started out with a trip from Big Bear City, California to Oshkosh for the (virtual) AirVenture, and since then we've explored 1,400 miles of the coastal regions of Norway; 3,000 miles of the Great Rift Valley; and 2,600 miles around Italy. We started our latest epic flight last week, taking off from Wiley Post-Will Rogers Memorial Airport, Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost airfield on the North American mainland, and heading for (eventually) Malvinas Argentinas in the Tierra del Fuego, at the far tip of South America. I don't fly in the cold. It's not that I actively avoid it, more that the places I usually fly happen to be closer to the Equator than the poles, so Barrow in November was an unfamiliar experience for me. The outside temperature at 8 am was 3 degrees F, about -16 C. Now, cold is not all bad. Because cold air is denser, airplanes are more efficient: more air means more fuel in the same intake volume and hence more power, and denser air means more lift for the wings, with shorter takeoffs and faster climbs. But it does raise a new set of considerations, particularly with planes like A2A's, where they take performance modelling very seriously. The Mustang has an oil dilution system that you use before shutting down in cold climates; it thins the oil to make it easier for the engine to turn over next time. Unfortunately, the last place I shut down the Mustang was in Indonesia, so whether or not to dilute the oil never entered my head. The next consideration was priming. A2A Accusim technology models the Merlin's quirks pretty accurately, and it's easy to over- or under-prime. Normally four seconds of primer is about right for a "cold start", so I went for six, since it was really cold. Thus armed, I turned on the fuel pump and flicked the starter switch. The engine turned, reluctantly; I don't know if A2A model the degradation of battery performance in cold conditions but it wouldn't surprise me. After the requisite six blades I turned on the mags and got - nothing. The prop continued to turn and I gave it another couple of seconds of prime. Still nothing. I turned off the starter (you're not supposed to run it for more than 30 seconds at a time), let it sit for a bit, then tried again. And again. And again. Suffice it to say that despite various combinations of priming, mixture adjustment, and throttle setting, I managed to drain the battery without eliciting more than a few reluctant coughs. A quick trip to the hangar restored the battery and I set up to try yet again. Much longer prime this time, and after about twenty seconds of cranking, throttle juggling, and MORE prime I actually got the thing to fire and run. I've since learned that in the conditions that prevailed that morning the recommended priming time is of the order of TWELVE seconds. This flight was intended as a check flight before the start of the big trip, and an opportunity to get everything warmed up and ready to go. There was cloud from a few hundred feet above the field up to about eight thousand feet, so I decided to just go up on top, look around, and come back down. Climbing through the cloud I eventually noticed that I had lost my airspeed indication. Ah, yes - pitot heat. I turned it on. The ASI never came back; I assume the ice encrustation was more than the heater could handle. Fortunately, with over 1,000 hours in this plane I've developed a reasonably good feel for her, and I was able to get back to the field, let down, and land without, I'm pretty sure, exceeding any of the flap and gear limitation speeds. So I learned some stuff about cold weather flying, and it stood me in good stead at our first stop, Dawson City where, although it's almost 600 miles south, the temperatures are about the same as at Barrow. On the next flight, oil thinned and priming sorted out, she fired right up. And I turned on the pitot heat. But, for another example of my inexpertness and subsequent ponderings, read on. Going Around I take my sim flying pretty seriously, but sometimes I catch myself doing things that would terrify me in real life. There's a little voice that still lurks in the back of my head that mutters something like "Hey, even if you have a catastrophic crash you won't get hurt, and you can always reload the plane." While that may be true, there are times when I'm embarrassed to reflect on something I've just done. The other day I was in the A2A Mustang (again) and approaching to land. Because of the restricted visibility over the nose I tend to do a curving approach whenever possible; it works well if you can hold a steady descent rate and a more or less constant rate of turn. This time, as I got down near the threshhold it was clear that I was getting too slow AND too low. The Mustang is an airplane you have to handle carefully at the bottom of the speed range, particularly down low in a left-hand turn; injudicious application of power can have you over on your back and into the ground in very short order. So, with a very delicate power increase and appropriate rudder work I tried to stretch the glide to get me to the runway. I got there, but very slow and still in a slight turn with the left wing low, and as I started to flare the left wing stopped flying. I was not high up, so she came down hard on the left main, bounced over onto the right, and proceeded to careen down the runway while I struggled with brakes, rudder, and power to keep her off the grass. I managed, and eventually brought the plane to a stop. It was at that moment that I thought about going around or, more accurately, my attitude to it. There is a phenomenon in real-world flying known as get-there-itis, defined as "The determination of a pilot to reach a destination even when conditions for flying are very dangerous". It has killed a lot of people through the years, and its variation "real men don't go around" almost got me. In an earlier article about engine failure on takeoff, I wrote that it is good practice during the takeoff roll and initial climb to ask yourself "What if the engine quit here . . . or here . . . or here?" Well, it's probably a good idea to ask yourself a similar question on approach, something like "Is it still safe to proceed . . . is it still safe . . . is it still safe?" And if the answer is No, what do you do? The go-around sequence is much the same for all aircraft: power, pitch, flaps, and gear. Power: apply appropriately. Slamming the throttle to the firewall might not be the best move. Pitch: get the nose into climb attitude. The need to PUSH on the stick may be quite strong. Flaps: retract per the manufacturer's recommendations. Lacking those, it might be a good idea to experiment at altitude, practicing balancing flap retraction and pitch to avoid sinking or stalling. And once you have the flaps down, if you haven't already, trim. Gear: retract once you have a positive rate of climb. On some aircraft the retraction sequence can create more drag than if the gear were left down. When should you go around? Whenever it's not looking good. It might be overcautious, but practice never hurts. Spot The Difference Preflight check, A2A Comanche. Ratty's Ramble - Colorado Cruise We just flew this deceptively simple 175-mile trip across central Colorado. Out of Denver's Centennial Airport you fly south, with the Great Plains to your left and the beginning of the Rocky Mountains to your right. The route takes you past Colorado Springs, the Air Force Academy and Cheyenne Mountain, before turning southwest to cross the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness. As you near the foothills of the Rockies you intercept the Rio Grande river, and follow it into the hills to land at Mineral County Memorial Airport, Creede. Since Centennial Airport is almost 6,000 feet up and Creede Airport is almost 9,000, this one is most fun in fixed-gear singles. Skyvector link
