Crossed over to the dark side
 

Well with all this snow and the Maule in for its annual I have taken the plunge and scored a deal on Ebay for a fancy supped up PC dedicated for flightsim software including yoke, rudder pedals, throttle and radio box. Never been much for gaming and have never tried Xbox or PS3 but figured I would give this MS Flightsim a try and hopefully can learn something. Thinking about doing my IMC rating and have bought and read a bunch of books and downloaded study material from ASA.

So if anyone has any pointers on the best way to do some home study elementary IFR training on Flightsim prior to starting proper training all suggestions/shortcuts are welcome.

Flight sim is excellent for getting practice in intercepting and tracking to and from a VOR or NDB. Once you can do that (intercepting a track to or from an NDB is not child's play, especially not with wind and of course you can set your own wind in FS) you can progress to holds and approaches.

Set all the realism settings high (not the display ones but the ones to do with gyro forces, gyro drift &c.) and get to know the wx settings properly so you can set your own cloud base and vis.

I think MS FS saved me at least £200 worth of flying in the early stages, getting the hang of NDB tracking (+30 aiming for -30 and all that), NDB holds, &c. I still use it to fly new procedures if they look complicated or unusual before I do them for real.

Tim

Google: Aerosoft, Avsim, PMDG, VATSIM. Thats a good start. Good luck.

It's only the dark side once you start posting videos on YouTube :)

Consider purchasing the photographic scenery and realistic airfields (e.g. justflight) so that it looks realistic when you pop out the bottom of the clouds

Also trackir -makes things much more realistic being able to look around as you would in the ac

Why dark side? :cool:

Basically, from what I've taken from all pertinent discussions and my own experience, desktop flightsims (whether MSFS or X-Plane) are good for headwork and practising procedures (including R/T if flying online) but rather useless (some even say detrimental) for airwork and practising instrument scan.

My recommendations (supposing you buy FSX):

• Get a good add-on plane nonetheless, it's just more fun. The RealAir Duke (RealAir :: Introduction) for example is probably a good choice for armchair IMC flying aside from airline jets (get the package with the piston and turbine version).
• Also consider buying Active Sky (HiFi - Active Sky 2012) for better weather simulation.
• Join IVAO or VATSIM (disregard any discussions about which is the "better network", go where you have more traffic and controllers for your virtual flying area. Basically VATSIM for US, IVAO for Europe.)
• A nice book if you want some input on armchair IFR flying: Wiley: Microsoft Flight Simulator X For Pilots: Real World Training - Jeff Van West, Kevin Lane-Cummings
• TrackIR TrackIR :: Premium head tracking Shop für pc-games :: Trackir 5 und Trackir 4:PRO - Bist Du Bereit Für Diesen Kick? Jetzt Trackir 5 kaufen is quite useful IMHO, but probably not necessary for "procedural IFR training".
• Last but not least prepare to invest some time in getting the whole thing to run smoothly and with everything set up as you want it.

Enjoy, it doesn't come that close to the real thing but can be very immersive and quite instructive. And regarding cost, it's certainly real aviation which represents the dark side :(.

Hi, remember you can fly almost from t/o to landing with the auto-pilot, you just need to set up the numbers at the right time. It will do the intercepts as well, as long as you are not too far out.

Thanks will take a look at that.

My nephew who happens to be right cheeky bastard suggested that we put the sim PC and seat inside a 1 ton tattie box and suspend it by rope from the JCB digger and he could slew it round 360 to make it feel like a spin and he could also dump the box real hard on the ground a few times to give me a 100% realistic effect of my usual landings, As i said he's a cheeky bastard. Think i will stick with installing it on the Ikea desk in the spare room

I would use it for NDB/DME approaches more than anything, they are the real buggers to fly. ILS approaches are simples.

Piperboy
 

With all this talk of crossing to the dark side until I had a good look at the thread I had assumed you had taken a job with EASA.

Could you kindly share the deal link on eBay? Given that I have been a Mac user for the better part of my adult, it sounds like what you've found on eBay could be ideal for my needs especially if it is delivered with the associated PC hardware (that is dedicated for the sim software).

Any suggestions where I could find this for FSX?

During my PPL course I saved a lot more than £200 by consolidating my learning using FSX. You do have to invest the time in setting it up right, and definitely need the Track-IR and VFR Scenery to get the most out of it.

Ian

Something Else To Try
 

I don't have as much experience of FSX as the other helpful contributors, but I'm sure you'll get value for money out of it compared with the cost of airborne time!

You could also supplement it with another piece of software that I have found tremendous, called RANT (Radio Aids Nav Tutor). It is far simpler to control than a full simulator, which isn't a bad thing when you are learning; you can concentrate on interpreting the instruments. Lots of animated tutorials and then opportunities for practicing (including a PAUSE facility, how good would that be in the air?). It's especially helpful for NDB/VOR, for example.

I taught, and examined, IF when I was in the RAF, and really wish RANT had been available then. I have heard that the RAF do use it now, though I can't confirm that personally.

It was invaluable when I was preparing for my own IMC rating recently, and I had good support from the company. You should be able to find it for around £80 - not bad compared with half an hour or so in the air?

Good luck

Redknight

It was a one of deal from a private guy that had bought a dedicated PC and all the software and 13 add on,s I paid 500 quid for the whole lot, ti looked to me like it was a guy that had went to town and ordered the works then for whatever reason decided to unload it.

