Piper Archer,
I have no formal IMC training and no desire to climb the ATP/commercial ladder, the reason i bought the FSX is my Maule has been in for its annual for longer than i expected due to the maintenance shop being a bit backed up and I wanted to "fly". Since retiring i spend pretty much everyday at my grass strip either flying if the weather allows, and if not i,m in the hangar tinkering around with the plane or in the hangar office reading about flying ( I know I,m a sad bastard) So you can see when the Maule's away, i get antsy for something flying related to do and thought FSX would do the trick. My frustration with it is not actually the flying part, its the usual MS bull!!!! of getting the new Throttle /Prop/Mixture console to work with the existing Sidewinder yoke. My intention was to create the exact match on FS with what i fly, there is a Maule in FX and i set up the TPM layout similar to my plane, but for some reason it keeps losing its settings and defaulting back to the sidewinder for TPM functions. I was probably a bit frustrated in my last post, since then my kid has suggested I forget the new TPM hardware and just use the joystick for everything, which i have now done. Last night I had a crack at flying out of Dundee, circling and landing at "night" and in "fog", not following any STARS or SIDS procedures but just getting up in the air keeping it level and using the GPS for positional awareness. The result: 5 attempts and 5 crashes, 3 into the river Tay, 1 into the Law hill next to the airport, 1 where the GPS window froze and I lost situational awareness and was just flying around lost till the girlfriend demanded that " i get off that f*&king "game" and come to bed, its 2 in the morning".
The lessons I have learned so far:
1. Stay the hell away from clouds and night flying.
2. Overlooking the "little" things like always been in trim, being pre-prepared, prior to flying, and equipment/instrument failure or unfamiliarity that you can get by with while VFR will kill you in IMC.
3. Get an instrument rating (even if i never use it)