  3. Ratty's Ramblings - Trim and Trimming By Ian Radcliffe There are many aspects of flight that are not necessarily obvious, and one of these is the role of trim. Not everyone understands trim, and a lot of people who think they do don't. It doesn't help that in our simulations it's often poorly implemented. I've also found that amongst sim pilots there are two common misconceptions that I should disabuse you of right now. The first: trim is not a flight control. The second: it's not an "elevator booster". Let's take a look at the purpose of trim, and then at how to use it. Most modern aircraft are dynamically stable; that is, once established in a steady flight state they will tend to stay in that state, or return there if displaced. In cruise flight, the pendulum stability of high-wing aircraft and the dihedral of (most) low-wing aircraft help maintain wings-level flight, and help restore it if the aircraft banks. Apply rudder briefly and the nose will swing from side to side until the vertical stabilizer brings the airplane back to straight-ahead flight. Raise the nose a little and release the controls and the nose will drop and rise a few times before settling back into level flight. Early aeroplanes with no throttle had one cruise speed; the power options were only All or Nothing. If, at cruise speed, your plane had a tendency to roll or climb or turn it could be rerigged on the ground to fly straight so you didn't have to hold control forces all the time. But add a passenger behind you and suddenly your plane is tail heavy, and heavier, and your elevator forces have changed. The biggest variations in control forces take place in pitch. Changes in speed, weight, power, and airfoil configuration all contribute to how hard you have to pull or push. Increase power in level flight and the plane will start to climb; if you want to stay level and go faster you'll have to hold forward pressure on the stick. Decrease power, and to maintain level flight you'll have to hold constant back pressure. And that's what trim is for: to stop your arm getting tired. The first trim device apparently was developed in 1910; all I've been able to find out is that it was "ground adjustable", but I'd bet it was created to accommodate changes in pitch. There are many ways that trim is implemented, most being aerodynamic and involving adjustment to the elevator and/or the entire horizontal stabilizer. The simplest system is a bungee or spring device connected to the stick. Aileron and rudder trim appear mostly on larger aircraft, because planes are most stable in roll and yaw. About the only way to make one wing heavier than the other is to mismanage fuel in the wing tanks. Propeller-driven airplanes do have yawing tendencies that vary with different power settings and speeds, but they're usually rigged for cruise, so a P-51 Mustang REALLY wants to swing left on takeoff, but bores straight ahead in level flight. In practice, I find I can fly for quite a long time holding control pressure, like holding a fixed accelerator position when driving, so my use of trim may be different than others', and I encourage you to look around and see what others have to say. For what it's worth, here's how I use trim: Before flight I set the elevator trim to the takeoff position. After takeoff, I establish a climb at the desired airspeed; to maintain that speed I need to maintain a particular stick pressure, but if I do it too long my arm will get tired. This is where I adjust the trim until I don't need to push or pull any more. In a real airplane you can feel the pressure going out of the controls. I have nose down/nose up buttons on my stick, and as I run the trim I can almost feel the pressure going out of the controls. When I get to my cruise altitude and level off, I lower the nose first, then adjust the throttle as necessary, then wait (because it can take a while to settle on a speed) and then retrim. After that, as I burn fuel my airplane will get lighter and want to climb. If I drop ordnance or fuel tanks my airplane will want to climb. If I increase power my airplane will want to climb. If I reduce power, my airplane will want to descend. If I add weight (as in air-to-air refuelling, for example, frankly the only example I can come up with) my airplane will want to descend. To maintain level flight, or establish a particular climb or descent rate, I will now have to apply force to the stick again. I wait for the speed to settle and then retrim. In the landing phase there can be numerous changes in the stick pressure you use. Slowing, power adjustment, lowering gear and flaps, all change the trim of the plane. I generally trim when established on downwind at a steady speed with the gear extended. Once cleared to land, reducing power puts me into a descent without the need to touch anything else. Speed adjustments will require pressure on the stick, but since I still have the flaps to deploy I don't touch the trim again until I'm established on a steady final approach with everything hanging and no major power changes in the offing. And then I won't touch the trim again; unless I have to go around, in which case I will apply power, clean up the aircraft, establish a climb...and trim. FS20... ...or, yes, I know, Emesseffess. I bought it, installed it, flew the 152 over my house, and uninstalled it. It's very pretty, and I guess has a lot of possibility but, for me, without realistic aircraft and without the ability to tinker like FSX and P3D it really is just pretty pictures. I go all the way back to FS2: for all its primitive graphics it was an amazing simulation of the Cherokee, and since then I've always made flight realism my priority over how it looks. Maybe one day... More Hang-ars/ers Ratty's Ramble Although the Misfit Squadron have flown all over the world, there are still regions we haven't explored. I've been looking at eastern and south-eastern Europe recently, and I've found several areas that make for spectacularly pretty VFR flights. This is one of them, comprising a piece of northern Greece and a bit of southern Albania. (Note: I flew this in FSX with Orbx Europe Landclass scenery. Your viewing experience may vary.) It's a 170-mile trip, tailored for Cherokee and T-6 speeds, but suitable for faster aircraft, though some of the canyon turns get a little hairy over 200 knots. Flying at two thousand feet provides a great view of the scenery and is a comfortable flight altitude, or there are canyons and valleys aplenty for the more adventurous. There are one or two "surprises" that you need to be at 4,500 feet to clear.
