In other news, I just had a RL flight lesson. The instructor said that for someone who had never flown before, I was really good at maintaining altitude.
Also, terrifying!
Skipper
2808
No joke, this is a real congrats kind of thing. It takes a lot to overcome the initial fear and just enjoy it. Nice work, man! Keep it going.
Looks like a 150 or 172 you were in? Itās a lot of routine, like the pre-flight, start up, setup of coms/nav, etc. I wish Iād stuck with it all the way to private pilot.
What did you find surprising or fun?
It was a 172.
Surprising was how viscerally terrifying it was. The instructor let me take the yoke for a while, and it was the most shit-your-pants frightening thing Iāve ever done. There are mountains north of Scottsdale, and it gets kind of bumpy. Itās tough to shake the feeling that the illusion is going to break and Iām going to die any second. Iāve only been scuba diving once, but it was kind of like that, where I had to fight the part of my brain telling me Iām going to drown.
We didnāt do much of the pre-flight stuff, etc. This was an introductory ādiscoveryā flight with one of the local flight schools.
The other interesting thing was that while I was up there initially, I felt like, ok, Iām glad I did this, but Iām never going to do this again. Now I find that I think I may take a few more lessons, just to see.
Edit: One other thing. How tiny the cockpit is. I drive a very small car (Mazda MX-5). Itās roomy compared to the inside of a 172.
jpinard
2810
@Editer @Skipper I dropped my OC and the sim is not crashing now. Will have to see what I can get it up to and still be stable in the future. And yes, for that hard crash it was an awful screech. Made it sound like my computer was going to blow up.
Can I ask a question. Iād really like to figure out how to start in a parking spot, then tune to correct frequency to talk to airport people, then taxi, then take off and then do the radio switching thing. Could someone walk me through this, or point me to something that will guide me? I donāt even know where to start, but right now the game just starts me ready to take off and Iād like to learn to do things ārightā when it comes to ATC.
When you set up your starting point, by default it puts you on a runway. Use the pull down - or drill down to the airport on the map - and select a parking spot.
Youāll also start cold and dark doing that. If you donāt want to do everything yourself, you can pull up the checklist and just hit the āautocompleteā butting for the different checklists.
Thereās a setting to allow the AI to auto-tune comms frequencies. I always leave that on. I have an understanding of how to set comms frequencies, but fiddling with the little knobs with mouse look seems very tedious. If you really want to do it yourself, I would suggest getting the mobile companions app.
Also, P Gatcombās youtube tutorials are great. In some of the auto pilot videos, he goes through the use of the different Garmin systems, including the use of the comms. I really recommend those.
jpinard
2813
How do you even know what frequencies to tune to?
schurem
2814
Thatās the rub. Thatās where you have to go look up some info externally. What freak is the local airfield at? Place like https://skyvector.com/ would be a good start. And down the rabbit hole you goā¦
When the thing hits VR, I fully intend to use my ring-pointer-thingy (pointctrl) for that. Itās fun and helps with the being-there feeling a LOT. Itās why DCS is such fun in VR. Cold starting becomes fun when you reach for the actual position. And some things can be hard to reach too! The fuel pump switch in the AV-8B for example, better not have a sore back getting that one!
Skipper
2815
Yeah they are really tight inside. I can understand some of the terrifying part in that you canāt see crap like a car. You really use every window at times just to try to gauge things. So, unlike a car, you use instruments to tell you things: wing leveling, pitch up/down, speed of a turn, where youāre headed, etc.
You do move around but in my opinion, less so than the simulator.
I honestly have rarely done it, but you can find guides on ācold and darkā for MSFS for most of the aircraft in-game at this point. Each is a bit different, understandably. Like the others said, turn things on/off on the āassistsā area of the game settings. Turning AI controlled frequencies in-flight really helps you understand the flow of communication from start to finish. After hearing those a few times you can turn the AI (copilot) off for that and all of it is done with the mouse, selecting the dropdown for each part of it and the response.
Matt_W
2816
The AI checklist assist will run through all the actions you need for a cold and dark startup. Watch them do it a few times and you should be able to run the checklist yourself.
Once youāre going to skyvector for frequency info, you might as well just install Little Navmap and let it read your entire library. Then you wonāt be frustrated when youāre at an airport where something doesnāt match reality and you canāt contact tower for some reason.
Skipper
2819
Add on program you can run:
https://albar965.github.io/littlenavmap.html
Some cool things you can get from it are minimum elevation on a trip/leg, weather (it pulls from in-game,) etc.
Pedro
2820
Itās really neat, I used it to generate the flight plans for my bush trip thingy. You can fly the route and export the plan, among many other things.
I would have liked to tip the guy, but as far as I can tell thatās only available via some Facebook plugin, and I donāt use that.
Oh, and congrats on the flight, Ike! :D
Skipper
2821
Also a word of warning, Ike. If you load up Little Navmap, itās a busy interface, you can see that from the pic above. I think I saw a youtube or something similar on it but there is a LOT more to the program than what Iāve used it for.
jpinard
2822
Where is the flying cat scenario?
jpinard
2823
So someone made a massive improvement with the downtown area of Grand Rapids where I live. But Iād like to make my own street area more realistic. And then add my pond and stuff.
This is MS Flight Sim of my area:
Google Maps:
Just how difficult would this be?
Thereās a guide on Reddit for it, not too hard for buildings, apparently. Not sure about water/terrain, might have to work with the SDK on that. I look forward to flying over the frop bog soon.
jpinard
2825
Thanks! Also the guy that did downtown broke traffic on the highways he re-did down there. So I hope I can fix that.