At least you can break the monotony by switching to guns and missiles every now and again :p

Nice catch. Well, if you're looking to unload yours, I'll be a decent bid. ;)

Flight Sim X- Well i have had a few weeks of faffing around with it and have come to the conclusion, its the biggest load of sh%te i have ever wasted my money on, I've given the lot to my kid to see if he wants to have a crack

Lol.
Actual flying wise - I'd have to agree. Although I haven't tried it with lots of addons included, its physics engine doesn't feel anything like real flying - no matter how many gadgets you attach to it.

We put our chief instructor ( who is a BA pilot) in front of one which had yoke, throttles, peddles and scenery packs. Lets just say he got a bit frustrated with it...

However to get the hang of instrument nav it should be fine I'd have thought. Don't touch the yoke - just use the auto pilot to make the plane do what you want. Select one of the simple Cessnas which have a standard analogue fit. Ignore scenery packs or what you can see outside - in fact - you can make the instrument panel pretty much fill the screen. Use your real approach charts (once you've checked the radio frequencies match) to follow SIDS / STARS.

Beyond that its pretty much just a game... albeit one which has huge numbers of followers...

We have a fairly well specced sim at our club, three monitors, seperate yoke, rudder pedals and throttles but no one uses it 'cos basically it's pants for anything other than having a bit of a laugh.

In fact it's not much use for that either.

I tried it when doing my IMCr and just found it frustrating rather than helpful.

last month I renewed my IR and used MSFS a lot for a week prior to the test to brush up on my scan as much as anything. Rant is an excellent bit of kit for learning the art of tracking, intercepts etc and has ADF dip along with built in tutorials. You cannot practice your scan on Rant though but can on flight sim.

Learning and practicing your instrument scan is as important as learning how to follow the needles. One thing to be aware of is that the ADF and RMI needles on flight sim are back to front.

Up until five and a half years ago I was flying commercially until a change in circumstance but revalidated my IR the last couple of years with the help of these programs, the only flying that I did were the tests themselves, it probably saved in excess of a grand each time.

Piperboy, can you elaborate? I am curious.

OK, I dont think it emulates ADF dip error, and its a PITA not being able to see your in flight progress without the use of an external device (there's a cheap one for the iPad anyhow), but for less than the price of an average IMC lesson, including charges for any instrument approaches), it seems priceless for IMCr or IR training. I dont bother with the scenery as it's a waste of computer resource, but I have a PA28 I downloaded years ago for about $20, a cheap but decent joystick and a regular PC monitor. I dont see how you can go wrong. Sure, you couldnt train to be an ATPL on it, but its pretty good at PPL level.

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)

LOL. Seem like fairly wise words. I sympathise with you then if you're trying to get MS FlightSim to emulate something a bit more realistic. I have a friend who pretty much has all the possible MS FlightSim attachments going, and he has it working OK, but he once offered to sell me all his gear because he got fed up with niggles and crashes and so on.

As a simple instrument training program with simple equipment, its pretty good and worth what you pay for it. I believe the 'Ice Pilots' were using it to practise DC-3 IFR flying, but I may be mistaken on that point.

Where is the dark side?
 

I thought that "PPRUNE" WAS the dark side, at least that is how it is referred to on the "FLYER" forum.

Can someone enlighten me as I am now in the dark.

Wait a god damn minute, I just flew the sim and basically loaded a flight plan in and the FS Maule had all kinds of fancy nav equipment like coupled autopilot/gps etc with altitude and heading hold, things my wee real world vfr Maule can only dream off.

But what i find really amazing is that Microsoft have the gall to imply by making it seem so easy that you could put any dip!!!! in the left seat with all that fancy equipment and as long as they could firewall the power, lift the nose then hit the autopilot on with the flight plan loaded all they would have to know was how to retract the flaps, set the power and gab with ATC while chatting up the stewardesses, and the plane would do everything else for them !! I mean really, what a slur on the professional pilot there must be so much more to it?:)

RANT was very useful when I did my IMC a while ago.

I've never been able to get on with FlightSims (of different types) - they seem too far away from 'real' flying.

Now a 'real' flight simulator - that's different!

An 18 year old said quite seriously that he could land a Tiger Moth on the back of a moving truck and wouldn't believe me when I said the most expert pilot couldn't do it.

He probably thought pilots were wasting thousands of pounds getting a commercial licence!:rolleyes:

pb84,

I suggest you have a look at X Plane 10 X-Plane 10 Global | The World?s Most Advanced Flight Simulator | X-Plane.com

This is not IR practice, but if you want some really challenging flying, try Condor: The Competition Soaring Simulator
I recently bought a joystick, which has transformed my Condor experience.

Today I was ridge soaring in Snowdonia followed by a 200 km cross-country in the Czech Republic. A tricky one because one of the turning points was over 6000'!

I managed that one just, and then became cocky on the final glide and "fluttered" my wings off. :sad:

All of this begs the question: for a Mac user, what's the ideal complimentary suite of applications to aid the IR/IMCR training experience?

RedKnight,

I'm a Mac user. There is a version of X Plane 10 for the Mac. Try the demo:

Download the free X-Plane 10 Demo | X-Plane.com

Condor is a Windows-only program so I run that natively in Bootcamp. It won't run in a Virtual Machine (Parallels).