  4. Ratty's Ramblings - Getting Around By Ian Radcliffe I'm a simple soul. I mostly fly general aviation aircraft and warbirds: a propeller and a wing and I'm good to go. And I love simple navigation: back when I learned to fly, although our field had a VOR, almost none of the planes there had a receiver, so I got around with just a map and a "Dalton Computer", the British E6B. I was mad about airplanes even as a little boy, and I had learned a lot about VFR navigation long before I ever got to do it for real. It's hard for me to appreciate the kind of challenge that navigation presents to a newcomer who wants to explore but has little idea what it takes to get around. In that situation, to just get up in the air and go places, the GPS is an incredible aid. Once you've figured out taking off and landing, and straight and level flight and autopilot operation, you're free to fly anywhere in the world. I guess the problem I have with that is that it skips the traditional steps that instill basic airmanship skills. As I've noted before, our simulated aircraft are too reliable, so you'll probably never suffer a total electrical failure, but if you were to lose your navaids, would you still be able to get where you're going or, for that matter, even figure out where you are? Navigation is a complex subject and because we fly in a dynamic medium it's almost as much art as science. But at its heart, aerial navigation is simple. As long as you can see the ground, a map and compass and a clock will do just fine: point the plane in the direction you want to go, keep track of your position on your map, and correct for drift. Let's try a little trip with just those tools, some minimal preflight planning - and no GPS. Go to ESMK, Kristianstad, Sweden. Set time to Day and season to Spring. Choose your weather; anything will do, as long as the clouds are higher than 1,500 feet, but if this is your first time, I recommend a selection with light winds and decent visibility. Pick a plane from your collection; the trip is only 63 miles, so something simple, with a cruise speed in the 90 - 120 knot range. Open Skyvector.com. Go to Kristianstad, ESMK and mark your start point. Go to Halmstad, ESMT, and mark your destination. Now right click on the line at the first lake to the north west of ESMK and set a "GPS" marker. It should be eighteen miles away on a bearing of 313 degrees. Fifteen miles further on there is a road perpendicular to your flight path, just past a fairly distinctive lake. Set another marker where the flight path crosses the road. The finished product should look like this: Full map at skyvector.com Do what you need to do to prepare for flight. Start up, taxi out, and take off. Circle the field, climbing to 1,500 feet. Turn onto a heading of 313 degrees and overfly the field. Note the time or start a stopwatch. At 90 knots, a mile and a half a minute, the lake is about 12 minutes away; at 120 knots you're going two miles a minute, so the lake is about nine minutes away. Maintain your heading of 313 degrees. You'll see the lake pretty soon. Keep going. When you get to the lake, or abeam the lake, pause the sim and note the time. Multiply 18 (the distance flown) by 60, and divide by the time in minutes. The result is your groundspeed for this leg. If it's more than your airspeed you have a tailwind, if less, a headwind. Armed with this information you can calculate how long the next fifteen miles should take to fly and estimate your time of arrival at the next waypoint. Take a look at where you are in relation to your intended flight path. If you held a steady heading of 313 degrees and finish up off to one side it's probably because the wind blew you off course (though there may be a small difference between Skyvector's magnetic north and yours). To adjust for drift, find out how many degrees off course you are. You can do this in Skyvector by pulling your course line to your actual position, thus: The E6B/Dalton Computer is a wonderful tool. With it and the information you now have - your heading, track, airspeed and groundspeed - you can calculate the direction and speed of the wind. You can then use those numbers to calculate how much to point your plane into the wind to allow for drift. Or, since this is a little 30-minute jaunt, you can just steer a bit to the right. From this position you have a number of options. If you turn five degrees to the right you will correct the drift, but you'll now be running parallel to your original intended track. To get back on track, you need to turn ten degrees to the right, fly that heading for the same amount of time, then turn five degrees back to the left. Alternatively, using the map, you can plot a new heading to the next waypoint and "allow for drift". Or you can plot a new heading to the destination, allowing for drift. Pick your method, make your best guess at the wind correction, unpause, make your heading change, and press on. Try to match your progress on this leg with features on the ground. There are roads, a railroad, and lakes to look out for. But be careful with lakes; in MSFS the programmers did a fantastic job replicating the lakes around the planet, but a few have changed shape or disappeared over time, and there can be differences between what Skyvector shows and what you see in your sim. The highway you're looking for as your next waypoint is a "line feature". Line features like roads, rivers, railroads, and coastlines are very useful. Following one can get you where you want to go. (Please remember, keep to the right.) Crossing one, it's usually easy to fix your position on it. Best of all, if you ever get lost, flying to intercept a line feature can get you found again. Whichever wind correction method you used, when you get to the highway note your time and position again. You can use this to check how well your corrections are working out, make adjustments for the last leg, and calculate the time you'll arrive at Halmstad. Once again, follow your progress on the map. There's a big lake about half way along, and very distinctive inlets and rivers as you near the coast. That confluence of river and railroad lines directly on your track is ten miles out from the field, a good point at which to call them up and get your landing instructions. Land and park and grab a burger. Then fly back. Lesson Learned? I had an engine failure the other day. I was climbing out of Dubrovnik on my way somewhere in the A2A Constellation when suddenly there was an awful clattering from the right hand side of the plane, and the engine instruments showed something amiss with number three. By the time I got to the engineer's postion he had already pulled the mixture and shut off the fuel. I punched the feathering button and the clattering stopped. Back in the captain's seat, I put the plane into a gentle left one-eighty and headed back to the airport. In the descent, with the power reduced, there was virtually no difference in the handling of this magnificent bird. The visibility was not great, but more than adequate, and we let down into a left-hand pattern and got ready to land. I selected the first stage of flaps on downwind, and my FO responded, "Flaps one". (Yes, the crew talk to you. The passengers make noises, too, even applauding particularly smooth landings.) We lowered approach flaps on base, and went to full flaps on final. There was a crosswind, but a slight crab took care of that. As we crossed the threshhold my FO counted us down. "Forty feet - thirty - twenty - ten . . ." Then someone shouted "Hang on guys!" and while I was wondering what that meant we landed - gear up. In the last couple of years I've developed the habit of sneaking a quick extra look at my plane's gear lights in the final stages of the final approach. I do it as a just-in-case backup to my routine pre-landing check. Obviously, I didn't this time. I'm pretty sure I hit the switch for the undercarriage on downwind; it usually works, and the FO will tell me "Gear down", but I clearly didn't listen for that, or didn't notice that it didn't come. Shutting down one engine in a plane like the Connie is not much of an emergency, as emergencies go. There was no fire, no rush to get down, no compelling reason to land as soon as possible. But I still somehow managed to make the failed engine a higher priority than following my routine. Stories of situations like this are legion in aviation; the distraction of something relatively minor leading to a critical oversight and catastrophe. I wonder if I'll do that again. Homonyms Again Hangar Hanger Ratty's Ramble Explore the island nation of Mauritius and the French island of Reunion in the Southern Indian Ocean. Start from Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport, FIMP, and take a quick tour of the island, then hop across to Reunion for a touch and go at Saint Pierre Pierrefonds, FMEP, and from there go north through some spectacular mountains to land at La Reunion Roland Garros Airport, FMEE. Full map at skyvector.com
