Matt_W
2025
Yeah, you can set up markers showing bearings to two radio beacons on your heading display. And there are little distance displays that pop up to its left and right, which I use for DME tracking on approaches.
The radial direction marked on maps is away from the VOR station. So if you want to fly toward it you have to add 180° in your head or you can supposedly use the back course autopilot, though I’ve had limited success with it.
Pedro
2026
Question: when you guys are flying a small plane and the wind is pushing you, say north. How do you adjust to that, do you fly towards a point a lot further south than your destination and let the wind take you north, make some very fine rudder compensation for the wind so you are flying into it and actually flying close to a straight line, or just adjust in small increments as you go along?
schurem
2027
You can calculate it, or have the avionics do that for you. It’s a vector calculation. So you steer upwind by a certain measure that can be precisely calculated.
I wouldn’t be able to give an example off the top of my head, but say your destination is at 270 and the wind is blowing from 180 at 50 knots. Your machine cruises at 200 knots. That means your course would need to be one quarter (?) Of the angular difference (90 degrees here) into the wind. So you’d fly 235 ish and end up with a ground track due 270.
This is probably utterly wrong and I should be schooled in this by someone who actually knows their shit.
Matt_W
2028
You can’t compensate for the wind with rudder, you have to fly towards the wind. If you’re doing visual navigation, just guestimate it. When you have a steady heading in the direction you want to go, pick a point on the horizon directly in front of you and see if it drifts to the left or right. Adjust your heading toward the drift.
In @schurem’s example you want the sum of your 200kt speed vector and the 50kt wind vector at 180 to be at 270, the angle is 270-arcsin(50/200)=255.5°. (This only works because 270 and 180 are at right angles to each other.) Easier to set the autopilot up to fly heading 270 and then see what it actually flies.
Skipper
2029
Been way too long (25 years plus) for ground school but your answer sounds correct. We’re all flailing around here. :)
I believe the phrase is wind correction angle. Surely there is a modern calc method or app or plugin or something. I remember doing that shit with a ruler and triangles.
@Pedro, honestly it was a lot harder with VOR as you had to do that. With GPS, I wouldn’t doubt if perhaps the garmin accounts FOR that, as it knows windspeed. I think anyway.
Pedro
2030
Thanks guys!
Yeah, I expressed myself badly, I meant fly into the wind. Cheers!
Matt_W
2032
It does. If you fly up to high altitude, winds are often 40-100kts up there. If they’re cross, you’ll see the aircraft heading way to one side of the GPS track if the AP is following it.
Both the G1000 and G3000 have wind speed indication on the PFD screen as an option. I always show option 3, which shows wind direction relative to the aircraft’s heading, with the arrow pointing downwind. The MFD on the G3000 (center screen) always shows wind direction north relative with the arrow pointing upwind on the upper right of the map display, which I think is option 1.
I’ve gone back and forth a lot during my lifetime on this perception of the size of our planet. I travelled a lot as a kid. Even though we lived in Qatar, we would fly to different places every summer. Countries in Europe, the U.S., Asia. And the more I flew the smaller the world felt in my mind.
But there’s still one particular flight I remember. I don’t remember exactly where we were, but I think it was on a flight to Europe, so my best guess is that this was somewhere over Greece, or close to it in the Mediterranean. And I just remember being at cruising altitude, being really high up, and looking straight down from the plane, out the passenger window, and see the sun reflecting off the waves, beautiful blue as far as I could see on my side of the plane, except for a rocky shore that looked brown, and off the coast of that shore, the white wake of a boat. I just remember looking down at that boat next to the shore and the huge ocean, and just having this feeling of the immense size of the planet. I think it was because the boat was so tiny from that far up that I couldn’t even see it directly, but i could tell it was there because of the wake it was creating. I imagined the shore I was seeing was part of a landmass that I couldn’t see that I could have maybe seen if I looked out the other side of the plane, but from my side there was just that rocky shore, the tiny boat and just so much water.
