Well, after putting about 13 1/2 hours in the NexStar simulator over the last few weeks I decided I was ready to fly in the real thing today. Fortunately, my local club has a training day on Sunday. It was incredible really. I only had the chance to fly it once for about 6 minutes during my four hour stay at the field due to the fact that my instructor was busy repairing one of his aircraft and talking to other members, but it was great when I finally got in the air.
It was also somewhat disturbing to find out that the real thing handles so differently than the simulator. The vertical performance was completely off, which might be because the engine was running WAAAYYYYY too rich (I am still cleaning unburnt fuel off of the fuselage. [:'(] ) It also had an infinitely difficult time doing rolls. In fact, I couldn’t get it to do one, even though I must have done at least 200 perfect rolls in the sim. My instructor was able to do a roll, barely, by giving it full down elevator. Another annoying trait that the real plane has over the sim is that it tends to climb during turns. [:-] I don’t know why it would have a tendency to climb into turns, but I am going to have to stop that ASAP. So, my sim experience of perfect landings and takeoffs with complete circuits of the simulated field inverted with only the rudder and elevator were for naught.
Still, despite the inaccuracy of the sim I did have a lot of fun, and it was nice meeting the other members of the club. I suppose the simulator did help with controlling the plane in the 3rd person perspective and reacting quickly to my plane’s movements. With any luck I will be free on Wednesday, which is another training day for my club, so I can go back and hopefully get a little more stick time. Heh, after today I am beginning to doubt I will solo for a VERY long time.
At least my plane will remain in one piece until that time.
(Note – Isn’t it normal procedure to do a range check on the ground? My instructor forgot about it and took off without doing one. Actually, now that I think about it he seems to have forgotten several things that I thought were standard procedure. Maybe he was simply distracted by the repairs on his plane though, plus, I am not even mildly close to his level of experience. He was out there flying large scale twin engine acrobatic planes, so I guess he knew what he was doing.)
(Edit - I decided to add this in shortly after my previous post, but it is not really worthy of another post. Maybes it’s not even worth posting at all, I don't know. It WAS a lot of fun out there today, but, as I mentioned earlier, it was deeply disturbing to me that my time in the simulator did so little. In the simulator I am able to make perfect landings 45/50 times even in 10-25 mile an hour gusts and can fly some fairly complex acrobatics with little problem. However, despite that simulator experience I was not able to do half of those things in real life today. I imagine had I tried to land it I would have ended up with a nice pile of balsa scraps. It annoys me beyond words that the simulator so failed to prepare me for what it is really like up there. Yes, it did help with controlling the plane in the third person perspective, but other than that it did nothing. Heh, I guess I was, somewhat arrogantly perhaps, expecting that I would go out there today, make a few token flights with my instructor just to please him, then solo perfectly and receive my wings within the hour. It was quite a shock really, seeing how different the real thing is. It was also immensely humbling to see the others out there flying low wing acrobatics planes and scale warbirds, knowing that I have so much trouble flying even a high wing trainer. I did well today, or so says my instructor, maybe I did, I don't know, but I was hoping to do so much better with the simulator experience I have accumulated. I will get used to it though, because if I don't, I won't have a plane to fly for much longer. Anyway, that is enough whining and moaning for tonight, I think. Sorry to put you through that, RCU and the friendly people here helped me out there far more than the simulator did, and I am truly grateful for that. Thank you, for everything. With your continued support, I think I WILL eventually learn to fly in real life as well as in the sim.)