  5. Ratty's Ramblings - Short Takeoffs By Ian Radcliffe With all the scenery packages and individual airfields available in freeware and payware, there are innumerable enticing little aerodromes dotted around the flightsim world these days. Occasionally, if I see an interesting looking airfield on my travels, I'll break my trip and drop in to check it out. I'll usually look up the runway length, to make sure that whatever I'm flying will fit, but even if it's not on the chart, my experienced eye can generally tell whether it's too short. So I'll land, and taxi around to explore the scenery - and then remember what I seem to forget every time. Most airplanes take a lot less room to get down and stopped than they do to get up, especially if there are obstacles. A Cessna 172 at sea level and a temperature of 20 degrees Centigrade can clear the quintessential 50-foot obstacle, land and stop in 1,350 feet. Its takeoff, however, will require 1,750 feet to get to fifty feet. And to get even that performance demands a different technique than normal takeoffs. This is not just true of "short fields". Heat and altitude can make even a long runway short. The same 172 landing at an elevation of 5,000 feet needs 1,535 feet to clear the obstacle and come to a stop, but a whopping 2,920 to take off to fifty feet - almost twice the distance. And at 8,000 feet and twenty degrees, the takeoff roll alone requires 2,525 feet, and distance to fifty feet is 5,315 feet! Short takeoff techniques vary little from plane to plane. Mostly, the difference is whether flap is used, and how much. If you have a Pilot's Operating Handbook for your craft, the information will be in there. Cessna seems to recommend ten degrees of flap for their 172. In the Cherokee book, Piper suggest "up to 25". A short field takeoff checklist for the 172 looks something like this: Flaps - 10 degrees Use all available runway Hold brakes Apply full power/check engine instruments Brake release/rotate at 51 kts Climb at Vx, 56 knots, until obstacle is cleared, then raise the flaps and climb at Vy "Use all available runway" means start as far back as possible. Many fields have displaced thresholds, which means you can't land on the first bit of the runway, but nothing precludes you taking off from it. There is still debate over the efficacy of running up the engines against the brakes; some claim that cavitation makes the propeller less efficient, and advancing the throttle on the roll is the way to go. It does sound good, though, and I find the roaring and shaking sets the right frame of mind for the task ahead. Ah, yes - Vx and Vy. If you do have a POH, in there you'll probably find two speeds for climb: Vx and Vy. Vx, the slower of the two, gives you the best ANGLE of climb, and therefore the best obstacle clearance. Vy gives the best RATE; for the 172 that's around 77 knots. And remember: just as temperature and altitude affect performance, there are other considerations to factor in; wind, slope, and surface should all be taken into account. A tailwind that is 10% of your takeoff speed will add about 20% to the distance required, a 2% slope will add 10%, and grass adds up to 30%. Controllers I've owned a lot of controllers in my time. I've had yokes, and sticks, and HOTAS setups. I had one of the first sets of rudder pedals from Thrustmaster. But some years ago I decided enough was enough. Am I, for verisimilitude, required to switch from yoke to stick when I climb out of my V-tail Bonanza and into my P-51? And what about a P-38, a fighter with a yoke? Or an Airbus, an airliner with a stick, and on the left side, too? I've often been asked what the "minimum" setup is. It's simple. You want a setup that allows you to control pitch and roll with one hand, power with the other hand, and yaw with your feet. Whether the pitch/roll control comes from a stick or a yoke is incidental, but I do consider the pedals almost essential. I know there are twist-grip sticks, I used one in my out-of-town, flying-on-a-laptop phase. But flying is a whole-body thing, and your legs and feet need to be involved. And that's it. With this setup and a keyboard you can fly anything. Of course, beyond this basic setup, there are plenty of accessories to enhance the experience. Programmable switches feel more "real" than the keyboard, so consider those in your choice of controllers. My joystick has twelve buttons and a hat switch, my throttle quadrant six switches. The latter also has six levers: if you fly planes with more than one engine it's nice to have a throttle setup that allows you to control the engines individually, and if you're into propeller aircraft, prop and mixture controls, usually activated with levers or push-pull knobs in real planes, add to the real-plane feel. All peripheral options share the same intent: to get you away from the keyboard and make your simming experience more "immersive". And the sky is, as they say, the limit. I have a friend who has replicated in excruciating detail the nose section and flight deck of a Boeing 737 in his spare room. I think that's a bit over the top - but I have to admit that flying it is a remarkably immersive experience. Hello, Helo I bought my first payware helicopter recently. I didn't like it. If you've followed these articles, you will have gathered that my passion is for realistic flight and operating characteristics. That's why I fly A2A's birds; since I don't enjoy complex systems management, their prop planes are the natural choice for me, and the Accu-sim technology brings the level of flying realism I like and engines that I can damage or destroy if I treat them wrong. I'm not a big fan - no pun intended - of flightsim helicopters. Real-life helos are harder to fly than airplanes, and that is also true in the sim - at first. But, because they're an attempt to replicate helicopter dynamics with a flightsim engine designed to replicate airplanes, they are inevitably simplified versions of the real thing. One of my Misfit Squadron accomplices recently bought a newly-released P3D helicopter about which he was very enthusiastic, and that prompted me to look at payware helos, wondering if there was, perhaps, something out there that measured up to my exacting standards. It turns out there is. There is a fair selection of payware helicopters out there, but I had a specific type in mind, and hunted down the "best" version I could find. I installed it and flew it. It was OK; but JUST OK. So with that relegated to the probably-never-again hangar, I went back to looking. I began to find hints of a helicopter out there that was "a quality helicopter simulator", and "a very unique product", and eventually tracked it down. The DodoSim 206 has been around since 2012. It looks like the default Bell in FSX. Even the cockpit, at first glance, looks the same, and it doesn't sport the gee-whiz graphics that we've come to expect. It works in FSX, but only in early versions of P3D. But the way it flies! There are five selectable levels of realism. At level five, incorrect starting procedures can set your engine on fire. I can check that one off. In flight, I've encountered VRS, vortex ring state, for the first time. Features include retreating blade stall, transverse flow, realistic torque-induced yaw, accrued wear and damage, and mechanical failures. The list goes on, but it amounts to what I look for in any sim bird: an exciting, challenging, immersive experience. It is just a Bell 206. It is dated. But the way it flies...! Spelling Test H A N G - R H A N G - R Ratty's Ramble This time, take a 190 nm scenic trip from Milan to Innsbruck. From Milano Linate, LIML, fly east for 66 nm to just past the south end of Lago di Garda. Then just follow the A22 autostrada up into the mountains to the Brenner Pass, then down the A13 autobahn into Innsbruck, Austria, landing at LOWI. Skyvector link
