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Taking my first tentative flaps...

Controlling your aircraft, using the autopilot etc.

Taking my first tentative flaps...

Postby LearningToFly » Wed Aug 16, 2017 12:52 pm

A week or so back it popped into my head that I might be interested in learning to fly.
So I've downloaded FlightGear 2017.2.1 on OSX and managed to get that up and running.

I guess I've now tried around 30 takeoffs, quite a bit of flying around in attempted straight lines, and 80 or so landings (as an ex-programmer I'm comfortable with command lines, so I have a bunch of those to set me up for landings), at various airports all around the world. I've exclusively been using the c172p - maybe one day I'll try some of the others, but I'd really like to get pretty competent in a little guy first, especially since this is supposed to be a precursor to actually flying one day. Strangely, or interestingly, I'm not sure which, I've never been able to actually land the tutorial landing.

I've looked around for some videos, but they're a bit thin on the ground, and seem to assume that, at least to some extent, you know what you're doing. Is there anywhere, a fully commented (in the audio) video of a simple takeoff, fly-around, and landing? Something that says, for example, "at xxx feet extend your flaps with 3 clicks", "from now on in you need to use the rudder", "Throttle should be more or less xxx", etc etc, or some such? My plane tends to wobble - not too bad in the air, but at takeoff I don't think I've launched off tar yet, and I've only actually landed smoothly, on the tar, maybe 5 or 6 times. I don't know if using the keyboard and mouse is a problem with that - is it a lot easier with a joystick?
I've seen there are planes with co-pilots - is it possible to sit next to someone landing a plane to observe (although my internet connection is not very good)?

After the initial frustrations of constantly crashing, I'm starting to enjoy my time in the e-air more - I'd just like to get to the next level of doing things a little more properly.

Thanks in advance for any pointers on the right heading.
LearningToFly
 
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2017 12:22 pm
Callsign: WL1890
Version: Personal
OS: OSX

Re: Taking my first tentative flaps...

Postby SVW » Wed Aug 16, 2017 1:23 pm

Mouse/keyboard control is possible but yoke/joystick is easier and more fun. If your mouse is over-sensitive reduce that. If you fly without rudder pedals have auto-coordination on, otherwise off. Maybe learn from real world aviation videos like https://www.youtube.com/user/MrAviation101/videos who actually flies a Skyhawk. Practise and have fun!
Cheers
svw.
SVW
 
Posts: 75
Joined: Sat Jun 13, 2015 6:54 pm

Re: Taking my first tentative flaps...

Postby LearningToFly » Wed Aug 16, 2017 3:16 pm

OK - I'll try and score a joystick.
"--enable-auto-coordination" - I just landed at Luxembourg - that seemed to make a lot of difference to my stability and control on the final approach - thanks - great tip!
I'll check out those videos later tonight.

Thanks for the pointers.
Last edited by bugman on Wed Aug 16, 2017 4:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Please do not quote the entire previous post.
I'm often found flying the skies of Portugal of an early evening - ~6pm - call sign WL (WineLover)
LearningToFly
 
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2017 12:22 pm
Callsign: WL1890
Version: Personal
OS: OSX


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