Just as a matter of interest, I used to try and do some IRR practise on MS Flight Sim (Professional), just procedural stuff, holds, letdowns, intercepts and the like.
What intrigued me was that the sim model MS Flight Sim uses cannot duplicate a Rate 1 turn. Try it some time. Set up 180 kt, 25 degrees of bank and time the turn. Instead of achieving 3 degrees per second, it will be less than 2! Pretty useless for practising holding and intercept procedures. Your turns are going to be much wider than they would be in the real universe!
I used the rule of thumb for a rate 1 of TAS divided by 10, plus 7 for the angle of dangle, and even selected the MS display to TAS to make it as accurate as I could.
At first I thought it was just the speed of my computer, but I have one of the fastest and it doesn't seem to matter which other computer I use. Whoever modelled this particular function in the game failed to get this bit of physics right.
I even tried to talk to someone from MS but when they phoned back, the guy they had answering my question had no idea what I was talking about.
So there, you go. I wouldn't put too much faith in it.
Last edited by skycoolie; 31st Mar 2005 at 22:11.