  6. Ratty's Ramblings - Drifting By Ian Radcliffe Drifting Unless you always land on runways pointing directly into the wind, you're familiar with drift. And of course it's one of the effects of those pesky winds at altitude. Even when you're on autopilot following the magenta line, if there's any sort of crosswind your plane is flying sideways a bit. Exactly how much depends on your speed and heading, and the strength and direction of the wind. I recently elected to fly from Southern California to Sydney, Australia. Don't ask. I decided to go via Hawai'i and Pago Pago, making the trip three hops of a little over 2,000 miles apiece. There are not a lot of landmarks and navaids in the South Pacific, but using a GPS seemed like a kind of heresy as I was flying the A2A Lockheed Constellation. In the Connie, the onboard map looks like this: I can see that wind from the east northeast is pushing me off to the right, so I'm heading 191 degrees to get my desired track of 193. This is, of course, more information than would be available in real life. Back in the day, forecast winds aloft were all you had, and landmarks and beacons had great significance. But those are in short supply over the Pacific, so you need another way to tell where you're going. Drift sights were invented in WWI as a bombing aid, but after that, many aircraft were fitted with them as navigation aids that allowed the pilot or navigator to look downwards to observe the relative motion of the surface and measure how much the aircraft was drifting due to wind. I like that they add a little bit of mystery to a flight. Drift information alone doesn't tell you how much your ground speed is affected, so while you can be more certain you'll reach your destination, you won't be able to calculate exactly when. (Some drift sights incorporated "speed lines" to get a ground speed reading by measuring the time it took for an object on the surface to move between the lines and then factoring for altitude.) The Connie's map is a great stand-in for a drift sight, but if you don't have an onboard map like that, how do you get the drift information? I've found that a simple protractor works just fine; the ones with radial lines and no holes are the best. Go to your top-down view in the sim and set it as "aircraft-oriented". Put your protractor on the screen over the aircraft with the 0-degree mark at the top, and watch the surface slide by. You'll be able to see the surface movement relative to your plane. Read off the drift angle and correct for it. After a couple of minutes, check again and make any necessary adjustments. That's it. Congratulations, you're on course! Formation Flight I'm reliably informed that formation flying is easier in real life than it is in a sim. That's encouraging, because I found it tricky enough in the sim that there were times I thought I'd never get the knack. But it turned out to be much like learning to ride a bike - not getting it, not getting it, not getting it ... got it! My moment was when I first noticed I was moving the throttle without consciously thinking about it. I'm not great; I can hold formation with an airplane that isn't maneuvering too drastically. The trick seems to be: Match the lead's bank angle Adjust throttle to move forward and backward Use rudder to move closer or farther away I've had the opportunity to practice a lot on our group flights, but it's also easy to practice alone with your program's AI. Turn off collisions, take off, and look for someone to follow (Ctrl-Shift-L for labels in FSX). Whatever you're flying, you should pick a target over which you have a performance advantage, because you will be playing catch up. Joining up is an art in itself, and easier if you've played combat sims. It involves juggling wildly variable geometry and vectors, a skill that is largely about feel; like everything else in flying, you get better with practice. It's easiest to join from astern, another instance where the speed advantage helps. Once you're at roughly the same altitude, heading, and speed, use your controls as above to move into the "slot" position, below and behind the lead aircraft. Choose two points on the lead aircraft to line up; for example, the edge of the rudder with the gap between the aileron and the flap. Then see how close you can get. I've been told that formating is easier the closer you fly to the lead. Let me know how that works out for you. If you're feeling particularly ambitious, JoinFS has a function that allows you to record a flight, then play it back and fly along. You can even record that flight and play it back and fly along. Then you can record that flight, and the next, and the next, and thus build a formation. When the British were still flying the Hawker Hunter, there was an RAF Hunter demo team called The Black Arrows. At the Farnborough Air Show in 1958, they executed a formation loop with 22 aircraft, a record that stands to this day. They followed that with a 16-aircraft barrel roll. I guess it just takes practice. Homonyms 2 They're homonyms, I get it, but really, people... HangAr HangEr Ratty's Ramble This time, we explore the Hudson River Valley, from New York City to the river's source south of Lake Placid. The trip is around 230 miles. Take off from Westchester County Airport, KHPN, avoiding the congestion and dodgy frame rates of the NYC area, and fly west to the Hudson River and Tappan Zee Bridge. Then follow the river north, past West Point military academy, Poughkeepsie, Albany, and Hudson Falls, and up into the mountains to the river's source at Mount Marcy, landing at Lake Placid, KLKP. The trip looks like this: /images/features/rattyrm5/3.jpg And the Skyvector plan is here.
  7. Ratty's Ramblings - The Impossible Turn By Ian Radcliffe A few weeks ago, discussing forced landings, I mentioned "The Impossible Turn". Arguably the worst time to lose the engine in a single-engine plane is on climbout after takeoff. Low on speed, and just plain LOW, your options are severely limited. Since there's not a lot of time to troubleshoot, the usual recommendation is something like "lower the nose and land straight ahead", shutting off everything you can on the way down. But advances in aircraft and engine performance since the days when that mantra was born, have made another option available. Turning back to the field is a very tempting proposition. After all, you've just left a perfectly good landing site; just making it back inside the airfield perimeter guarantees you a relatively flat, smooth, unobstructed surface, one that could be infinitely more appealing than the area surrounding the airport. But the impossible turn gained that appellation for a reason: it mostly didn't work. In the old days, aircraft takeoff performance was often lackluster at best, but performance enhancements make the impossible more possible - in the right airplane, under the right circumstances. And, once again, with our flight simulator we can explore those circumstances without risking the nasty consequences of real-life miscalculations. It's not a bad idea to ask yourself during your takeoff rolls, "What would I do if the engine failed here...or here...or here? Clearly, if the engine dies during the takeoff roll or the initial part of the climb, continuing straight ahead, slowing, and avoiding obstacles is the best you can do. But at some point you will gain enough height to make a turn back viable. What that height is depends on a number of factors: Airplane. A July 2002 AOPA Pilot article, "Engine Out!" reported that a Cessna 172 required nearly 500 feet of altitude to return to the runway using an "aggressive" 45-degree bank and allowing the nose to fall "fairly dramatically" to maintain airspeed. The only way to find out what works for your plane is go out and fly it. Weight. Are you solo with half fuel, or is every seat full and the tanks topped off? Pilot skill and response time. Unless your immediate response is to lower the nose and begin the turn, you're probably not going to pull it off. Also, if you spend a lot of your time in straight and level flight, an "aggressive" bank and dramatic nosedrop will