Matt_W
2034
Yeah, having ridden on a ship across the Atlantic back and forth, the scale of the planet is just immense. It’s so hard to see it with our air travel and satellite images and Google Maps, but down at human scale, it’s just enormous. The distances between places are stupendous, both in distance and in culture. Read about these for a better sense of scale:
I remember passing a little island off the coast of Morocco one night. Just a scrap of land in the Mediterranean. But there were lots of lights on the shoreline. People lived there. Perhaps their whole lives on this little scrap of land. Just incredible.
Skipper
2035
When you look at the Mediterranean Sea on a globe, it seems so tiny in comparison to say the Atlantic or Pacific. And I served on a relatively “small” Navy ship with a crew just over 600. It wasn’t fast but wasn’t entirely slow either. But it was possible back then to be multi day cruises north to south and multiple week crosses east to west (depending on how far we went.) In that comparatively tiny sea. And the smallest I’ve ever felt was on that ship in the middle of that sea at night. Nothing but water around you, the widest and clearest view of the stars I’ve ever seen and the slow waves rocking the ship. A ship, mind you, that was over 500 feet long and about 14 thousand tons displaced. In other words, pretty big.
I can imagine seeing one that far below and thinking even more just how tiny the world we inhabit is in comparison to the whole earth. Akin to that famous, “pale blue dot,” picture in comparison.
I’ve been working with Microsoft’s Community Manager for Flight Simulator over the past few weeks to co-host the community fly-in event on their official Twitch stream this Friday, October 2. We’ll be visiting Japan to take advantage of the just-released scenery update. All the details are here: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/official-community-fly-in-event-guided-japan-tour/287988
A reminder that this is TODAY (Friday, Oct. 2) at 3pm ET / noon PT on twitch.tv/msfsofficial. I am beyond excited to be working with the Microsoft community team on their official stream. I really hope some of you can join, either flying along with the group in MSFS or watching the show on Twitch.
Skipper
2037
I’m giving a training presentation at that time but will join a bit late. Here’s hoping you’re going for a bit.
The flight plan from Tokyo to Nagoya should take about 90 minutes (+/- 10), which includes some sightseeing over the Tokyo metropolitan area (and yes, we will be flying past the life-size Gundam in Yokohama). The stream itself is scheduled to last for about two hours.
Matt_W
2039
Can I join even if I don’t use Twitch?
Can I join even if I don’t use Twitch?
You don’t need a Twitch account to watch the stream or to participate in the group flight. If you want to watch the show, just open https://twitch.tv/msfsofficial in your web browser at 3pm ET / noon PT. If you want to fly along with the group, follow the instructions linked here. If you’re flying with us, I highly suggest having the Twitch stream open in the background so you can hear the commentary.
Matt_W
2041
I’ll try to be there. May have to kick my kids off the computer. They don’t need to do school!
Matt_W
2042
Screenshots I got before I CTD’d
CTD’d again trying to re-load the flight. Guess that’s it for me. Seemed like a cool fly-in. MS needs to fix their sim.
Matt_W
2043
Got back into the sim, but for some reason I couldn’t move the camera in drone mode, so here’s a bunch of cockpit/external shots.
Other notes: My trim control binding on my joystick would trim down, but not up, so I had to keep looking down to grab the trim lever with my mouse and move it ever so little.
Switched time of day here. Fuji looks better when the sun is high.
I actually caught up to SeedyL (who I think is also @MarchHare) for a few minutes here! Most of the time I couldn’t see him. Different player population slice I guess.
Flying through the canyons to the west of Fuji, my plane started doing all sorts of weird things. Fuel was fine, but my RPMs were dropping, oil pressure warning came on, oil temps dropped low, couldn’t maintain altitude, hope there was an ejector seat. Could be I redlined the engine for too long. It was a fun flight up until then. Thanks @MarchHare!
jpinard
2044
What video card do you have?
