felixone

After reading the post “A radio to grow with” I started thinking that it would be great to have more posts like this. Since I am technically still a newbie there is very little I have of value to share. However, I thought I could share my experiences with the flight simulator. I have established a “routine” that I think others might find beneficial.

The routine I use is based directly off of training from my instructor, so this will be a blend of “instructions” and sharing my experiences in learning to fly. To begin, before I even bought a plane I bought RealFlight G3.5. Although the examples I will be using during this are based on features in RealFlight I can only assume most simulators have similar features. After installing the sim, I immediately loaded up each of the planes and attempted to fly them with varying degrees of success. After I got that out of my system I loaded the PT-40 model and set to work. My first couple days I didn’t use any sort of “routine” I simply loaded up the plane and flew around until I either landed or crashed. It was fun, and I was building a lot of confidence.

A few days after buying the simulator I visited my local club. They have a couple club trainers, and one of the instructors talked me into taking one of them up on the buddy box. I was quite nervous due to the amount of wind we had that day, but he was insistent and I was easily swayed. Everything went fine, but I realized something very valuable about my simulator time. I had never practiced flying with any wind so I was not prepared for how a plane handles in the wind. For instance the first time I made a turn away from the wind I nearly rolled the plane over due to the added roll speed the wind caused. So, turning up the wind in whatever simulator you use would be step number 1. I would actually expand this to adjusting the environment to match your field conditions as closely as possible. This includes the wind, position of the sun, and selecting a field that most closely resembles the one you fly at.

After the couple of flights I had that night I vowed never fly the simulator without at least a little wind. I generally set the wind speed in RealFlight anywhere between 4-8 MPH (although sometimes as much as 10-12 MPH). If you have used RealFlight you are lucky since it does a good job of mimicking real wind in that it varies the wind speed so even if you have it set to 6 MPH you might get gusts that are much higher.

As it so happens that first day at the field was also the same day I bought my first plane, an Avistar Select RTF. I made arrangements to meeting with an instructor the next week, but before that I spent a lot of time on the simulator, with lots of wind dialed in. At my next lesson we worked on basic flight patterns, and even some basic aerobatics. This is where I learned another valuable lesson about the simulator. Although it has passable collision detection, and mostly realistic physics it does not fully mimic real life. I say this because as I was practicing my loops the instructor told me that I should really be cutting power on the down slope. He said that although rare the added stress of completing a loop at full power could over time stress the wing eventually causing a failure (wing coming off, etc). Now in the simulator you don’t have a setting for aggregate damage, so stresses to the airframe are automatically cured when you hit the reset button. The lesson I learned this day was not so much a new simulator setting but that just because you can do it on the simulator doesn’t mean you can or should do it with a real plane.

Moving on to my next lesson I discovered that I had a lot of difficulty lining up for approaches. Since landing was so easy in the simulator I never really cared where I landed, just so long as I didn’t crash. The lesson I learned this day again wasn’t a special setting I could change, but another refinement in the way I approached my time on the simulator. It was really at this point that I began to develop my routine. Every time I worked with the simulator after this lesson I spent the first 25% of my sim time just doing takeoffs and landings. I did this until I could not only take off, but land on the runway every time.

A week later it was time for my next lesson. This time we were going to work on actual takeoffs and landings. Since I had made some modifications to the pushrods to help mechanically center my trims I had the instructor do the first takeoff. It was however my turn to land. I wouldn’t say it was the best landing ever done, but this was really the first time that it was obvious that sim time was paying off. Once on the ground however the next area of weakness immediately showed itself. While flying on the sim you are lucky in that when you reset the plane immediately is placed on the runway ready to take off. So although I had practiced taking off and landing hundreds of times, I had never really practiced ground control. Taking pity on me the instructor was kind enough to line me up for my first take off. Again my lack of ground skills ended this with an aborted takeoff. After lining me up again, he cleared me for takeoff. Here again the sim time paid off. Although it was a little steep my first takeoff was completely passable. I had a few more takeoffs and landings that night, but left knowing what I needed to do the next time I go on the simulator.

After my abysmal ground performance I modified my routine as follows: setup environment with adequate wind and sun position; practice taxiing the plane around before taking off for the first time; lastly spend several minutes doing takeoffs and landings. I did this every chance I had before my next lesson.