probably not come naturally. Practice helps; that's what flightsims are for. By the way, even with the throttle closed, idle thrust is just that - thrust. You won't have that if it happens for real. For added realism, pull the mixture. Headwind. Will make for a steeper climb, but becomes a tailwind on the way back, meaning higher landing speed and the chance of running out of runway. Crosswind angle is a factor too, affecting the choice of the best way to turn. Atmosphere and altitude. Air temperature and elevation both have an effect on climb performance. What you can pull off at sea level may not work at Denver International. Chosen climb profile. Did you opt for a cruise climb, best angle, or best rate? Runway length. How far behind you is it? And: is it long enough for you to land on and stop with a tailwind? All these variables ensure that there is no stock answer to the question "How high do I have to be?" Only experimentation can tell you that. Have fun! Crashes And Damage If you've read many of these pieces you will have gathered by now that I'm a fairly adventurous flyer. Not for me the tedious plodding through the ATC system in a tubeliner; I love the opportunity to fly fast and low, to "dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings" and do a hundred things I would (probably) never do in real life. I was pretty hardcore in my early simming days, even started a logbook to record each and every hour. (That died out quickly, and nowadays I fly too often and too spontaneously to keep a record. My "total hours" are unknowable, spread as they are over multiple systems and 35+ years; even now I have versions of FSX on three different computers.) But I kept "crashes and damage" turned on for a long time. There was a kind of pride in knowing that I really completed a flight, that that last landing really wasn't hard enough to wipe out the gear. There was, of course, the occasional frustration: a bridge that I cleared with room to spare had an invisible "crash box" much larger than the visual model, and I would find myself returned to the beginning of the flight. A bit harsh. I play first-person shooters sometimes, and even when you DIE they never send you back to the start of the game. I think it was Tim Conrad, creator of - IMHO - the single greatest treasury of freeware aircraft for MSFS, who finally changed my mind about the damage settings. In his read-me notes on pre-release testing he includes the item "Crash Detection off, I KNOW when I crash!" I confess at first I sneered a little, but I took to turning it off occasionally, then more and more, until eventually the sheer practicality of the choice convinced me. (Note to self: get word to Microsoft that it would be great if they could refine the damage modelling in their new sim. That, and PLEASE put a scale on the map!) Turning off crashes and damage gives you the freedom to at least take the occasional chance. Have you flown near London and not heard the siren song of Tower Bridge? The space between those towers is 200 FEET WIDE; you can get a 747 through that. Or the Eiffel Tower in Paris? The space under that is huge in real life. I'm all about learning and sharpening up your flying, and buzz jobs like those will really get you paying attention. What's In A Name? (1) A few months ago there was fairly energetic discussion in the sim world over what to call Microsoft's upcoming iteration of its classic flight simulator. I think it's fairly certain that whatever MS finally decides, we'll come up with our own term. Look at "Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight". An impressive and information-packed title, to be sure, but for simplicity's sake it was rendered down to FS2004 or, more simply still, FS9. So we'll need something catchy, that rolls easily off the tongue. "Eff-ess-eleven" doesn't do it, and somehow lacks the significance the program looks like it will deserve. Emmesseffess? Nope, not specific enough. My vote? "FS20". After all, it's to be released in 2020, it's kinda like "FSX-X", it could well be twice as good... What's In A Name? (2) One of my pet peeves. There IS a difference: Hangar Hanger Ratty's Ramble This time, a 170-mile trip from Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, to Launceston, through some of the island's most spectacular national parks. Orbx Tasmania Demo scenery and Launceston Airport scenery will enhance this trip. If you don't have them already they are both available as freeware on the Orbx site. Skyvector flight plan here
  8. Ratty's Ramblings - Round The World By Ian Radcliffe Have you flown around the world? I've done it three times now. The first time was after Steve Fossett made the trip non-stop in the GlobalFlyer. There was a nice rendition of the plane for FS2004 and I used it to follow the same route. I don't recall anything eventful from that trip, although I have a hazy recollection that the landing was not all it might have been. The second time was in a Piper Cherokee, of all things. I had just bought the A2A model, and it had turned out to be love at first sight. After only a couple of weeks I decided to go around the world in it. I used Skyvector to draw a line between Gillespie Field in California, the airport near where I live, and Biggin Hill in England, the airport where I learned to fly, and followed that as closely as I could, figuring after that I would make up the rest as I went along. It actually went pretty well. You should understand that, for me, the GPS takes a lot of the fun out of getting around, so I made the trip using maps, radio navaids, and a drift sight. From 9,000 feet I could see the surface most of the time, because the weather was generally favorable, or at least not too awful. I remember persistent carburetor icing on the way up through Japan and the Kurile Islands; and waiting a week in Ile Rodrigues in the southern Indian Ocean for winds that would get me to Diego Garcia. That leg was 912 nautical miles and, using standard tanks because there was no way to "realistically" augment fuel capacity, it was a dangerously long flight that I would never attempt in real life. The Cherokee performed flawlessly the whole way round the planet, and did the almost 23,000 miles in 237 hours. The third trip was an equatorial circumnavigation in the A2A Constellation, starting from and returning to Quito, Ecuador, and once again eschwing the GPS. Across the large stretches of open ocean with no navaids I used the drift sight when possible. Failing that, I made the best calculation of which way to steer and trusted that I would at least pass within range of my destination beacon. It worked every time, though on one long night leg, after a big shift in winds, when I finally picked up the beacon I was almost 100 miles north of track. The total distance for the trip was 21,725 nautical miles, the total flight time 93 hours 57 minutes. Some real-world stats: The very first aerial circumnavigation was in 1924, by two Douglas World Cruiser floatplanes of the United States Army Air Service. They took 175 days and covered 26,345 miles. The first non-stop circumnavigation was in 1949, in a United States Air Force B-50 Superfortress. It flew 23,452 miles in 94 hours and 1 minute, and required four in-flight refuelings. And in 1992 an Air France Concorde achieved the fastest circumnavigation to date, in 32 hours 49 minutes and 3 seconds. What exactly is "around the world"? Well, for a powered aircraft to officially circumnavigate the globe, Federation Aeronautique Internationale stipulations are that it must cross all meridians in one direction, travel a distance of at least 36,770 km (19,854 nautical miles, the length of the Tropic of Cancer), and complete the journey at the point of departure. There is no requirement that it cross the Equator or touch "antipodal points", spots on the globe directly opposite one another. Most round-the-world flights are from west to east, to take advantage of the world's wind patterns, but they have been flown from east to west, and even over the two poles. If you're thinking about doing a round-the-world flight, I have a couple of suggestions. The first is: consider doing a little more planning than I did on my Cherokee trip to make sure you don't wind up at a dead end where you can only go backwards. The second: make the voyage in an airplane