Posted on 01/20/2024 11:03:07 AM PST by fireman15
The community is awesome, there are so many talented folks who help to make it the way it is. I never got into the design side myself...except for creating AI flight plans(from old pdf timetables), but PMDG, LEVELD767, ACTIVESKY, TDS/freeware developers...the list of dedicated "hobbyists" goes on and on.
I recently bought a VR set for use with MSFS...the immersion is fantastic, but after 30 minutes or so, nausea set in(bummer...but may give it another shot).
Not as "addicted" as I once was...but still enjoy 'simming.
About 20 years ago I took a friend from work flying. When he walked out to meet me at the airport, he said that he had downloaded the same airplane that I owned. He said that he had been practicing with it and had memorized all of airspeed numbers for take-off, approach and landing.
We did a walk around and I told him that I wasn’t going to give him any hints and just wanted him to take off and fly to another airport and land there. I told him that the real thing was easier than using the flight simulator because there was so much more sensory input. But I was not sure how his simulator experience would actually carry over.
Of course, he took off without any problems, but I wasn’t sure how the landing would go when we got to the other airport. To my surprise he was even using trim to get to the correct airspeeds when we entered the pattern and was using the flaps appropriately. And he was correcting our altitude with the throttle.
He made a perfect landing. Our plane is a Piper Cherokee which is very forgiving and one of the easiest planes to fly. But he had no previous flying experience and I was very impressed. We spent the entire day flying all around the area and I had him land at more challenging airports.
I thought for sure that he would start training and get his license, but he never got around to it.
Yeah, I bought 2 of those myself for my old gameport setup(G-Force Plus yoke, $12 clearance way back when, and and old logitech side-stick(thrift store) for Airbus...combined with gameport CH Pedals(Ebay/used). The springs for the yoke are long since broken, but found using dental-bands work great, allowing me to adjust tension(add or reduce bands).
Buddy of mine bought the newer CH Yoke, I personally found them too stiff.
The full cockpit setups I've seen on YouTube are amazing...if not a bit... insane, but I fully understand the quest for the "real as it gets" addiction.
There is a really great community willing to help other flight simulator enthusiasts. Typically, they are not as grumpy as those you meet in other types of forums. Almost all are way beyond my abilities and yet no one really cares.
Even when you own a budget airplane, flying is still pretty darned expensive. I have a homebuilt ultralight that sips just a little over a gallon an hour... so that is reasonably priced entertainment. The problem is that my life insurance doesn't cover me when I am flying it, and I would hate to leave my wife in a financial crisis.
Our Cherokee's Lycoming O-320 can be throttled down to 5 gallons an hour when properly leaned and still cruise along at about 100 mph which is very good for a general aviation airplane. But even that adds up pretty quickly. It wasn't too bad when I could buy unleaded Autogas for $1 a gallon. But my plane's STC requires that the autogas has no alcohol in it. I can still get it at a local Commercial Fueling Network station but it is much more expensive than other stations and Avgas is even more expensive.
And of course, that does not count oil, maintenance, parts, insurance and other related expenses.
I live on an airpark and a lot of my neighbors are getting up there. Fortunately, most of us know our limitations. Our Piper Cherokee and Ultralight airplane are both extremely easy to fly, but some of these guys are still flying older complex high powered aircraft.
My neighbor bought a super-fast and powerful modified Mooney. Ten years ago, a few months after he bought it, he took me for a ride. I could tell that flying the plane made him very tense. The take-off was not nerve racking but when we came back to the airport it became obvious why the plane scared him. On final he skimmed the tree tops, used full flaps along with “speed brakes” that came out of the top side of his wings. We were still halfway down the runway before his tires touched the ground and we still were going very fast.
In my Cherokee I was used to plopping the plane on the ground barely past the threshold hitting the brakes and taxiing off on the first or second exit. I realized that I had no interest in a high-performance plane when I reached a ripe old age.
That’s really unfortunate about the Mooney driver!
I think he’d do well to get some time with an instructor experienced in Mooneys.
I was the Safety Officer and check airman in a club that had three different Archers. None of the 25 or so members had any mishaps in my two decades with them.
We all need to stay away from white-knuckle flying.
Best wishes for safe flights—always!
Lol- yep, some are too overconfident for sure.
I beleive mine is USB (been so long since I used it I can’t remeber now)
It was of *great* interest to me, and I again thank you for it.
“The buttons are simply single pole switches that connect from the button pin to ground, while the joystick axis pins connect to a 100 kohm, linear taper potentiometer which is in turn connected to one of the +5 pins.”
https://www.mikesflightdeck.com/interfacing/gameport.html
The old control yokes and rudder pedals that I have are very easy to troubleshoot when they are not working quite right.
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