The next time at the field I had the instructor do the initial takeoff. This time it was due to my son getting his tiny hands on my transmitter and having fun with all the switches. Even though I was pretty sure I had accurately reset all of the trims, I wanted to be sure. After a few light aerobatics I landed, and prepared for my first full takeoff. With the plane setup on the flight line, I taxied it out to the runway, lined up and execute a perfect takeoff. Once again proving that my simulator time was not being wasted. For the rest of the night I did all of the takeoffs, and all of the landings. My instructor was even kind enough to let me buddy box his plane so I could get a feel for how a more aerobatic plane handled. Of course I passed on the takeoff and landing this time. I did however practice some more ground control so I could get a feel for a tail dragger. They definitely handle differently; I made a mental note to practice with those on the sim.

Things went so well during this session that we ended the night discussing what needed to be done for me to begin to solo. The one area we discussed that I really should work on was deadstick landings. Although I had been manually killing the engine in RealFlight, I hadn’t really practiced unexpected engine failure. To rectify this on my next session with the simulator I adjusted the settings to disable all flight failure options except engine failure. I then set the frequency to always, so every flight would end with a deadstick. Although I have just added this new requirement to my routine I already have dozens of deadstick flights on several different aircraft, each flight landing better than the one before.

So, summarize the method I use:

1. Adjust the simulator environment to match your field conditions as closely as you can
2. Practice ground control with whatever aircraft you are practicing with
3. Practice takeoffs and landing for several minutes before moving on to any aerobatics
4. Turn on a high frequency of flight failures to begin to not only recognize when a failure has occurred but how to recover from it
5. Lastly, load up a fun plane (for me it is the Yak, or the Ultimate Bi-Plane). Fly the wings off this plane. The crazier you fly the better. Just remember to always fly as though when you crash it is for real. If you do this you will learn a lot about how to recover the plane from all sorts of attitudes.

I realize that everyone has a different reason for buying a simulator, but if you are like me you bought it as “insurance” against a lost trainer. If that is the case, and you follow my suggestions hopefully you will have good luck learning to fly quickly.

I hope this is of help to some of my fellow newbies, and I apologize for making it so long. I tend to get carried away and ramble on, especially about things I am passionate about, or would it be obsessed with in this case.

Anyway, good luck to all of you. May every takeoff end with a happy landing!

Thanks for taking the time to read my book

bigedmustafa

My Feedback: (2)

This is a terrific post, and is a great example of how to use the simulator as a training tool in spite of a simulator's intrinsic weaknesses in some areas!

It sounds like you're off to a great start with this sport, and you must be having a lot of fun as well.

rclement

My Feedback: (1)

Yes, awesome post. I've been wanting to write something along these lines but now I don't have too. Very good job. I'm certain that if more students would read this and practice what you have mentioned here they would be flying better in no time. As an instructor myself I've noticed that people that put in sim time catch on to flying much quicker than those that don't. You've gone the extra and important step and use the sim as a tool.

LeeL

My Feedback: (1)

felixone great post, I only hope that many folks will read it and take it to heart. The sim is a great tool to use, but it will only teach you what you program into it. There is no substitute for a good qualified flight instructor.

opjose

Wonderful post!

Some suggestions.

Edit the planes and set the strength multiplier of the gear WAAY down.

This forces you to be very light on your landings. It will improve your approaches at the field to no end.

Set the gear Toe-in to a negative value, say -9. This will make the plane more skittish on the ground, and more prone to ground loops.
Again this will help you better prepare for the real thing.

Edit the airport, and set the Friction co-efficients so that "Rolling Resistance" is about .7 and "friction" is about .9.

You'll find that then the plane will slow down quickly on grass surfaces, tend to nose over if when it transitions from asphalt to grass, and require much more throttle to get it moving on grass.

The nose heavy tail draggers will tend to nose over if you don't hold up elevator as you run up the engine.

Set the Micro Turbulence to say 50%, wind gusts & variations to 30%, increase the layer heights, and finally bring the wind speed up to about 12mph. You should then see it gusting to approximately 18-20mph at times with wind direction varying quite realistically.

Finally set the wind to approach the flight line in a diagnonal fashion. This will mimic your real world flying conditions fairly accurately.

Doing all this has taken me to the point, that often on high wind days I'm the only person out at the field.... and much to some people's surprise I'm usually flying .90 - .60 planes in 25 mph+ winds w/o any problems.

The sims are certainly useful and great training aids, of course the real world is a harsher teacher.