you love to fly. You'll come away loving it even more. Multiplayer Flight For the past couple of years I've been flying regularly with a group of A2A enthusiasts. The camaraderie is amazing, and the exchange of knowledge and experiences invaluable. And we have fun! So much, in fact, that I'm amazed that EVERYONE isn't in multiplayer almost all the time. Like so many others, I used to be "mic shy", and I suspect that may be the single biggest thing keeping people away from multiplayer flying. Fear of public speaking is number one for most people, even before the fear of death. So, apparently, most people would rather die than have to stand on a stage and speak. I get it; people might not like you. But what I discovered is that talking about and participating together in a shared passion like ours negates all the silly stuff about "looking good". Try it, I dare you. I'm a big fan of JoinFS; with that program you can find a listing of servers and join in, whether you're using FS2004, FSX, P3D, even X-Plane. Pick a group and connect with their comms channel; TeamSpeak and Discord seem the most popular ways to communicate. Once you hear voices, wait for a gap and speak. All you have to say is something like: "This is Ratty. Mic check." The response you get will tell you everything you need to know about the people on the channel and the way you should conduct yourself. After that you're on your own, but be prepared for some of the richest and most satisfying moments of your sim flying life. Ratty's Ramble This time, let's take a trip around the island of Taiwan. Ever been there? I hadn't either. The geography of the island is nicely varied: a mountainous spine separates the western coastal plain - home to most of the country's metropolitan areas and agriculture - from the rugged eastern side with its enticing valleys and canyons. The tour starts from and returns to Hsinchu Air Base, RCPO. At 400 nautical miles this one is a fairly long flight; also a great sightseeing trip, so unless real weather is particularly benign, I recommend Fair or Clear to really enjoy the view. Skyvector Link
  9. Ratty's Ramblings - Forced Landing By Ian Radcliffe How many times have you had a forced landing? There are a few freeware and study-level aircraft with powerplants that you can actually damage through misuse, but for the most part, unless you run out of fuel, flightsim engines don't fail. Which is a pity, because in the real world, knowing how to handle total power failure and a forced landing is an important skill, and one that really sharpens up your flying. Some time, in your single-engine prop plane, try pulling the mixture and see how you do. But first, read on. It's a good idea to do as much preparation for an engine failure as you can while still on the ground, before you fly. If possible, learn the best glide speeds of your craft. There are two: one for best range, one for best endurance. If your airplane's performance matches the numbers in the handbook, use those. Failing that, the speed for best endurance is the same as for minimum sink rate, which you can determine experimentally. Best range speed is a little faster. Plan your route to avoid inhospitable areas, and consider the glide range of your aircraft. Many GA types are good for a 10:1 glide ratio, meaning if you're 6,000 feet above the ground you can glide about 10 nautical miles. Airliners do even better; a clean A320 has a glide ratio of 17:1. Review the actions to take in the event of an engine failure. I've looked at a lot of lists. This is mine: If your plane has a carbureter, apply carb heat. Fly the plane. Convert excess speed to altitude. Assume best glide speed. Trim. Pick your landing area. Consider wind direction. You don't know it? What was it on takeoff? Are there cows, smoke? Perform your engine failure check. If the procedure is in the aircraft docs, follow that. Otherwise, check: Primer (in and locked) Magnetos (on "Both" then try individually, then back to Both) Master switch (on) Mixture (rich, or possibly lean if at altitude) Carb heat (off then on) Fuel (tank quantities and selector) Fuel pump (on) If the engine doesn't restart, make your Mayday call. Close the throttle, set mixture to idle cutoff, turn off the fuel, turn off the magnetos. Keep the master switch on until flaps are deployed if they're electric. Don't stall. Keep your landing area in sight, and make sure you can reach it. If you're at best glide speed and it's moving up the windshield, you're not going to make it. The objective in a forced landing is to touch down in control, the right way up, at the lowest controllable speed, at a spot that gives you the best chance of slowing safely to a stop. [A word about terrain and collisions: a lot of flightsim world is smooth and flat, but in real life there are fences, and powerlines, and ploughed fields, and rocks and so on. You'll have to use your imagination a bit. And if you usually fly with collisions on, you should consider turning them off; even if you manage to steer the aircraft between two trees to have the wings absorb the impact, you'll crash anyway.] Once you've chosen your landing site, aim to fly a partial pattern around the field, entering on a downwind or base leg, depending on your height. You want to reach a "key position" from which you know you can make a landing. If you're too high, slip, extend the pattern, or add flaps. If too low, fly directly to the field. From the key position, configure the aircraft for landing. Don't stall. Land with full flaps. Gear up or down? Depends on the surface. The landing gear can absorb some of the crash forces, but in a water landing, for example, it is probably better left up. Fly the airplane all the way into the crash, and look at where you want to go, not at what you're afraid you'll hit. I've talked about enroute emergencies, but need to mention the most dreaded power failure event: engine failure on takeoff. During your takeoffs, it's worth considering "What would I do if the engine failed now.. or now... ?" Once you're airborne, your options are severely limited as you have neither an excess of height, nor an abundance of airspeed. The first thing to do is to get the nose down, then "land straight ahead", actually within about thirty degrees either side of your flight path. There is much discussion about "The Impossible Turn", reversing course and landing back on the runway, or at least inside the airfield perimeter on relatively flat ground. It turns out to be not so impossible after all, in the right circumstances, and we'll be looking at that in a coming piece. [A suggestion: It would be nice if engine failures could be truly unpredictable; while it is possible to program failures, the very act of programming them sets them within a predictable timeframe and thus you're already on alert. A family member or roommate can help in this regard. I've enrolled my wife. From time to time she will announce "Oh, dear..." or "I hate to tell you this..." at which point I pause and save the flight. I can then finish the flight then fly the forced landing; or fly the forced landing then finish the flight. If I'm flying a multi-engine aircraft I'll ask her "1, or 2, or 3, or..." and make for the nearest airport.] Ratty's Ramble It is the late 1940's... To all crews: The recent massive earthquake in South America has devastated the city of La Paz, Bolivia. Many of its citizens require immediate evacuation. Our task is to provide shuttle flights to ferry in supplies and aid workers, and to fly out evacuees. Assemble at Coronel FAP Carlos Ciriani Santa Rosa International Airport (SPTN), Tacna, Peru. Route: La Paz El Alto International (SLLP) is 151 nm away on a bearing of 058. The highest terrain directly on the route is Mount Sirk'i Qullu, which rises to 18,196 feet. Higher terrain lies immediately to the north. Pilots should fly to the SOUTH of this mountain. After unloading the supplies and aid workers, load evacuees and return to SPTN. Note: La Paz El Alto lies at an elevation of 13,325 feet. It is recommended that you carry a minimal (but safe) amount of fuel that will allow you to fill all the seats at La Paz and still get off the ground. The earthquake has rendered the (ahistorical) main runway unusable. The active runway is the 6,500-foot dirt strip, 10L/28R, on the north side of the airfield.
  10. Ratty's Ramblings - Slow Flight By Ian Radcliffe I've been doing this flightsim thing a long time. I got started in 1984, with subLOGIC Flight Simulator II for the Commodore 64. Crude as it seems now, it captured perfectly the Piper Cherokee 180 I knew so well, and I was hooked. Since then, sims have come a long way. From a little piece of Illinois, we now have an entire planet to explore, with accurate topography, real-world weather, air traffic and ATC, and incredibly realistic aircraft. On the day I got my pilot's license, my chief flight instructor told me: "Congratulations. You now have a license to learn." I took that to heart, and carried that attitude over to flight simulation, so that my last 35 years of simming have been not only a heck of a lot of fun but also an ongoing exploration of the intricacies of flight. I've learned a lot; perhaps some of what I've discovered can make the simming experience even richer for you. Flying Slow Flying is mostly about going fast. You have to reach almost highway speeds to get even a small aircraft off the ground. But there are occasions when being able to fly slowly is desirable. It can allow you to adjust spacing on approach to avoid a go-around; and with all the fantastic scenery we have nowadays it's great for sightseeing. The most obvious case, of course, is when landing. Recently, one aviation writer suggested that excess speed was to blame in two-thirds of real-world general aviation landing accidents in the US. I'm not surprised; I've sat at the approach end of the St. Maarten runway on Steam multiplayer and watched the arrivals. Landing at or near the aircraft's slowest speed has a number of advantages. It's safer, means less wear on the gear and brakes, eliminates bounces and, perhaps most importantly in a simulation, minimizes the landing roll. Skillful slow flying allows you to fly the airplane all the way down to the runway and turn your arrivals into touchdowns. So I wonder why more people don't fly more slowly. Is it that there's something unnerving about the low end of the speed range? After all, there lie the dreaded stall, and the spin. We treat them as things to be avoided rather than mastered. Slow flying was one of the most enjoyable parts of my flight training. Back in the day we did actual stalls and actual spins so, with those out of the way, stooging about at the low end of the envelope was not the unnerving exercise it might otherwise have been. Experiencing stalls taught me to recognize and avoid them, confident that even if I did stall I could recover. When you get a new airplane, it's good practice to perform a familiarization flight. During that flight, it's worth getting to know the aircraft's slow-flying characteristics and experiment with combinations of flaps, power and gear. But first, since we are blessed with the ideal device with which to explore stall behavior, let's go fall out of the sky a few times to get stalls out of the way. Briefly: if you increase the angle between the wing and the airflow (the angle of attack) beyond a certain point, the otherwise smooth flow is disrupted and the wing stops producing lift. The plane falls out of the sky. How it falls varies from type to type, and even between individual airplanes of the same type. The appropriate aircraft for the exercise? Anything you like, but if you haven't stalled an airplane before, I'd recommend something in the Cessna 172 class. I'll be speaking at that level; if you're flying a 747 your experience may vary. Climb to 5,000 feet above ground level and establish the airplane in level flight at a low power setting. Once you're established, retard the throttle slowly while easing back on the stick. Maintain your altitude by checking the vertical speed indicator. As the plane slows, keep the wings level by applying opposite RUDDER; lowering the aileron to lift a wing increases the wing's angle of attack and can induce a premature stall or spin. Reduce the throttle to idle, and keep back pressure on the stick until it's all the way back. With luck, depending on what you're flying, before the actual stall you'll experience gentle buffeting and/or the stall warning will beep/light up. Spare a glance at the airspeed indicator; that's a good number to know. Now, the exciting bit. There are a few airplanes that at this point will enter a stable, nose high, parachute-like descent, usually because they have leading edge slats that help maintain a smooth airflow over the wing, or because the elevator travel is deliberately limited to preclude reaching a stalling angle of attack. Most aircraft will drop their noses, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. At the far end of the spectrum, you might see violent pitch change or a dramatic snap roll. After the plane has stalled, the first thing to do is stop pulling on the stick; release the back pressure on the stick, even push forward if the plane is reluctant to exit the stall. Then apply power and pull back carefully on the stick; pulling too hard or too soon can cause a secondary stall. Make sure that you don't hit redline RPM, or overspeed the airplane. Climb back up and do it again. If you finished up in a spin, all is not lost. Release the back pressure, then figure out which way you're going round and apply opposite rudder until the rotation stops. Then recover as from a straight ahead stall. There are some caveats to remember when flying slow. As already mentioned, use opposite rudder to pick up a wing that drops. The controls become sloppy, so expect to make larger control movements than usual. Variable or gusty winds are a consideration when judging how close to the stall you should go. Turns and power settings change the situation; in many aircraft a power-on stall is a very different experience from the benign nod you get with power at idle. After you get comfortable with stalls in a clean configuration, experiment with various combinations of gear and flaps. When you're comfortable with flying on the edge of a stall with gear and flaps extended you're ready to take on those short strips you've been avoiding. Ratty's Rambles For a couple of years I've been coming up with flight plans for our group of weekend fliers. We're generally in GA aircraft or warbirds, and the flights are timed at about two hours apiece. Here's an interesting one. I happened across one of the longest and deepest river valleys in Europe, cut by the river Tara in northern Montenegro, one of those parts of the world most of us probably never go. If you're into canyon running, this one is a beaut. Or you can fly the route at altitude and take in some spectacular scenery. At 214 nautical miles, it takes about an hour and a half in a single-engine retractable. Take off from Podgorica, LYPG, capital city of Montenegro, and follow the valley of the Moraca river northwards about 25 miles to where the valley divides. Turn right to 034 degrees and fly to the NDB, and town, of Mojkovak. From Mojkovak, a heading of 293 will take you to the mouth of the Tara river valley. Follow the valley northwest, and on to Sarajevo in Bosnia & Herzegovina. From Sarajevo, fly heading 236 for 19 miles to Lake Jablanica and the town of Konjic. Turn left to 163 and, after 68 miles, land at Dubrovnik, Croatia, LDDU. Skyvector.com chart: View chart at skyvector.com
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